Donald Trump and Joe Biden have not set foot in the same room since the debate between them in October 2020 during that year’s presidential campaign. So, the outgoing president did not even have the courtesy of receiving his successor in the White House, but instead left without admitting his defeat—and with mountains of classified documents, although that is another story. Mutual antagonism has not stopped growing in the last four years. This Thursday, faces will be seen in person at the CNN studios in Atlanta (Georgia), in the first of the two presidential debates scheduled for this campaign. Both Biden and Trump need to capture the vote of moderate and independent voters, but attracting them in a dog-eat-dog confrontation between two candidates who disqualify each other will not be an easy task.
Atlanta receives the candidates with suffocating heat. This Thursday two events of national interest coincide in the city. The American soccer team faces Panama in a Copa América match. Shortly after that match, Biden faces Trump in the presidential debate. European soccer does not arouse many passions in the United States. The presidential elections, yes, although citizens do not like either of the two candidates running this year, who repeat the 2020 duel.
There is a certain consensus that Trump’s aggressiveness in the debates that year was counterproductive. During a rally last weekend in Philadelphia, Trump asked his supporters how to behave toward Biden: “How should I handle it? Should it be harsh and unpleasant? Or should I be nice and calm and let him talk?” Of course, his faithful asked for blood. It is, furthermore, what is in Trump’s nature. However, the mere question shows that the former president is aware that showing the toughest side of him is perhaps not the most productive strategy. He doesn’t need to win over his loyalists, but rather show that he can be reasonable and sensible enough that moderate and independent voters won’t turn their backs on him.
The rules of the debate, which is held without an audience and with the microphone muted for those who cannot speak, in principle seem favorable to Biden, since Trump handles himself better by descending into the mud of constant interruptions. However, they may end up benefiting Trump by imposing containment in ways that he would have a harder time achieving on his own. “This could be the most boring debate. Or it could be very exciting. “Who knows?” Trump said in relation to those rules.
A very low bar
The Trump campaign, on the other hand, has realized that it had set such a low bar for Biden (going so far as to say that he would not be able to stand for 90 minutes or that he would not be able to string two sentences together) that the president would only need reach the lectern without stumbling to exceed expectations, as one Republican strategist joked. For this reason, Trump has also tried to correct part of that message in recent days.
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Trump will undoubtedly try to take advantage of what Americans consider to be their two main problems: inflation and immigration. It is on this last issue that he is likely to show his most extremist side, with his radical and xenophobic messages and his promises of mass deportations.
Biden’s strategy to win the moderate vote involves, first, showing that despite his 81 years, only three years older than Trump, he is prepared to govern the world’s leading power for four more years. His physical fitness and mental acuity are in question and for Biden to have a chance of being re-elected, clearing up those doubts is a necessary condition, but not sufficient.
Democrats are putting much of their focus on encouraging the fear vote. They insist on presenting Trump as an extremist, as a risk to democracy itself, as a convicted criminal seeking revenge who wants to reach the White House for his own benefit. Trump is the first convicted felon to participate in a presidential debate. He also does it in the part of Atlanta that belongs to Fulton County, where he is accused of trying to steal the 2020 elections and where his famous mugshot was taken, which he later used as a propaganda weapon.
This Wednesday the Biden campaign has added an ally in that strategy. Former Republican congressman Adam Kinzinger has called for a vote for Biden with a very harsh message against his former leader. “It’s about whether democracy survives the way we want it,” he said. “I lived on January 6 [el día del asalto al Capitolio]. I didn’t see it on television, I was there and I have a two and a half year old son who I don’t want to grow up in a country where it’s okay for things like that to happen. So, for me, we have to put decency above political differences. “These are truly the most important elections of my life,” he added.
The other issue that Democrats preferentially use to mobilize their voters is abortion. Biden will try to take advantage of Trump’s contradictions, who in this matter is guided more by electoral convenience than by a matter of principle. The former president prefers not to get involved and refer the matter to the States.
The vice presidential candidate
This Wednesday, in Atlanta, the hustle and bustle of street closures, traffic detours, collection of credentials and other paraphernalia associated with the debate had already begun, which begins at 9:00 p.m. Eastern time in the United States (3:00 a.m. on Friday, local time). Spanish peninsula). The city not only receives the president and the former president, but also an entire entourage of notables who accompany them. Trump has said that among those attending the debate will be his chosen one to accompany him on the ballot as a vice presidential candidate, so it’s his turn to sign up. Senators Marco Rubio and JD Vance are expected in the city – he has said that he would be disappointed not to be the anointed one – and the governor of North Dakota, Doug Burgum, among many others, who will look askance at each other while paying homage to the leader .
The Turner Entertainment Networks headquarters, embedded on the campus of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), is already decked out with presidential debate posters everywhere. CNN has set up the university team’s pavilion, with capacity for 8,600 people, as a large complementary set from which to follow the debate with those incited and also as an improvised press room for the hundreds of accredited journalists.
The duel, however, will be held in a studio in another building, without an audience, which CNN has already prepared. The news channel prides itself on being the first television channel to exclusively organize a presidential debate and has put its logo everywhere, on the floor, on the lecterns, on the screens in the background… There are large, small and medium-sized logos. On a black platform there are two blue and white lecterns that are closer to each other than in the 2020 debates. The entire decoration has the air and corporate colors of CNN programs.
The network hopes that the broadcast will be the most watched program in its history, counting on the simultaneous retransmission of its signal through the other major channels. Nobody expects, however, that the record of 84 million viewers who followed the first confrontation between Hillary Clinton and Trump himself in 2016 will be surpassed.
A poll by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research finds that nearly 6 in 10 American adults say they are “extremely” or “very” likely to watch, read or listen to commentary about the debate. Many think the stakes are high for both Biden and Trump. A majority of Democrats, 55%, think the debate is extremely or very important to the success of Biden’s campaign. About half of Republicans, 51%, say the same about the importance to Trump. The poll shows that the Democratic president and the Republican candidate remain widely unpopular.
It is probably Biden who has the most at stake. According to polls, if the elections were held now, Trump would be elected president. According to the vast majority of polls, he has an advantage in most of the decisive states, which are expected to tilt the result one way or the other with his Electoral College delegates (the election is indirect and, as a general rule, the one who wins in a State, he takes all the electoral votes of the same, equivalent to his representation in Congress). Those States are mainly Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, where the debate takes place.
However, Biden has begun to see the light. The general voting intention is very close and although the majority of survey aggregators – including media experts such as The New York Times either Washington Post and specialists such as RealClearPolitics, Race to the White House and Decision Desk HQ—still place the Republican ahead, one of the most prestigious, FiveThrtyEight, places Biden with an advantage of 0.1 points. That would not be enough to win in the Electoral College, but it is the first time that he has been ahead in the popular vote since said aggregator began its series almost four months ago.
Both Biden and Trump are optimistic. Both have scheduled rallies the day after the debate in States where the favorite is the rival, but the difference is not insurmountable. Biden will go to North Carolina and Trump will go to Virginia, where he will be accompanied by the governor, Glenn Youngkin, the last to be suggested in the pools as a possible Republican candidate for vice president. We’ll have to see if he shows up in Atlanta.
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