Donald Trump skipped every GOP primary debate, but he is urging Joe Biden to debate him while ignoring similar calls from ex-U.N. ambassador Nikki Haley.
"Well, if I were him I’d want to debate me too. He’s got nothing else to do.”
You can’t reasonably debate someone whose arguments aren’t based in reality.
The point of a televised political debate isn’t to win your opponent to your side. The point is to establish to the outside viewer that your position and your personage is more fit to the task of governing than your opponent.
For a candidate who is divorced from reality, this is typically pretty easy. You point out a few things that the opponent disagrees with and that your audience knows to be true. Then you provoke the opponent into saying something outlandish, attack the absurd allegation, and put up a far more attractive countervailing position/policy that people are more likely to believe practical.
The problem Biden has is that he’s also immersed himself in propaganda. He isn’t willing to accept the rising poverty or the failing liberal institutions at home. He’s backed an ugly unpopular war in Ukraine and a fucking outright genocide in Palestine. His fixation on bipartisanship has left him once again getting Lucy-with-the-football’d on immigration. His slavish loyalty to the banks means he’s back to harping about a balanced budget and gutting popular public services. He’s constantly saying how he can’t do anything as President, while insisting that a future Trump Presidency would be totally unchecked, which didn’t make sense when Obama claimed it in the wake of Bush and now has completely run itself through.
And he’s OLD. Really fucking old. He’s even more prone to gaffs and flubs than he was sixteen years ago.
Trump will never lose points for bad behavior among his base
Trump’s base isn’t enough to win a general election. But “bad behavior” is its own reward when its directed at someone the crowd doesn’t like. That’s what really makes Trump dangerous. If he were to try and tussle with Biden on the debate stage in 2020, an enormous number of people would be disgusted. But now that so many of those people have soured on Biden, I suspect you’d see quite a few of those same voters applaud.
Even then, the thing Biden really has to worry about isn’t the Obama-Trump-Biden swing voter nearly so much as it is the Ohio or Virginia or Arizona or Georgia voter who refuses to vote for either one of these assholes. He needs to rally his base, regardless of who his opponent is. Trump being an asshole on stage matters far less than Biden advertising a future four years in this country that isn’t just four more years of shit.
The point of a televised political debate isn’t to win your opponent to your side. The point is to establish to the outside viewer that your position and your personage is more fit to the task of governing than your opponent.
For a candidate who is divorced from reality, this is typically pretty easy. You point out a few things that the opponent disagrees with and that your audience knows to be true. Then you provoke the opponent into saying something outlandish, attack the absurd allegation, and put up a far more attractive countervailing position/policy that people are more likely to believe practical.
The problem Biden has is that he’s also immersed himself in propaganda. He isn’t willing to accept the rising poverty or the failing liberal institutions at home. He’s backed an ugly unpopular war in Ukraine and a fucking outright genocide in Palestine. His fixation on bipartisanship has left him once again getting Lucy-with-the-football’d on immigration. His slavish loyalty to the banks means he’s back to harping about a balanced budget and gutting popular public services. He’s constantly saying how he can’t do anything as President, while insisting that a future Trump Presidency would be totally unchecked, which didn’t make sense when Obama claimed it in the wake of Bush and now has completely run itself through.
And he’s OLD. Really fucking old. He’s even more prone to gaffs and flubs than he was sixteen years ago.
Trump’s base isn’t enough to win a general election. But “bad behavior” is its own reward when its directed at someone the crowd doesn’t like. That’s what really makes Trump dangerous. If he were to try and tussle with Biden on the debate stage in 2020, an enormous number of people would be disgusted. But now that so many of those people have soured on Biden, I suspect you’d see quite a few of those same voters applaud.
Even then, the thing Biden really has to worry about isn’t the Obama-Trump-Biden swing voter nearly so much as it is the Ohio or Virginia or Arizona or Georgia voter who refuses to vote for either one of these assholes. He needs to rally his base, regardless of who his opponent is. Trump being an asshole on stage matters far less than Biden advertising a future four years in this country that isn’t just four more years of shit.