Op-Ed: Presidential Debate May Decide the Future of Democracy

June 26, 2024, 9:19 am 1.3k Views 70 Comments

President Joe Biden (left) and Donald Trump (right)[Photos: Library of Congress]

A TV Event That May Be the Most Important Political Show You Will Ever Watch

Time is running out for President Joe Biden to change the dynamics of his rematch against Donald Trump, the nation’s most momentous election since the Civil War.

The first votes for the November 5 general election will be cast in just 88 days, as Minnesota, South Dakota, and Virginia start early voting September 20. California ballots go out soon after, on October 7.

This means that the stakes for Thursday night’s one-on-one presidential debate could not be higher, and the historical importance of the choice could not be starker.

“This is going to be the most important election since 1860, because it is going to be about the future of this country as a democracy,” Duke University political scientist Herbert Kitschelt told The New York Times.

The Biden–Trump contest is “an election about whether this country will preserve the rule of law in an independent justice system; whether women will be respected as autonomous decision makers or subjected again, step by step, by a religion-encoded male supremacy; whether this country will continue to hold free and fair elections, or generalize to the entire realm a new version of what prevailed in the South before civil rights legislation,” he added.

Why it matters: Presidential debates rarely are pivotal to the outcome of national campaigns, multiple research studies have shown. With few exceptions — 1960 and 1980 come to mind — the televised events are far more spectacle than substance, and the conventional wisdom among the cognoscenti is that they barely matter.

Biden needs to prove the conventional wisdom wrong.

Poll after poll shows that Biden–Trump II is the race a vast majority of Americans don’t want; the Republican former president remains extremely unpopular, and the Democrat has the lowest approval rating ever for a president seeking reelection.

Voters of every stripe — including many Democrats — say that at 81, Biden is too old for the job; while Trump is only three years younger, his campaign effectively fuels the perception that Biden is weak, befuddled, and unlikely to survive a second term — raising the specter of Vice President Kamala Harris, even more unpopular than Biden, occupying the White House.

Although Trump and Biden technically are tied in polls of the national popular vote, the former almost always has a slight but steady lead that is significant directionally, if not statistically.

Crucially, Trump tops Biden in surveys in all six battleground states, which yet again are expected to decide the Electoral College result. Additionally, the impact of third-party candidates on some state ballots, including independents Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Cornel West, and the Green Party’s Jill Stein, is uncertain, although most polls suggest that their inclusion favors Trump.

Biden–Trump polling has basically not budged for months; if, as this indicates, preferences about the contest have begun to calcify, Biden must transform the shape of the race now, from a judgment of voters about him, to a referendum on Trump.

Thursday night’s affair, to be hosted at 5 p.m. PDT by CNN and expected to be aired widely on other cable and network stations, may be his last, best chance to flip the script.

Montesquieu vs. Mussolini: The oldest person ever to run, Biden is a gaffe-prone octogenarian who shows signs of physical decline, from his shuffling gait to his senescent face.

Regardless of this, or of his stances on specific policies, Biden stands squarely within the historic mainstream of American politics and governance. In crafting the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution, the Framers molded the work of such Enlightenment political philosophers as John Locke and Charles Montesquieu, developing the values of liberal democracy, such as the rule of law, checks and balances, and the separation of powers, which have governed the country for 250 years.

The 78-year-old Trump presents an unprecedented contrast.

After losing in 2020, Trump fought to overturn the election. The violent attempt by supporters to stop its certification on January 6, 2021, marked the first time in history there was not a peaceful transfer of power in the U.S. Spending the past four years spreading lies about the vote, while being indicted by a Special Counsel for his actions, Trump’s convinced nearly three-fourths of Republicans that Biden was illegitimately elected.

Echoing voices of nationalist authoritarianism around the world, he has stated his desire and intent to govern as a strongman; less well-known is that, in a series of public opinion surveys, majorities of Republicans prefer an authoritarian president, to rule without significant interference from Congress or the courts.

On Thursday night, Trump’s basic message is likely to be: “The world is spinning out of control — I’m strong and Biden is weak.”

Biden’s answer: “I may be old, but he’s a deranged dictator.”

The deciders: The timing of Thursday’s debate is a big change from recent elections, because it landed so early in the campaign calendar.

