NEW YORK (AP) — President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, will meet on the debate stage for the first time Tuesday night in Cleveland. Millions of voters will get their first opportunity to compare the candidates’ policies and personalities side by side on national television for 90 minutes just five weeks before Election Day and as early voting is already unfolding in some states.
Here are some of the biggest questions heading into the night:
HOW DOES TRUMP HANDLE BEING ON THE DEFENSIVE?
In his first formal debate since taking office, Trump has a lot to answer for.
More than 200,000 Americans have been killed by COVID-19 under his watch — the highest death toll of any country in the world. Tens of millions of people are still out of work. The country’s cultural and political divisions are widening. And don’t forget the weekend revelations that Trump has paid less federal income taxes than most working-class Americans for several years.
Moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News and Biden will no doubt press Trump on those facts.
Trump seems to revel in hand-to-hand combat, and history suggests that neither facts nor any code of conduct will prevent him from saying whatever he needs to change the subject. He can pivot to more friendly issues such as the Supreme Court confirmation fight or “law and order” — or he can jump into the mud by going after Biden’s mental and physical strength or his family.
Such personal tactics worked for Trump four years ago. But now that he’s the man in charge of the country, it’s unclear if voters will be as willing to accept the brash outsider act.
HOW DOES BIDEN RESPOND?
It’s difficult to keep up with Trump’s campaign messages, but one line of attack has risen above the rest over the past year: that the 77-year-old Biden, or “Sleepy Joe,” is not mentally or physically fit to be president. Therefore, perhaps nothing matters more for Biden on Tuesday night than his ability to convince America that he has the strength to hold the world’s most important job.
Given Trump’s persistent attacks, Biden faces a low bar in proving his stamina.
But it’s worth asking whether that’s the measure for success that voters should use. After nearly a half century in politics, Biden is a far more experienced debater than Trump, and he has a much better grasp of foreign and domestic policy. On paper, at least, Biden has the advantage.
Yet the former vice president’s uneven performances in the primary debates offer plenty of reasons for Democrats to be worried.
WHO WILL VOTERS SEE ON STAGE?
Trump and his Republican allies have been trying to brand Biden as a socialist since he emerged as the Democratic nominee from a pack of primary candidates that featured a self-described democratic socialist (not Biden). And Biden and his allies have been calling Trump a racist since Biden launched his campaign.
On Tuesday, each candidate will have a prime-time opportunity to debate the policies and rhetoric underlying each argument.
Biden, who has long positioned himself to the center of his party’s most liberal positions, has embraced plans to enlarge the government’s role in health care, education and the environment. Such policies are hardly socialist, but they would represent a significant shift to the left and require tax increases.
Trump has a well-established pattern of using racist rhetoric and favoring policies that disproportionately favor white people. For example, Trump has used the power of his office to crack down on Black Lives Matter protesters fighting for civil rights, calling them “terrorists” and warning that violent mobs of such protesters are invading largely white suburbs.
While the candidates’ personalities may draw more attention than their policies, it’s their policies that will touch the lives of virtually every American voter.
HOW WILL BIDEN HANDLE TRUMP’S FALSE STATEMENTS?
Heading into the debate, Biden’s team was advising him to avoid messy confrontations and fact checking Trump in real time to avoid getting pulled into the mud with a president who loves getting dirty.
Biden could easily spend all 90 minutes consumed by trying to refute Trump’s claims, and no doubt, liberals will want to see Biden take the fight to the president whenever the opportunity presents itself. But Biden also wants to rise above the chaos and present voters with a clear alternative who’s willing to compromise and move past the divisive fights that have dominated the Trump era.
It’s a delicate balance, and Biden has struggled at times to stick to his advisers’ plans. You may remember him snapping at voters on the campaign trail back in the spring or the campaign’s futile attempt to get him to shorten and focus his stump speeches.
Even under the best of circumstances, as we’ve seen in Trump’s previous debates, it’s difficult to take on Trump directly. The former TV reality star is clearly comfortable on camera, and he’s willing to say whatever he needs to — whether it’s true or not.
HOW WILL DEMOCRACY FARE?
Trump has repeatedly sought to undermine the integrity of the election by raising unfounded concerns about voter fraud. Trailing in the polls, he’s been escalating such warnings as Election Day nears.
Trump’s message is not supported by facts, but many of his supporters believe it. We’ll see how convincing Trump’s message is, with Biden — and perhaps Wallace — pushing back.
There are legitimate concerns about the Postal Service’s capacity to handle the surge of mail ballots as people try to participate in the election as safely as possible during the pandemic. And several states are scrambling to avoid the same ballot-counting delays that plagued primary elections. But experts are quite clear that there is no evidence of significant voter fraud and very little chance it will happen in 2020.
The experts’ voices are not as loud, however, as whatever will be said Tuesday night.
Trump, Biden prepare to debate at a time of mounting crises
CLEVELAND (AP) — In an election year like no other, the first debate between President Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, could be a pivotal moment in a race that has remained stubbornly unchanged in the face of historic tumult.
