Not debating is a political stunt in and of itself. A few years back Keith Ellison debated his GOP opponent once and then refused to debate him again even though he had agreed to before. Ellison called his opponent a "low life scumbag" in the one and only debate when his opponent brought up the story of Ellison abusing his ex-wife. While Ellison still won, in this district a Democrat could still win even if they shot someone on Hennepin Ave, but Ellison did get hammered by political pundits and margin of victory wasn't as high as it was in previous elections. I think there will be a lot of pressure on Biden to debate and while it might not end his chances to win will be costly. It will feed into the narrative that he is senile and doesn't want to debate because his handlers fear he can't handle the pressure. Further it will greatly energize Trump and his supporters.
Biden will get lost in the debates... start talking about corn pop or something.... His campaign does NOT want a debate with Trump. They know his mental faculties are done.
@Trader_Jorge and @bigtexxx get schlonged her everyday for living fake lives through their BBS accounts.
trump's stunning incompetence in dealing with Covid-19 is easily the largest impediment to an "in person" debate. I wouldn't agree to one, not as things stand now.
There will be 3 debates because 3 debates are agreed upon. I’ll take even money against anyone who disagrees lol. Biden has an advantage in debates because gee he went to law school and has been a politician since the 1970s. Trump’s campaign are the only ones trying to worm out of it. but at the end of the day, they’ll debate. Trump is nightmarishly bad but they’ll do the customary debates and trump will customarily leave the White House once Biden wins the election.
Yeah.... this guy is mentally acute Here is the president, in his own words: "I tested very positively in another sense. I tested positively toward negative. I tested perfectly this morning, meaning I tested negative." Here is Trump responding to a question of how to get African Americans to trust the police: "Well, I think it's a very sad problem. As you know as a Republican I'm doing very well with African Americans and with the vote with the — in polls and everything — especially I mean I haven't seen one very recently because you had the plague come in from China," Trump said. "So that changed things up, but we had the best economy ever. We had the best numbers for African American on employment and unemployment in history. Best homeownership — best everything. We had the best numbers in everything — not only African-American, but the African American numbers were great." Here is more rambling: “People want the border wall. My base definitely wants the border wall, my base really wants it — you’ve been to many of the rallies. OK, the thing they want more than anything is the wall. My base, which is a big base; I think my base is 45 percent. You know, it’s funny. The Democrats, they have a big advantage in the Electoral College. Big, big, big advantage. … The Electoral College is very difficult for a Republican to win, and I will tell you, the people want to see it. They want to see the wall.”
Exactly. People who criticize Biden’s English only watch short YouTube clips. I’m convinced of it. If you watch full interviews/speeches of both candidates there’s no question that Biden eats his lunch
It wouldn't surprise me if there are 3 debates. What will surprise me is if they are in person, face to face. Everywhere trump and Pence have gone recently, the Secret Service has seen numerous agents come down with the virus. That trump or Pence haven't caught it is a bloody miracle. Both Biden and trump are over 70 and an "in person" debate would be lunacy, in my opinion. Live in separate locations by video? Sure. That's what I expect.
I think having podiums an appropriate distance apart would suffice. Obviously they can’t have an audience but otherwise I think they can pull it off. But sure I’m not discounting a debate from separate locations...I really hope it doesn’t come to that though
I would prefer an in person debate myself, but do you really expect trump not to pace around the stage? I don't. Maybe if the studio built a wall. ;-)
"Don't deprive Americans of the Trump-Biden debate spectacle": https://theweek.com/articles/929024/dont-deprive-americans-trumpbiden-debate-spectacle Don't deprive Americans of the Trump-Biden debate spectacle Matthew Walther August 4, 2020 Let's be real. Not a single member of the increasingly loud chorus of journalists and activist types calling for Joe Biden to sit out this year's presidential debates is arguing in good faith. The obvious but (usually) unannounced premise for people like New York Times columnist Tom Friedman is that Biden is not up to the task mentally. President Trump would wipe the floor with him. I am not entirely sure this is true. This is not because I have changed my mind about the former vice president's cognitive faculties but because even in terms of debating style Trump resembles no one so much as Biden himself. Trump is not a good or sharp debater. What he is good at instead is insults and shouting the other person down — or the other persons: He is just as good, if not better, on a stage with a dozen other candidates. He called Jeb Bush low energy and made fun of how much his campaign spent to come in fifth in New Hampshire. He mocked Rand Paul's low polling figures. He told Hillary Clinton that she didn't have the "tremendous stamina" that the presidency requires. (Meanwhile, Clinton complained: "Go to