One thing that hasn’t changed: The election outcome will boil down to a relatively nanoscopic number of voters in a half-dozen states, thanks to the calculus of the Electoral College, which makes presidential contests 51 separate elections, including the District of Columbia, not a national one.

Trump has considerably more pathways to the necessary 270 electoral votes, as experts have shown. In a nation divided in political tribes, results in more than 40 states are all but inevitable, meaning a few now-undecided voters in the rest will decide the future of democracy.

The battlegrounds demarcate into these key categories:

The Blue Wall: For the third straight election, the 45 total electoral votes (EV) in Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin will be decisive. Until 2016, Democrats had won all in every election since 1992. Regaining them for Democrats in 2020, Biden is all but certain of reelection if he holds them; if he loses even one, his chances of victory decline significantly.

The Sunbelt: In 2020, Biden surprisingly won Arizona and Georgia, and held on to Nevada, which Clinton also captured in 2016, for a total of 33 EV. Now Trump leads all three significantly, making them second tier priorities for Biden.

The Stretch States: Both campaigns claim they can flip a state long held by the other party — North Carolina (16 EV) in Biden’s case, and Minnesota (10 EV) in Trump’s. While vigorously trying to win, the weaker candidate also wants to force the leading campaign to spend its resources defending home turf.

The Congressional Districts: Nebraska and Maine, unlike other states, award EV by congressional district, not at-large, and the presidency may be decided by voters in one of their individual districts.

The Nuclear Option: If the contest ends in a 269-269 tie, the House of Representatives, as elected in November, picks the president. Each state gets one vote, with the majority party in control; if this happened today, Trump would win, as the GOP controls 26 delegations.

P.S. Take it to the bank that if Trump loses on November 5, he and his supporters will refuse to accept the result, triggering another round of stolen election lies, political rage, and possible violence.

Here is a look at the state of play in toss-up states:

The Midwest

Michigan: 16 electoral votes
Result in 2020: Biden: 50.6 percent; Trump: 47.8 percent
Most recent polling: Trump: 48 percent; Biden: 46.7 percent
Fast take: This is a Biden must-win, and he counts on the political organization of Governor Gretchen Whitmer, who’s much more popular than he, to offset lost support among its large bloc of Arab American voters, outraged at his patronage of Israel in Gaza. Trump’s appeals to Black men are increasingly successful and may damage Biden in Detroit.

Pennsylvania: 19 electoral votes
Result in 2020: Biden: 50 percent; Trump: 48.8 percent
Most recent polls: Trump: 47.8 percent; Biden: 45.5 percent
Fast take: Both candidates appear constantly in the Keystone State, where the president appears to have a big edge in ground game organization. But both Kennedy and Stein are poised to win ballot access here, where the third-party factor may have its biggest impact.

Wisconsin: 10 electoral votes
Result in 2020: Biden: 49.5 percent; Trump: 48.8 percent
Latest polling: Trump: 47.4 percent; Biden: 47.3 percent
Fast take: The Republican National Convention is in Milwaukee, and Trump blundered by trashing it as “a horrible city” in a recent closed-door meeting. This was ground zero for the 2020 fake electors scheme, and he’s vowed to not accept the election results if he loses here, where both Kennedy and Stein will probably make the ballot.

The Sunbelt

Arizona: 11 electoral votes
Result in 2020: Biden: 49.36 percent; Trump: 49.06 percent
Most recent polling: Trump: 48.3 percent; Biden: 43.7 percent
Fast take: Abortion rights will be crucial, as Democrats are likely to qualify a pro-choice ballot initiative after the state Supreme Court upheld an 1864 total ban. But Trump’s promise to use U.S. military troops to control immigration may outweigh the issue: Nearly two-thirds of voters here agree with him.

Georgia: 16 electoral votes
Result in 2020: Biden: 49.5 percent; Trump: 49.2 percent
Most recent polling: Trump: 48.5 percent; Biden: 43.7 percent
Fast take: Trump’s infamous 2020 phone call to GOP state officials, demanding they “find 11,780 votes” to reverse his loss, could aid Biden’s 2024 appeals to protect democracy, although the Atlanta DA’s sprawling case about election interference has stalled. Biden’s win four years ago was a huge surprise, but Black voters are considerably less enthusiastic about him this time.

