President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump are set to resume hostilities with the first presidential debate in Atlanta. They are battling low expectations, legal records, and lingering doubts about their records and character, as well as battling each other. The Washington Examiner is taking a closer look at the event, which could transform the entire 2024 contest. Part one will look at the expectations facing Biden in the all-important contest that could decide the fate of his reelection bid.
President Joe Biden‘s 2024 opening debate against former President Donald Trump is poised to be a make-or-break moment of his reelection campaign as the first side-by-side comparison of the two candidates since 2020.
When he steps into CNN‘s TV studio spotlight in Atlanta on Thursday, Biden will have one responsibility: to dispel persistent concerns about his age and mental acuity that have been repeatedly captured by polls, including among Democratic voters.
Despite 2024 being a rematch of the 2020 election, longtime Biden supporter, South Carolina Democratic state Sen. Dick Harpootlian, predicted “huge viewership” of Biden and Trump’s opening debate because, he quipped, people are “hoping for a wreck.” Approximately 73 million people watched their opening debate in Cleveland four years ago, but their first debate this cycle is considered to be even more important because of the state of the race, their polar opposite visions for the country, and the test it presents for Biden given his age.
“This is, in my opinion, more about style than it is about substance,” Harpootlian told the Washington Examiner of the debate. “They’re going to have some policy differences on how you approach different problems. But I really don’t think that’s what this is about. It’s about does Joe Biden look engaged? Does he look presidential? Is he focused? Alert?”
“The right-wing pundits are picking at him from being over the hill, too old, disengaged, walks stiffly,” the lawyer said. “He needs to show that he’s in command of his faculties, that he can articulate a position that resonates, and, again, who appears to be presidential here? … It’s in Biden’s advantage to remain calm and appear to be presidential, and be cogent and focused.”
The debate, the earliest in history and the first to showcase a successor and a predecessor, could be the most important debate “of all time,” according to University of Michigan debate director Aaron Kall. But while the debate is highly anticipated, Kall, the co-author of Debating The Donald, contended Trump has lowered expectations for Biden after extensively criticizing him for his “advanced age.”
David Axelrod, a one-time advisor to former President Barack Obama, conceded Sunday during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union that Biden has to answer voters’ questions about his age during the debate and whether he has the “stamina” and “acuity” for another four years as president.
“It’s obvious the president has to come out and has to be aggressive, and engaged, and energetic, and take every opportunity to create a contrast between himself and Trump,” Axelrod, a Democratic strategist, said.
The lowered expectations for Biden prompted Trump ally and possible vice presidential pick, Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND), to warn against having too low of a bar for the president, asserting during an interview Sunday that his long political career has given him the “ability” to perform well and that Biden can “step up” when he needs to.
But while Biden may have a low bar to clear during the debate, expectations are likely higher for Trump because of his performance during his previous debates, his experience from the reality TV show The Apprentice, and the fact that, at 78, “he’s a little bit younger” than Biden’s 81, per Kall.
That is regardless of Kall’s criticism of Trump’s Cleveland debate, during which the then-COVID-19 positive candidate was perceived to be too aggressive toward Biden, with the debate coach adding that the pair will likely have to deal with debate “rust” after having not debated in four years.
“For all those reasons that people believe that Trump will do better, Trump believes he’s going to do better or else he wouldn’t have agreed to such an early debate and I think President Biden got most of the terms that he wanted,” Kall told the Washington Examiner. “Sometimes debates are more about expectations than the debates themselves. It’s not a high bar for President Biden to clear and, if he doesn’t make a major, disqualifying gaffe, he may be perceived as the winner.”
Irrespective of that “if,” Trump has been trying to temper expectations for himself by downplaying his preparation as informal policy discussions compared to Biden’s more formal mock debates.
Trump started sitting down with advisers, policy experts, and even potential vice presidential picks in Washington, D.C., two weeks ago. Meanwhile, Biden is scheduled to remain at Camp David, Maryland, with former White House chief of staff Ron Klain, who coached him for the 2020 debates, until the debate to practice. En route to the presidential retreat, Biden responded with a thumbs up when asked about his prep.
“President Trump takes on numerous tough interviews every single week and delivers lengthy rally speeches while standing, demonstrating elite stamina,” Trump campaign spokesman Jason Miller told the Washington Examiner. “He does not need to be programmed by staff or shot up with chemicals like Joe Biden does.”
“The president will have less time for debate prep than four years ago given his day job, so prep will largely be confined to immediately prior,” a Biden campaign spokesman countered. “The president has gotten increasingly punchier in recent remarks about Trump and plans to carry that theme through to the debate, while still projecting himself as the wise and steady leader in contrast to Trump’s chaos and division.”
The Biden campaign has long welcomed the side-by-side comparison between Biden and Trump that the debate will provide, particularly if the president performs as he did during the State of the Union in March, according to Democratic strategist Mary Anne Marsh. Biden’s State of the Union managed to ease the concerns of many Democrats regarding Biden’s age.
“Politically, for Biden, the more voters see Trump the better,” Marsh told the Washington Examiner. “The more people are reminded of who Trump is and what he will do to the country if he returns to the [White House], the more that helps Biden.”
“Voters have seen far more of Biden than Trump the last four years as most of them don’t attend Trump rallies or watch them,” she said. “To see Trump onstage with Biden will remind them of what they have forgotten about him, bring back memories of the first 2020 debate where Trump talked over Biden and that hurt him with swing voters.”
To that end, the Biden and Trump campaigns reached a debate agreement with CNN without the Commission on Presidential Debates, the first such arrangement since 1988. The agreement includes a 90-minute debate behind two standing podiums with two commercial breaks, during which the candidates cannot confer with their staff, and without prewritten notes. The men’s microphones will also be muted unless they are speaking to minimize interruptions, and Trump will have the last word.
“The question is, can he stay rational and presidential, or will he go script off? He’s a very volatile guy and has shown an inability in the past to stick to the script,” Harpootlian, the South Carolina senator, said of Trump. “It’s got to be an elevated discussion. If it degenerates into spitballs, that ain’t going to be good for either one of them. But I would suggest that Trump has more of a track record of degenerating into and descending into a shouting match.”
“How Trump performs when challenged or fact-checked by the moderators or Biden will determine the outcome for him,” Marsh, the strategist, agreed. “If Trump sticks to his usual rally fare and talking points, then it hurts him as he’s missing the opportunity to address undecided voters and only appealing to people who already support him.”
Expected debate topics include the economy, abortion, immigration, the Israel–Hamas war, Ukraine, the Supreme Court, the Jan. 6, 2021, riot at the U.S. Capitol, and the criminal trials of Trump and Biden’s son Hunter, all opportunities for the candidates to criticize their opponent as they attempt to turn the debate into a referendum on them.
“The lack of an in-person audience is just so unique. We haven’t had that since the Kennedy-Nixon 1960 [debate],” Kall, the debate coach, said of former Presidents John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon. “The candidates have less of an incentive, I think, to be aggressive, and interrupt, and have some canned zingers, and things like that, because those more traditional debate tactics don’t work as well, aren’t as effective with the lack of a live audience.”
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The stakes for this debate are so high that the expectations game, while fun, is meaningless, according to Republican strategist Doug Heye.
“There is more downside than upside for both candidates and pre-spinning things will not matter if things go wrong,” the former Republican National Committee spokesman told the Washington Examiner.
