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SEPTEMBER 24, 2020 | The Jewish Home The Jewish Home | OCTOBER 29, 2015
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Political Crossfire
Tuesday Night’s Debate Biden’s Applesauce Challenge By Nate Davis
I
should be out of the prediction game – my last prediction was that Joe Biden would never pick Kamala Harris as his running mate because she would be the worst possible choice. I was dead wrong. He picked her. Then promptly put her in the Witness Protection Program. So I’m only a half idiot. Well, then, here is my next prediction: Biden will clean Trump’s clocks in the debate this Tuesday. Before you call “strike two” on me, let me explain. Presidential candidates generally have one central attack theme on their opponents. Trump’s central attack theme on Biden is that he has dementia. There were other themes available to Trump when he first took on Biden: (i) Biden’s long history of kowtowing to America’s number one enemy, China (including the fact that son Hunter took $1.5 billion from China for an investment company, even though his only life experience was getting thrown out of the army due to his penchant for sniffing white power); (ii) Biden’s flip-flopping on social justice (as a senator, he led the 1994 crime bill that put tens of thousands of blacks in prison for minor offenses); (iii) Biden’s lack of any significant accomplishments in 47 years in Washington (other than a pretty good hair plugs job); and the list goes on. But instead, Trump went with the theme that Biden has dementia. Why did he go with this theme? C’mon man...you know…see, the thing, I mean, let’s get…seriously? Really? I mean, c’mon man!” In non-Biden speak – it was low-hanging fruit. But here is the problem with the dementia theme: it set the bar so low for Biden that as long as he doesn’t show up at Tuesday’s debate with applesauce dripping down his chin, he’s going to look competent. Now, if you believe the dementia argument, you may not be so worried.
But the truth is that politicians always magnify their opponent’s weakness. Is Biden exhibiting some sort of mental slowdown? It’s hard to say that he is not; he uses a teleprompter when discussing what he ate for dinner last night. But Biden can get through a debate on sheer muscle memory alone. He has been debating for literally a half century. Granted, he didn’t do well in most of the Democratic primary debates. But in those debates, there were multiple candidates on the stage, which makes it harder to shine. Turn to the last debate, though, when it was just him and bread-line Bernie, and he actually did very well. Although he has been hiding in his basement and has been professional in his ineptitude in the few interviews that he has done, in a certain way debates are easier than interviews because they are pretty much a forum to highlight your best attack lines. If you watch Biden, he usually does not stumble when attacking Trump with broad strokes. His troubles start rather precipitously when he has to talk policy, numbers, or recite facts. Ironically, that does not happen much in debates – even when moderates ask substantive questions, it has become acceptable for candidates to quickly pivot to their carefully crafted attack lines.
Biden will show up at the debate well-rested, all cued up with his well-prepared attack lines…. “You froze on corona and failed to show leadership when it mattered most”... “You said there were good people on both sides in Charlottesville”... “The deficit exploded in your term”… “Ten million Americans are unemployed.” Although there are varying degrees of falsehoods to these attacks, they will put Trump on the defensive. They will also embolden Biden who – possibly due to cognitive decline – looks his sharpest and most focused when screaming about Trump’s moral inferiority. (It almost seems like Biden remembers who he is when he delivers these attack lines.) Even so, there are ways for Trump to prepare for this. He has to not take the bait and has to hyper-focus on substance. Doing this during the debate will make him look presidential – not a bad look to have thirty days before an election. It will also throw Biden off of his game as he will try to match Trump and attempt to talk about substance. If that happens, Trump would be the shoo-in winner. Literally. Biden will be eating his own shoes all night because he has absolutely no ability to sound cogent when talking policy off the cuff. Well, you wonder, perhaps Trump will take that tactic and focus on the
substance. I certainly hope so, but it is unlikely to happen because Trump looks at debates like a boxing match. Try asking a boxer to get into the ring and pepper his opponent with riddles. Not happening. Using boxing terms, Trump doesn’t do the rope-a-dope; he is a Mike Tyson knockout puncher. He throws big punches… “Low energy Jeb” (boom!), “[Hillary] you should be in jail” (bam!). Although it would certainly be fun to watch him throw some big punches at Biden, it would be more fun to watch Biden talk about how 600 million people in America got corona in the last six months, which is more than the amount of Americans that got it in the past sixteen years combined. Now, losing the debate does not necessarily mean Trump will lose the election. In 2012, Obama got walloped by Mitt Romney in the first debate (remember that – when Romney was still pretending to be a Republican?) and came back in the second and third debates with better preparation and ended up winning the election. Additionally, what may look like a loss to some people (i.e. soft New Yorkers like me), may not look that way in other parts of the country. In his first debate with Hillary Clinton, many people watching thought that Trump blew it really bad. You may recall, that was the debate where he was breathing weirdly and the only diagnosis was “yep, he has a deviated septum.” But it turns out that many voters thought that he actually won that debate. In general, people are more tuned in nowadays to the whole process so the debates probably play a diminished role. So even if Trump does appear to lose the debate, it will not be a reason to panic; there will always be the next debate. And, who knows, maybe Biden will have applesauce on his chin then.