Nevada: 6 electoral votes
Result in 2020: Biden: 50.1 percent; Trump: 47.7 percent
Latest polling: Trump: 48.3 percent; Biden: 43.7 percent
Fast take: The Silver State was among those hardest-hit by the pandemic, and amid a slow recovery, many blame Biden for inflation, and high gas and grocery prices — and his stubborn insistence on telling them “Bidenomics” have made things better is counterproductive. A Republican hasn’t won here since 2004, but Trump is making inroads among Latino voters.

The Stretch States

North Carolina: 16 electoral votes
Result in 2020: Trump: 50 percent; Biden: 48.6 percent
Most recent polling: Trump: 47.8 percent; Biden: 42.5 percent
Fast take: One intriguing reason the Tar Heel state could be competitive is that the Republicans nominated homophobic Holocaust denier Mark Robinson for governor, though Biden is competing here largely to force Trump to spend money that might otherwise go to the Midwest.

Minnesota: 10 electoral votes
Result in 2020: Biden: 52.4 percent; Trump: 45.3 percent
Most recent polling: Biden: 45.7 percent; Trump: 42.7 percent
Fast take: Minnesota last voted for a Republican in 1972, part of Richard Nixon’s 49-state landslide reelection. If Trump wins here, it signals catastrophic defeat for Biden.

Key Congressional Districts

Nebraska Second Congressional District: 1 electoral vote
Result in 2020: Biden: 52 percent; Trump: 48 percent
Most recent polling: N/A
Fast take: Trump won four of the Cornhusker State’s five electoral votes in 2020, but Biden captured the so-called “Blue Dot” 2nd District, which includes Omaha, more liberal than the rest of the state. The district could be a literal tipping point, moving Biden from 269 to 270 EV.

Maine: 4 electoral votes
Result in 2020: Biden: 53 percent; Trump: 44 percent (statewide)
Most recent polling: N/A
Fast take: Trump won one electoral vote by prevailing in the rural 2nd District in 2020, but Biden won statewide, including the 1st District, giving him three EV. Professional prognosticators currently forecast the same result in 2024.

 

Op-Ed’s are written by community members, not representatives of edhat. The views and opinions expressed in Op-Ed articles are those of the author’s.
[Do you have an opinion on something local? Share it with us at info@edhat.com.]

Written by Jerry Roberts

“Newsmakers” is a multimedia journalism platform that focuses on politics, media and public affairs in Santa Barbara. Learn more at newsmakerswithjr.com

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70 Comments

  1. Sobering look at our future, but not wrong. Not many want either of these two as our President, but sadly there’s only 1 person to vote for if you don’t want our country to descend into a third world authoritarian state. People who weren’t born white, straight males will suffer under Trump. It’s already happening in many backward states. Education will regress as Christian Nationalism finds a new foothold in places other than Louisiana. We are on the verge of a major, life-changing (and ending for some) choice. We cannot allow this to happen.

    Biden may be an awful choice in some peoples’ minds, but he’s really the only choice for America to continue as the beacon of freedom and democracy we (and the entire world) have grown to depend on.

    3

      • There were no lies in sacjon’s statement. Go ahead and point out one LCP##s.
        Christian Nationalism is the specified goal of Trump’s transition team. A national religion that forms the basis of our laws. An education program that reflects that one group’s interpretation of Christianity. Immigration policy that simply codifies xenophobia and hatred towards anyone who isn’t Christian. Marital laws, healthcare policies, civil rights laws, retribution and revenge towards anyone who dared attempt to bring the former president to justice. It’s all in print. You can say it won’t happen, and it probably won’t (because Trump is going to lose), but the point is that these things are their stated, actual goals for the future.

        Probably just sounds like more fear mongering to you but not to anyone who has read the insane manifesto from the Heritage Foundation called Project 2025.

        2

  2. These two clowns are two wings from the same bird…Google “Strategy of Tension”…its a Governmental policy used to break down all societal order….We are provided the Illusion of control through our vote…If voting made any meaningful/beneficial change for society it wouldn’t be allowed…

    -2

  4. Now Oklahoma has just joined Louisiana as another backward state forcing all students in PUBLIC schools to learn the Bible.

    https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/27/us/oklahoma-public-schools-bible.html?campaign_id=60&emc=edit_na_20240627&instance_id=0&nl=breaking-news&ref=cta&regi_id=55007874&segment_id=170727&user_id=112c8fafe0d7a637dd4bd3bc04fbf66a

    These are the leaders who will find full reign and support under Trump. You may think this is a non-issue, but imagine how many other governors, superintendents, etc are just waiting for the change to force religion on the masses…..

