Since the current calendar of primary elections and civic assemblies (caucuses) to designate the candidate for the presidency of the United States was consolidated from the 1970s, there had never been a situation like this year’s, namely , that by the beginning of March all the fish had been sold. Indeed, barring an unlikely cataclysm on the part of one of the two sides, President Biden and former President Trump will star in the revenge of the elections of four years ago.
To prevent the only thing that will wake the electorate from lethargy in the almost eight months that remain until the decisive day of November 5 are the physical stumbles of the president or the judicial ones of the ex-president, the two campaign teams will have to sharpen their wits and one of the momentous decisions they will have to make is whether to keep the televised debates or not. Legendarily inaugurated by Jack Kennedy and Dick Nixon in 1960, they did not resume until 1976, but they have been a fixture ever since and no candidate, Democrat or Republican, has dared refuse to participate.
The truth is that the public tends to stay more with anecdotes than with known content or political initiatives. Many people remember, for example, that Trump called Hillary Clinton disgusting in 2016 (“Such a disgusting woman”) or that Biden called Trump a clown (“You’re a clown”) in 2020, but not much more ‘those confrontations, of course, to the death.
The fact is that the debates between the long dozen Republican candidates who aspired to the presidential nomination in 2016 were momentous for the triumph of the New York real estate businessman, who imposed himself with his insolent and overbearing style on politicians in principle more qualified than him, like governors Jeb Bush or John Kasich or senators Ted Cruz or Marco Rubio. It is obvious that Trump was favored by his extensive experience in the television medium, thanks to the reality show that he hosted for years, The Apprentice.
This year, on the other hand, Trump decided not to participate in any of the debates to decide the Republican candidate, which seemed like a risky decision that, nevertheless, has been crowned with success. In retrospect, it seems clear that his grip on the Republican base was and is so strong that he didn’t need a televised debate to ratify his dominance. Indeed, he has won the Republican nomination without practically having to get off the bus.
Therefore, President Biden would theoretically be justified in refusing to debate this time, unlike what happened four years ago, when the pandemic limited televised face-to-face meetings to two. Held on September 29 in Cleveland and October 22 in Nashville, they were so rough that the organizers were forced in the second to momentarily silence the microphones of the candidates to avoid continuous interruptions.
But Biden won’t. He does indeed run the risk that some mistake like a house will reveal his presumed mental fragility before a mass audience, but the greater risk is being called a coward by an adversary who has never held back when it comes to insult and disqualification . And the opposite could also happen, that is, that Trump, seeing himself as the winner, refused to debate, worried that some outburst or obvious lie would take him away from victory. Possible, but unlikely. Right now, this chronicler’s bet is that there will be debates, but until autumn, which is when they are usually held, there is an eternity.
