Good evening, ladies and gentlemen…
…and that is the last pleasant thing I expect I’ll have to say tonight. Noah, Jim, and Audrey have all already covered the various reasons why tonight’s debate is likely to be thoroughly unenlightening and unedifying; all of the angles about “expectations management” and the like have already been explored. Now we just wait for the Grand Guignol to begin.
Perhaps the most notable thing about tonight is how every single person — both candidates, the moderators, and everyone watching or commenting on the debate — understand it to be almost entirely a question of optics. Everyone in America “knows” who Joe Biden and Donald Trump are at this point. Dobbs will be mentioned countless times by Joe Biden and the moderators tonight; America has already priced it in for what it’s worth. Donald Trump will almost certainly rip on Hunter Biden; everyone who could be persuaded by that already has been.
Instead America is watching purely on an aesthetic level: we want to see these candidates, see which one “looks” more credible in a situation where neither choice thrills the vast majority of voters. So — unless something truly wild happens tonight, like Joe Biden accidentally endorsing Hamas — the words spoken today matter less than Joe Biden or Donald Trump’s ability to get them out of their mouths without embarrassing themselves.
Given the Biden campaign’s problem with enthusiasm and support among the Democratic base, there is probably a good case that Biden should want to be onstage with Trump as often as possible. Because there is nothing else that unites the Democratic coalition, and in particular the activist and donor base, like hatred of Trump.
According to a Biden campaign official: “The 6-7pm hour was Team Biden-Harris’ best grassroots fundraising hour of the campaign — besting the 5-6pm hour which was our prior record hour for grassroots fundraising.”