    This as un-American as it gets.

    1

  6. https://heathercoxrichardson.substack.com/p/june-27-2024

    Tonight was the first debate between President Joe Biden and presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump, and by far the most striking thing about the debate was the overwhelming focus among pundits immediately afterward about Biden’s appearance and soft, hoarse voice as he rattled off statistics and events. Virtually unmentioned was the fact that Trump lied and rambled incoherently, ignored questions to say whatever he wanted; refused to acknowledge the events of January 6, 2021; and refused to commit to accepting the result of the 2024 presidential election, finally saying he would accept it only if it met his standards for fairness.

    Immediately after the debate, there were calls for Biden to drop out of the race, but aside from the fact that the only time a presidential candidate has ever done that—in 1968—it threw the race into utter confusion and the president’s party lost, Biden needed to demonstrate that his mental capacity is strong in order to push back on the Republicans’ insistence that he is incapable of being president. That, he did, thoroughly. Biden began with a weak start but hit his stride as the evening wore on. Indeed, he covered his bases too thoroughly, listing the many accomplishments of his administration in such a hurry that he was sometimes hard to understand.

    In contrast, Trump came out strong but faded and became less coherent over time. His entire performance was either lies or rambling non-sequiturs. He lied so incessantly throughout the evening that it took CNN fact-checker Daniel Dale almost three minutes, speaking quickly, to get through the list.

    Trump said that some Democratic states allow people to execute babies after they’re born and that every legal scholar wanted Roe v. Wade overturned—both fantastical lies. He said that the deficit is at its highest level ever and that the U.S. trade deficit is at its highest ever: both of those things happened during his administration. He lied that there were no terrorist attacks during his presidency; there were many. He said that Biden wants to quadruple people’s taxes—this is “pure fiction,” according to Dale—and lied that his tax cuts paid for themselves; they have, in fact, added trillions of dollars to the national debt.

    Dale went on: Trump lied that the U.S. has provided more aid to Ukraine than Europe has when it’s the other way around, and he was off by close to $100 billion when he named the amount the U.S. has provided to Ukraine. He was off by millions when he talked about how many migrants have crossed the border under Biden, and falsely claimed that some of Biden’s policies—like funding historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and reducing the price of insulin to $35 a month—were his own accomplishments.

    There is no point in going on, because virtually everything he said was a lie. As Jake Lahut of the Daily Beast recorded, he also was all over the map. “On January 6,” Trump said, “we had a great border.” To explain how he would combat opioid addiction, he veered off into talking points about immigration and said his administration “bought the best dog.” He boasted about acing a cognitive test and that he had just recently won two golf club tournaments without mentioning that they were at his own golf courses. “To do that, you have to be quite smart and you have to be able to hit the ball a long way,” he said. “I can do it.”

    As Lahut recorded, Trump said this: “Clean water and air. We had it. We had the H2O best numbers ever, and we were using all forms of energy during my 4 years. Best environmental numbers ever, they gave me the statistic [sic.] before I walked on stage actually.”

    Trump also directly accused Biden of his own failings and claimed Biden’s own strengths, saying, for example, that Biden, who has enacted the most sweeping legislation of any president since at least Lyndon Johnson, couldn’t get anything done while he, who accomplished only tax cuts, was more effective. He responded to the calling out of his own criminal convictions by saying that Biden “could be a convicted felon,” and falsely stating: “This man is a criminal.” And, repeatedly, Trump called America a “failing nation” and described it as a hellscape.

    It went on and on, and that was the point. This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.

    It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has. It is similar to what Trump did to Biden during a debate in 2020. In that case, though, the lack of muting on the mics left Biden simply saying: “Will you shut up, man?” a comment that resonated with the audience. Giving Biden the enforced space to answer by killing the mic of the person not speaking tonight actually made the technique more effective.