the fact checkers, please, get to work!") This is more or less how Biden himself approaches debate. In 2012 he interrupted Paul Ryan 82 times. He rolled his eyes, sneered, and broke out into laughter over and over again. He called Ryan's talking points "a bunch of stuff" and "malarkey" and implored viewers to "follow [their] instincts" when the Tea Party congressman offered detailed proposals. It was a brilliant and memorable performance, and no one, least of all supporters of the Romney-Ryan ticket, disagreed about who had won. Here are a few predictions for the proposed series of Trump-Biden debates this fall. They will be the most watched debates in history, topping even the 84 million record set by Trump's first encounter with Clinton in 2016. Each man will interrupt the other more than 80 times. There will be a lot of name calling. Biden will say that Trump is a liar who could bluff the blizzard off a chuck wagon, whose brains if they were made of dynamite wouldn't be enough to blow his nose. Trump will insist Biden's energy is the lowest energy in the history of energies, since our people started recording them, and everyone knows it. Politifact's website will crash. The Washington Post list of Trump's "false or misleading statements" will quadruple after 15 minutes. There will be at least one exchange in which the moderator says "Gentlemen!" and "Mr. President, Mr. Vice President [sic]!" after the two men argue over who would win in a fist fight. A hundred million of us will all be glad it happened. Why? Not because it clarifies anything or helps us to make an informed decision about whether Trump or Biden is more qualified to hold the office of the presidency, but because this kind of shallow People magazine-level engagement with facts and issues is what American politics became long ago. Trump was simply the first to understand this and capitalize on it. There is no reason to think that he will be the only person to win the White House by running like he's trying to beat the other contestants on a reality TV game show. Some people will argue, as Elizabeth Drew did in the Times recently, that the debate format itself should be done away with. Apparently these debates are mindless spectacles that allow candidates to replace substantive arguments with one liners and cheap rehearsed quips. This is like complaining that WWE is not a chess match. Most Americans accepted long ago that we get the candidates we deserve. The same is true of the debates. Give the people what they want.
They already agreed on 3, not sure why this is even a topic. I suspect they will honor the 3...... DD
https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/08/to-debate-or-not-to-debate.php TO DEBATE OR NOT TO DEBATE POSTED ON AUGUST 5, 2020 BY PAUL MIRENGOFF For many decades, there has been broad bipartisan support for the notion that the presidential nominees of the two major parties should debate each other. Privately, some may have questioned whether such debates should occur, but publicly, support for presidential debates has been nearly unanimous. Suddenly, though, pro-Biden voices are urging that there be no presidential debates this year. Elizabeth Drew, whose work I haven’t seen in at least a decade, gave voice to this position in a New York Times op-ed. Bill Kristol takes the same position publicly, as does former Bill Clinton press secretary Joe Lockhart. Lockhart’s argument is that Donald Trump is too much of a liar to debate. Drew makes largely the same point, but more obliquely. But if calling a politician a liar, even with justification, were enough to cancel debates, presidential debates never would have gotten off the ground. The first such debates were between Richard Nixon and John Kennedy. Nixon was considered a liar, and not without justification. Bill Clinton, Joe Lockhart’s boss, was a congenital liar. (I love Jackie Mason’s line: “Bill Clinton is a pathological liar. Nixon lied too, but at least he had the decency to sweat when he did it.”) I don’t recall Elizabeth Drew or anyone else balking at Clinton’s appearance in two sets of presidential debates. The 2016 election featured two liars — Trump and Hillary Clinton. They debated three times. In effect, the “don’t debate Trump” crowd wants to deny Trump an established and important forum on the theory that he’s really, really awful, but the public can’t see through him. The authoritarian undertones of this argument are obvious. But the real reason Drew-Kristol-Lockhart don’t want a Trump-Biden debate is fear that Biden will fare badly. The idea is to hide Biden’s inadequacies from voters. Is this the smart move? Biden might well do poorly in debates, but then again, he might not. He wasn’t that bad during the endless procession of Democratic debates. Moreover, expectations for Biden will be quite low. It’s far from clear to me that he can’t meet them. Moreover, there’s an obvious downside to Biden ducking debates with Trump. It will fuel the narrative that his mental capabilities have, in fact, seriously diminished. It will be viewed by many as an admission that he’s not up to the job of U.S. President. As noted in this post, there is reason to believe that Biden needs to overcome this perception among swing voters. If he’s ahead of Trump, he may need to “seal the deal” with a competent performance in at least one debate. If he’s behind, he may need a debate in the hope of catching up. Biden’s best move when it comes to debate is to keep his options open. The “don’t debate Trump” crowd, in a blatantly cynical move, hopes to lay the groundwork for a nuclear option.
