With just 35 days left until the election, President Donald Trump and Democratic challenger Joe Biden launch into their first crucial debate on Tuesday night, the most crucial moment yet in a race that has remained stubbornly unchanged in the face of tumult. historical.
Both men huddled with attendees in the final hours before the debate, which will offer candidates their largest national stage to outline entirely different visions for a country facing multiple crises. Americans are fearful and impatient about the coronavirus pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans and cost millions of jobs, and many are concerned about racial justice, protest violence, or both.
Each side hoped the debate would energize its own supporter base, even as candidates compete for the small portion of undecided voters who could decide the election.
Biden will take the Cleveland stage keeping the lead in polls, important in national polls, closed in some troubled states, and looking to expand his support among suburban voters, women and seniors. Polls show the president has lost a lot of ground among those groups since 2016, but Biden faces his own questions buoyed by Trump’s devastating attacks.
Trump will have possibly his best chance to try to recast the campaign as a choice between candidates and not as a referendum on his handling of the virus that has killed more people in the United States than any other nation. Americans, according to polls, have soured in his leadership in the crisis, and the president has struggled to launch constant attacks on Biden.
“This will be the first time in four years that someone will take the stage as a co-equal with Trump and hold him accountable for the malfeasance he has shown leading the country,” said Steve Schmidt, John’s senior campaign aide. McCain’s Republican presidential nomination in 2008 and a frequent critic of Trump. “If Biden can’t accuse Trump for everything he’s done, (that) would be a profound failure. There is no way to divert that. “
As he left the White House for Cleveland, Trump punched supporters gathered on the White House lawn with his fist, but did not address reporters. He spent the morning preparing for an informal discussion while a more formal session was set for the afternoon once he arrived in Ohio. Among those working with the president are former New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani, Senior White House aide Jared Kushner and former White House Counselor Kellyanne Conway.
Biden held up an umbrella to shield himself from the Delaware rain as he boarded a new field plane en route to Cleveland. He did not address reporters either.
Although some Trump aides involved in the preparations urged the president to adopt a measured tone when selling his own achievements, Trump has told his advisers that he is preparing an all-out assault on Biden, claiming that the former senator’s 47 years in Washington have left him. outside. tact and that his family, namely his son Hunter, have profited from corruption.
Biden’s performances during the primary debates were uneven, and some Democrats have been nervous about how he will fare in an unscripted environment. But his team sees the night as a time to illuminate Trump’s failures with the pandemic and the economy, with the former vice president acting as a “fact-checker on the floor” as he prepares for the attack to come.
Both parties looked at each other in the hours leading up to the debate.
Biden released his 2019 tax returns just days after highly successful disclosures about Trump’s long-hidden tax history, including that he paid only $ 750 a year in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and nothing in many. other years. The Bidens paid nearly $ 300,000 in taxes in 2019.
Meanwhile, trying to push a claim that Biden is not up to the task of president, the Trump campaign rejected a number of pre-debate allegations, including that the former vice president asked for numerous breaks during the 90-minute debate. and he had backed up from a search designed to rule out either of them wearing a headset from which he might receive answers.
Biden’s campaign denied the allegations and, in a conference call Tuesday afternoon, rebuked reporters for biting into a Trump tactic.
“We are in the middle of a global pandemic,” said Biden’s senior campaign advisor, Symone Sanders. “Is this what you would really like to spend your time on with these false, crazy, random and ridiculous claims of the Trump campaign?”
The president’s handling of the coronavirus is likely to dominate much of the debate. The effects of the pandemic were in full view, with the candidates’ lecterns widely separated, all the guests in the small crowd screened, and the traditional opening handshake scrapped.
The scene in Cleveland was notably underrated compared to typical election years, without any pomp and pageantry. Instead of the usual auditorium, the discussion takes place in an atrium on the campus of Case Western University and posters were posted on two out of three chairs that read: “Thank you for not sitting here in observance of social distancing.”
And Biden’s selected guests hinted that he wanted to focus on the virus, inviting small business owners dealing with the struggling economy and Kristin Urquiza, who spoke out at the Democratic convention about her father’s death to Covid-19. Trump, meanwhile, was inviting Giuliani and UFC fighter Colby Covington.
The debate was also marked by an extraordinary confluence of other recent events, including the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, which allowed Trump to nominate a conservative jurist to replace a liberal voice and perhaps reshape the high court during generations.
The 2020 tumult was hard to overstate: Covid-19 has rewritten the rules of everyday life, schools and businesses are closed, and protests for racial justice have swept through cities after several murders of blacks at the hands of highly publicized police.
But the impact of the debate, or the next two, was not clear in an election year like no other. Despite the turmoil, the presidential race does not appear to have changed since Biden took control of the Democratic field in March.
While both sides anticipated a vicious debate between two men who don’t like each other, Biden’s campaign downplayed the importance of the night, believing that the pandemic and battered economy would outweigh any one-night stand or zinger. By contrast, the Trump campaign exaggerated the scale of the duel, believing it was a time for the president to hurt Biden and reshape the race.
That continued a curious round of expectation-setting: While the Trump campaign has lately praised Biden’s debating skills, the president has also vividly portrayed his opponent as not up to the job, potentially allowing him to Biden does well as long as he avoids a major one. stumble.
“Historically, headlines don’t do so well in the first debate, largely because they are not used to being openly challenged,” said presidential historian Jon Meacham. “The most important individual debate in terms of direct impact on the outcome occurred 40 years ago, with the only Carter-Reagan meeting a week before the election. So the key question: “Are you better than four years ago?” – has a fresh and compelling resonance. “
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