If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee and Biden is the Democratic nominee, the likelihood of debates goes way down.
It’s an article of faith among Republicans that the aging, visibly declining Joe Biden can be exposed on the debate stage next fall. But why should we assume that there will be debates at all? If Donald Trump is the Republican nominee and Biden is the Democratic nominee, the likelihood of debates goes way down.
Both candidates, after all, are ducking debates during the primaries. Trump argues openly that he’s winning without them, so why bother? Biden’s team has pushed the notion that he shouldn’t dignify Robert F. Kennedy Jr. with a debate. In 2020, sniping between the two candidates about safety protocols after Trump caught Covid led to there being only two debates.
If we get to the general election, one or both candidates will have overpowering incentives to duck the debates. Both camps are already thinking about it. We’ll have one guy whose lawyers don’t want him talking, and one guy whose doctors don’t want him walking. If one candidate feels he is ahead, he will conclude that he has too much to lose — and because each of them pulled this maneuver in the primaries and (if they’re the nominee) got away with it, they will be insulated from criticism. You can’t very effectively play the “he’s afraid to debate me” card after months on end of being afraid to debate your primary opponents. Trump will say he’s ahead of Biden and the race is over. (He may say this even if he’s ten points in the hole.) Biden will say he has state business to attend to and won’t appear on the same stage with a man who has committed treason, rape, riot, election denial, white supremacy, and malarkey.
Debates may be overrated by political journalists who work with words for a living and love the spectacle, but they are one of the few times in a general-election campaign when candidates can be forced off script so the voters can see what they’re made of. That should be particularly important when one candidate is 78 years old and has been conducting a leisurely campaign in which he leaves his resort primarily for arraignments; the other will turn 82 just after the election, works a reduced schedule, hides out in the White House, and calls only on pre-selected reporters; and both of them have been investigated or charged with all manner of indefensible things since the last election. I’d say the voters deserve to see what these men are still capable of — but if the primary voters in both parties decide to nominate them without doing so, maybe we don’t deserve better. In any event, we shouldn’t expect better.