The Tuesday night debate will offer a massive platform for Trump and Biden to outline their starkly different visions for a country facing multiple crises, including racial justice protests and a pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans and cost millions of jobs.
The health emergency has upended the usual trappings of a presidential campaign, lending heightened importance to the debate. But amid intense political polarization, comparatively few undecided voters remain, raising questions as to how, or if, the debate might shape a race that has been defined by its bitterness and, at least so far, its stability.
Biden will step onto the Cleveland stage holding leads in the polls — significant in the national surveys, closer in the battleground states — but facing questions about his turn in the spotlight, particularly considering Trump’s withering attacks. And Trump, with only 35 days to change the course of the race, will have arguably his best chance to try to reframe the campaign as a choice election and not a referendum over his handling of a virus that has killed more people in America than any other nation.
“This will be the first moment in four years that someone will walk on stage as co-equal to Trump and be able to hold him to account for the malfeasance he has shown leading the country,” said Steve Schmidt, senior campaign aide for John McCain’s 2008 Republican presidential bid and a frequent Trump critic. “If Biden is unable to indict Trump for all that he has done, (that) would be profound failure. There is no spinning that away.”
The president’s handling of the coronavirus will likely dominate much of the discussion. The pandemic’s force will be tangible as the candidates’ podiums will be spaced far apart and the traditional opening handshake scrapped.
And the debate could be shaped by an extraordinary confluence of other recent moments: the death of Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, allowing Trump to nominate a conservative jurist to replace a liberal voice and reshape the high court for generations, and the blockbuster revelations about Trump’s long-hidden tax history, including that he paid only $750 a year in federal income taxes in 2016 and 2017 and nothing in many other years.
But the impact of the debate — or the two that follow in the weeks ahead — remains unclear.
The tumult of 2020 is difficult to overstate: COVID-19 has rewritten the rules of everyday life; schools and businesses are shuttered; and racial justice protests have swept the nation after a series of high-profile killings of Black people by police.
Despite the upheaval, the presidential race has remained largely unchanged since Biden seized control of the Democratic field in March. The nation has soured on Trump’s handling of the pandemic, and while his base of support has remained largely unchanged, he has seen defections among older and female voters, particularly in the suburbs, and his path to 270 Electoral College votes, while still viable, has shrunk.
Polls suggest fewer undecided voters remain than at this point in the 2016 campaign. And several high-profile debates in past elections that were thought to be game-changing moments at the time ultimately had little lasting effect.
Four years ago, Democrat Hillary Clinton was widely seen as besting Trump in their three debates, but she lost in November. In 2012, Mitt Romney crushed Barack Obama in their first meeting only to falter in the rematches.
But some debates have mattered: most famously, a turning point in the 1960 race was when John F. Kennedy was perceived — at least by TV viewers — as outdueling Richard Nixon. And in 1980, Ronald Reagan was able to reassure nervous voters that he possessed a presidential temperament when he delivered a winning performance against incumbent Jimmy Carter.
While both sides anticipate a vicious debate between two men who do not like each other, the Biden campaign has downplayed the night’s importance, believing that the pandemic and the battered economy will outweigh any debate stage gaffe or zinger. Conversely, the Trump campaign has played up the magnitude of the duel, believing it will be a moment for the president to damage Biden and recast the race.
Trump had told advisers that he is preparing an all-out assault on Biden, claiming that the former senator’s 47 years in Washington have left him out of touch and that his family, namely his son Hunter, has benefited from corruption. The president on Monday also repeated his demand that Biden take some sort of drug test, asserting without evidence that the Democratic nominee was somehow using a performance enhancer.
That continued a curious round of expectations setting: While Trump’s campaign has of late praised Biden’s debate skills, the president has also vividly portrayed his opponent as not being up to the job, potentially allowing Biden to come off well as long as he avoids a major stumble.
“This guy doesn’t have a clue. He doesn’t know where the hell he is,” Trump said recently, likening the debate to a boxing match and pointing to his head. “To win matches you need that up here. This wins, probably, it’s 50% of it. This is not prime time for Joe.”
But Trump — never a polished debater, though a commanding presence on stage — has done little in the way of formal preparations, which may mean he is walking into his own trap.
“Historically, incumbents do less well in the first debate, largely because they’re unaccustomed to being challenged openly,” said presidential historian Jon Meacham. “The most important single debate in terms of direct impact on outcome came 40 years ago, with the single Carter-Reagan meeting a week before the election. The key question then — ‘Are you better off than you were four years ago?’ — has fresh and compelling resonance.”
Biden’s performances during the primary debates were uneven, and some Democrats have been nervous as to how he will fare in an unscripted setting. But his team views the night as a moment to illuminate Trump’s failings with the pandemic and economy, with the former vice president acting as a “fact checker on the floor” while bracing himself for the onslaught that is coming.
“They’re going to be mostly personal,” Biden said. “That’s the only thing he knows how to do. He doesn’t know how to debate the facts because he’s not that smart. He doesn’t know that many facts.”
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Lemire reported from New York.
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