The Moderators, The Candidates, The Reaction - Top 3 Takeaways – June 28th, 2024
The debate had a little bit of everything. A deep Biden freeze. Feats of strength in the form of a golf challenge. Occasionally substantive answers. Only occasionally... For my top three takeaways let’s dive into the moderators, the candidates and the reaction to the debate.
- The moderators. One of the biggest storylines ahead of last night’s presidential debate was the role the moderators would play in this debate. Moderators are like referees and umpires. If we come out of debate talking about them...there’s a problem. And there were plenty of concerns for there to be problems related to the moderators. After all, as we’ve discussed, both debate moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, have had a history of comparing Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler (and Mussolini as well in the case of Bash). Jake Tapper literally called Trump a threat to democracy on-air as well. For these reasons it was reasonable to wonder 1) How would the questions would be framed (would they be aimed at keeping Trump on the defensive as a convicted criminal)? The answer is that the questions were generally framed fairly. 2) Would the focus of the questions be on the issues that matter to us or matter to the moderators (January 6th, threat to democracy, yada, yada)? The answer was that the early focus was on the issues that matter to us prior to perhaps a disproportion amount of time to January 6th and threat to democracy nonsense towards the end of the first set. 3) Would Joe Biden be properly pressed on his obvious failures according to us (Biden’s approval rating on the economy is 40%, foreign policy 37%, inflation 37%, crime 40%, immigration 33%, direction of the country 25%)? Partly, starting with the first question on the economy. Trump was still put on the defensive a bit more than Biden (abortion, Jan 6th, democracy), but it wasn’t entirely one sided. 4) Would the moderators let the candidates speak during their allocated time or would they intervene and/or cut off mics during a candidate’s time? Yes, they did. What we saw last night was that...largely the moderators weren’t the story.
- The candidates. Could Joe Biden stand for 90 minutes? Yes. Would Donald Trump be able to stay on message? Not really. Would Biden freeze? Yes. Not even 15 minutes into this debate Joe Biden had a moment where he couldn’t remember what he was saying or perhaps where he was or who he was. Would Trump take the 2020 election bait or focus on the future? No, to taking 2020 bait. But also, no, he didn’t stay focused on the future. Would Biden be the usual slow Joe, or would he appear to be “juiced up”? Slow Joe for sure. Even when he wasn’t freezing he wasn’t exactly unfrozen. He was clearly an elderly man struggling to complete his thoughts throughout the debate. Would Trump keep the focus on Biden’s policy failures, or would he allow himself to become the focus of the debate? Yes, Trump was generally able to keep the focus on Biden’s failures. What would Biden’s closing argument be? That’s still a good question. Does anyone actually know what Joe said in his closing argument? It’s objectively the worst closing argument I’ve ever heard in any debate in any setting. That includes middle school student council debates. Would Trump make his closing argument the obvious one? Would Trump channel Ronald Reagan in asking if you’re better off today than you were four years ago? No. He almost went there but he didn’t. That’s in part because he nor Joe really ever effectively spoke directly to the Americans people. It was an argument between the two of them that we were all on the outside looking in on. Rather than the American people being directly engaged by the candidates they would engage each other and occasionally the moderators. And that takes me to...
- The reaction. “The whole thing was awful...”. That was the reaction of my wonderful and talented wife Ashley. “It’s time to take the car keys and checkbook. Honestly, I would not allow President Biden to drive my kids to school or take care of the on-line banking.” The was the message I received from a listener named Jill. “That was painful”. That was the reaction of former Obama advisor and Democrat operative Van Jones speaking about Joe Biden’s performance. Van’s statement led to a panel discussion on CNN discussing the prospect of President Biden stepping down before the Democrat convention. If that’s where the conversation immediately went in high level Democrat Party circles, there’s not much more left to say. The speculation by some that this debate was being held this early due to Democrats having time before the convention to try to try to find the Biden escape hatch seems that much more plausible today. Reactions to presidential debates are as subjective as they come. All that matters is what you and what other voters thought of the debate and whether it influences your vote or anyone else’s. And what that is, is crystal clear. CNN’s flash poll conducted by accredited pollster SSRS, found that by a margin of 67% to 33% viewers of the debate thought Trump outperformed Biden – which honestly could have been done by simply stringing sentences together. What that shows is that 33% of Americans have TDS and that there’s no doubt about how last night’s debate played. Objectively Joe Biden had a hard time on that stage. And that’s after having been sequestered for over a week preparing for this debate. Just imagine how weak and frail he really is in the day to day. There’s no spin that can change what people saw and what they heard, which was often challenging to do due to his challenges simply delivering a message. Four years ago, what happened in the presidential debate did matter...but only to about 2% of the voting population. The 2020 debate between Trump and Biden led to a 2.2% Biden bump in the polls. But that small bump in the polls was larger than Biden’s margin of victory in four critical swing states that decided the election – Arizona, Wisconsin, Georgia and Pennsylvania. Presidential elections first and foremost a referendum on the incumbent president. Joe Biden is a historically unpopular president. A president whose approval rating is even lower than Trump’s was during the middle of a pandemic at this point in his presidency. Last night’s debate and this year’s presidential election are taking place through that prism. A week from now the reaction will become much clearer as to what the impact of this debate was. Trump had momentum heading into this debate. It’s quite clear he’ll have momentum coming out of it. The biggest question at this point might not be who won the debate but whether someone can convince Biden to drop out of the race.