    There are ways to combat the Gish gallop—by calling it out for what it is, among other ways—but Biden retreated to trying to give the three pieces of evidence that established his own credentials on the point at hand. His command of those points was notable, but the difference between how he sounded at the debate and how he sounded on stage at a rally in Raleigh, North Carolina, just an hour afterward suggested that the technique worked on him.

    That’s not ideal, but as Monique Pressley put it, “The proof of Biden’s ability to run the country is the fact that he is running it. Successfully. Not a debate performance against a pathological lying sociopath.”

    A much bigger deal is what it says that the television media and pundits so completely bought into Trump’s performance. They appear to have accepted Trump’s framing of the event—that he is dominant—so fully that the fact Trump unleashed a flood of lies and non-sequiturs simply didn’t register. And, since the format established that the CNN journalists running the debate did not challenge anything either candidate said, and Dale’s fact-checking spot came long after the debate ended, the takeaway of the event was a focus on Biden’s age rather than on Trump’s inability to tell the truth or form a coherent thought.

    At the end of the evening, pundits were calling not for Trump—a man liable for sexual assault and business fraud, convicted of 34 felonies, under three other indictments, who lied pathologically—to step down, but for Biden to step down…because he looked and sounded old. At 81, Biden is indeed old, but that does not distinguish him much from Trump, who is 78 and whose inability to answer a question should raise concerns about his mental acuity.

    About the effect of tonight’s events, former Republican operative Stuart Stevens warned: “Don’t day trade politics. It’s a sucker’s game. A guy from Queens out on bail bragged about overturning Roe v. Wade, said in public he didn’t have sex with a porn star, defended tax cuts for billionaires, defended Jan. 6th. and called America the worst country in the world. That guy isn’t going to win this race.”

    Trump will clearly have pleased his base tonight, but Stevens is right to urge people to take a longer view. It’s not clear whether Trump or Biden picked up or lost votes; different polls gave the win to each, and it’s far too early to know how that will shake out over time.

    Of far more lasting importance than this one night is the clear evidence that stage performance has trumped substance in political coverage in our era. Nine years after Trump launched his first campaign, the media continues to let him call the shots.

    1

    • What people don’t understand is that Trump or Biden is not as important as the people they bring with them. Trump’s people are fixated on destroying the Unites States government for their political and economic gain. They have no desire to govern, nor do they have the ability to do so. Biden’s people are middle of the road, good governance types who will try to hold the country together and deliver reasonable policies that protect the health, safety and economic prosperity of the people.

      So, yeah, I would rather vote for Joe Biden’s literal corpse and know that we will have a functional government.

      2

      • Also there are judicial appointments and which legislation is signed and which executive policies are supported in Congress … it’s about the entire party, not the individual. The media does us a huge disservice with their horserace reporting that radically distorts the realities of governing.

        That said, Biden’s corpse is still pretty lively, despite his unfortunate performance in the “debate”: https://youtu.be/HYghfyxtZnc?t=514

        3

    • Thanks for posting Ms. Richardson’s piece. The last sentence is key. The media is the problem. They amplify Trump’s verbal abuse. It is not only how they do not clearly and immediately respond to his lies, his using swear words and derogatory and demeaning terms onto his “hit list of adversaries”, but how they do not address him (or other elected officials for that matter) appropriately, and consistently.

      It is “former president Donald Trump” or Mr. Trump. Not “Trump”. It is President Biden, or Mr. Biden. Not “Biden”. The Britts and most of the educated world get it. It extends to all elected officials. It is MP in UK, Congressperson, Representative, Member of Congress or Senator over here. They have a title. It should be used.

      When they speak lies or refuse to answer directed questions, they should be called out on that. Honesty and politeness are about moral character, and Mr. Trump clearly lacks that.

      1

  9. The Democratic Machine has known all along that Biden would NOT be the chosen one in ’24- “The
    Debate” was a calculated move which is part of the plan to replace Biden… There has NEVER been a debate prior to the Convention of either Party. The Dems are not being honest with the American people—they don’t feel the need to… The “Progressive–uber liberals” (read, Marxists) in the Biden Administration, have been the operatives running the Country the last 3 years -Running it into the ground with open borders, INSANE Green Mandates, Woke Mandates, DEI, no strong foreign policies, Divisiveness among Americans and other unstable and insane policies….

    -2
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