Democrat Joe Biden takes the stage in the first presidential debate of 2020 on Tuesday looking at an opponent, President Donald Trump, who has unknowingly done him a huge favor: he lowered expectations for Biden’s performance.
The president has spent months painting Biden as sleepy, shaky and senile, a move that may have lowered the bar for Biden’s performance in the eyes of many voters who will see him on stage in Cleveland for the first time since the Democratic convention.
An even acceptable performance by the former vice president could look like a victory in a debate that has assumed enormous importance after Covid-19 limited the candidates’ in-person campaign.
“President Trump will definitely try to throw a bunch of curveballs at the vice president that are designed to get him out of his game,” said Jay Carney, who was Biden’s communications director before becoming White House press secretary during the presidency of Barack Obama. “The vice president waits and is preparing for that and knows that biting that bait is not what he wants to do.”
Waiting for mistakes
But if the error-prone Biden stumbles or looks a bit like the cartoon Trump has painted of him, his campaign could be damaged. There are two more presidential debates left, but first debates, like first impressions, have a way of sticking with the candidates.
A good showing in Trump’s debate at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland could help revive his faltering campaign. It trails Biden by about 7 points nationally, according to an average of RealClearPolitics polls. Trump, bolstered by his unwavering confidence in his ability to sell himself, has said he has done little of the traditional preparation for a high-stakes debate. He says that his daily exchange with journalists, sometimes two or three times a day, is practice enough.
“I think I prepare myself every day. I think, you know, when you are president, you see everything that they are going to ask you, “Trump said in an interview Sunday with Fox News.
Trump muddied the waters a bit Sunday, tweeting a “demand” that Biden take a drug test before or after the debate, the latest in a series of unsubstantiated suggestions that the former vice president’s public appearances have been affected by the consumption of drugs.
But early debates are often a trap for incumbent presidents, who have less time to practice than their rivals, or are simply not as likely to be worked on by loyal and sometimes even sycophantic attendees in preparing the debate .
Ronald Reagan devastated President Jimmy Carter in 1980 by asking voters if they were better off than four years ago. President George W. Bush was criticized for complaining about how hard his job was while debating John Kerry in 2004. Bush’s father, President George HW Bush, faced double-cannon attacks from Bill Clinton and independent Ross Perot in his first reelection debate in 1992 – and he looked at his watch in the middle of the debate. President Barack Obama, one of the most talented speakers in the Democratic Party, was clearly outdone in his first debate with Mitt Romney in 2012.
Wall Street will be watching. Trump’s refusal last week to commit to a peaceful transfer of power if he loses the election reinforced moves by merchants to protect themselves after November. 3 volatility. Assets ranging from currencies and gold to stocks and interest rates now reflect an unusual potential for sharp movements around and after Election Day.
Covid campaigns
Trump has only resumed his campaign rallies in earnest in the past month, hosting events on outdoor airplane hangers that have fewer people than the sports arenas he’s used to filling.
And Biden has largely avoided all campaign events except small and strictly guided ones, in what his aides say is an effort to adhere to social distancing best practices during the pandemic. But that exposed him to much less of the usual give and take with journalists and the public.
Biden, meanwhile, had fewer campaign events last week, staying home for attendees to pepper him with questions and compose responses in person at his home in Wilmington, Delaware, and via video conference. Advisors Ron Klain and Anita Dunn are leading the effort. Dunn’s husband, Bob Bauer, who served as an attorney in the White House during the Obama administration, has played Trump in mock debates, according to a person with knowledge of the preparations for the debate.
The Biden campaign believes that Trump will be eager to hurl insults and spread misinformation, posing a challenge to anyone debating it. That’s particularly serious for Biden because any verbal misstep by the Democratic candidate offers Trump an opportunity to strike.
Preparing for attacks
Aides have prepared Biden for possible Trump attacks on his family, particularly after Senate Republicans last week released a critical report from the former vice president’s son Hunter, detailing millions of dollars in transactions and payments that, according to They said they came from Chinese businessmen with ties to the Chinese government and the widow of the former Moscow mayor. An attorney for Hunter Biden denied that he had any financial relationship with the former mayor, and the report found no wrongdoing on the part of Joe Biden.
Biden has become angry and defensive in the election campaign when he feels his family is under attack, including criticizing an Iowa voter in January who asked him about his son’s business.
“I hope they don’t fool me into fighting this guy,” Biden said at a fundraiser earlier this month. “It’s going to be difficult, because I predict that he will be yelling.
Trump has been perfecting his attacks through a fast-paced campaign schedule for the past week, in which he often mocks his Democratic rival.
After the debate, Biden seeks to match some of Trump’s campaign appearances frequencies, embarking on a train tour of Ohio and Pennsylvania, marking his first multi-day change since March, according to a person familiar with the candidate’s travel plans. .
Setting expectations
Trump may be preparing more than he shows. The president has had a phalanx of campaign aides accompany him on his recent trips across the country, and he enlisted former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, who played Hillary Clinton in Trump’s mock debate in 2016, for additional help. .
Trump advisers have studied Biden’s past debate performances, including two previous vice presidential debates, and have briefed Trump on how Biden has consistent answers to certain questions that he has honed over decades in Washington.
And the Trump campaign has recently changed course by setting expectations, portraying Biden as a veteran debater thanks to a lifetime in politics.
“He was in the Senate for three decades, where all they do is debate,” said Trump campaign spokesman Tim Murtaugh. “He debated twice as vice president and by all accounts he won those debates. During the primaries he was in 11 debates and managed to defeat two dozen rivals. He’s a guy who knows his way around the debate stage. “
But the Trump campaign’s attempts to raise expectations for Biden have been largely thwarted by the president, who goes on to say that the 77-year-old former vice president cannot function without a Teleprompter.
Debate fights
Biden’s team has also played the game of expectations, saying that for the vice president, a key challenge will be absorbing the personal tirades the president plans to unleash.
Biden’s allies also acknowledge that he sometimes struggled during Democratic debates, stumbling over his words or failing to avoid attacks, such as when Sen. Kamala Harris, now his running mate, gutted him in a primary campaign debate for his stance. passed on transporting children to Integrate schools racially.
And Biden’s team has tried to train him not to get too involved in trying to verify Trump’s facts, according to a person familiar with the campaign’s thinking. They worry that too much time spent discrediting Trump will take away Biden’s opportunity to present his vision for the country. They hope Fox News moderator Chris Wallace will do the fact check so Biden doesn’t have to.
“Debates don’t reward people who speak with full sentences and long paragraphs,” Carney said. “They really pay off witty lines, name calling and gossip.”
Still, the former vice president has made it clear that he hopes to beat Trump.
“He doesn’t know how to debate the facts,” Biden told MSNBC in an interview that aired on Saturday. “He is not that smart. You don’t know so many facts. He doesn’t know much about foreign policy. You don’t know much about domestic politics. He doesn’t know much about the details. “
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