Ideally they’d frame it as a picture in picture. The main frame being tightly centered on the speaker, with a postage stamp in the corner centered on the other guy.
OTOH, everybody on camera needs a few seconds of privacy now and again to scratch a nose, chase off a fly, whatever, and knowing they’d each have a camera trained on them and broadcasting for the entire time, less commercial breaks, might be a bit much.
This morning a local columnist asked the question I’ve been wondering about:
Joe Biden and Donald Trump will be debating each other this week, and it really shouldn’t matter.
On one side of the stage in Atlanta we’ll have a sitting president who served eight years as vice president and 36 years in the U.S. Senate. How much more can we learn about Biden in a 90-minute televised debate?
On the other side of the stage, we’ll have a former president who hosted a popular reality show for 14 years and has been a national celebrity for roughly four decades. How much more can we learn Thursday night about Trump?
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My bold.
I’m late to the party with this question, but why is this “debate”* even happening? We already know all there is to know about both of these men.
*Because it’s not really a debate, which is a real thing with structure and rules.
There have been several posts in this thread saying that the debates have been meaningless for ever, etc., but I don’t agree.
To answer your point directly, yes, as a general answer, we get to know what they think about, and how they’d deal with, things right now. Even a person we know well can have good or bad ideas for the times we live in, and the pace of change is very rapid.
But in the particular case of Biden and Trump, there have been accusations of cognitive decline, etc., on both sides (very true in the case of Trump); therefore, seeing them interact side by side can be instructive.
I dunno, they give the candidates the same question, and there are usually rebuttals, right? It’s not the Demosthenians going on and on over the same topic for an hour, but I do think it’s a useful exercise, or at least can be.
Thanks. I haven’t followed the whole thread.
Cognitive decline is in the eye of the beholder. Within minutes of the end of the debate it will be reduced to sound bites. No one wants to hear it but Biden looks ancient and frail. Trump is only a few years younger but he does not look frail. Perception becomes reality. That is the real danger. The unengaged voters that might vote may look at those clips and have no confidence in Biden. That is the danger. Voters will see a frail old man and think he shouldn’t be president. Unfortunately it would be worse for perception if he didn’t debate.
Yes I know what kind of reaction I’ll get. Biden’s great never been better! He doesn’t look at all like my grandfather a week before he died. All is well!
Story mostly about Trump but with a question to Biden while he was shuffling along.
And to pivot on that phrase, it so happens many potential voters haven’t followed the whole campaign, and an alarming number who every cycle seem to erase and overwrite everything that happened in the 8 years before, but they’ll pay attention when there is a head-to-head event (and MAYBE recall that for a couple of months). That is a sad comment on the level of democratic engagement but alas is a reality. (Those are the voters Loach just wrote about.)
I think the best thing Biden could do, in the event Trump becomes unhinged and starts shouting from his lectern, is to say, “Folks, do we really want to go back to that?”
Counterpoint: “Why is Biden wasting time debating when there’s so many issues to deal with now?”
Given that Trump didn’t even have the courage to debate among his own fellow Republicans, it’s hard to imagine where he’d summon up the courage to debate against Biden. Trump is such an easy target these days. Unless he’s playing up the martyr image again,
But that danger is already upon us. I would bet that a lot more people have seen memes about bidens cognitive impairment alongside deliberately misleading edits of videos of him, than are engaged in politics.
So if that’s all that comes out of this debate, then nothing much has changed.
But it is an opportunity, like the SOTU, to show more people than usual the reality, that while Biden indeed looks physically slow, he remains cognitively incredibly sharp and is working hard for America.
I think the odds of Trump dropping out are now well under 50%. If he was dropping out, he would have done so last week OR we would have heard a lot more hints over the past 48 hours. The Trump campaign has merely tried to backpeddle from their lame sleepy Joe moniker.
Still a worthwhile thread. Normally, the idea that a Presidential candidate would pull out of a debate he had agreed to would be absurd. In 10 years time, it might look absurd in retrospect, but it isn’t. Because Trump is erratic, his base is fanatic, and more normal Republicans have their views laundered through Fox News, an organization with no interest in informing their viewers and an overriding interest in pandering to them. So dropping out is a viable option for Trump.
The best thing for moderate liberals to do is shake their heads and say, “Biden is an old guy but still sharp. Trump, who had problems with focus even during his prime, is gettting crazier.” Or something more direct about what Trump did.
We are gonna watch trump babbling and showing he is now mentally incompetent.
This won’t change MAGAs but the preaching is to the Indy and youth voters.
Agreed. At this point we can feel confident that Trump will likely show. (Though as you mention, he knows that his FoxNews-addled voters are with him even if he doesn’t show.)
If he doesn’t want to go through with the debate, he will prefer to have something to save his face (even though the MAGAiest won’t care either way). It’s not impossible that he’s okayed some sort of false-flag dramatic Incident (which by its nature would have to happen at the last minute on Thursday). I don’t think this is remotely likely, but the fraction-of-a-percent possibility does exist, given Trump’s desperation to be President added to his well-known penchant for making headlines, added to his team’s knowledge that he’s likely to display his mental deterioration over the debate’s ninety minutes.
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Very true (especially the part I bolded). That part is true and unfortunate.
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Oh, fer corn’s sake. No one is alleging “menacingly approach” nor “deprive him of the use of his microphone.” An actual reading of all posts on the topic would knock this out-of-left-field claim out of your consciousness.
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Possibly, but nothing would stop Trump from “leaning.” (Note: leaning isn’t violence and it isn’t menacing.) His likely excuse ‘I have no choice because you Enemies of the People cut off my mic, and the American People want to hear what I have to say’ would satisfy many.
Trump will want to do whatever the proverbial kid-in-the-backseat does: keep doing stuff to annoy/infuriate his opponent (‘sibling’ in the case of the kid) while staying just this side of actual consequences.
That’s his nature, and what he’s discovered since 2016 is that millions of Americans admire him for doing it and getting away with it.
He’ll brat it up during the entire debate.
It’s expected for the president to debate and campaign. If the president doesn’t campaign or debate people will wonder why.
Probably not sorry to say. Trump isn’t able to give insightful answers to important questions. He is able to give short simple non-specific answers to direct questions. We have seen a lot of babbling from Trump but just about all of that is from his 90 minute stream of consciousness speeches at his rallies. He will repeat “I was great Biden is the worst” for every question, that doesn’t take a lot of mental acuity. If you are expecting another discussion on sharks you will probably be disappointed. Sure I’m hoping to learn more about sharks but I think the format will help him. Fact checkers will have a field day and I’m sure some stupid things will be said but I would bet there will be no babbling.
Trump skipped his the first time around and did fine, but he’s Trump. I agree that Biden is too traditional to get away with not debating, as much as I wish he would.
Here’s an interesting article that suggests that Trump needs the debates more than Biden.
Touching can be battery. Why couldn’t leaning be a threat or an assault?
Haven’t heard of anyone prosecuted for Leaning.
I guess nothing is impossible, but…
ETA: in the brave new world of No More Rule of Law that a 2nd Trump Presidency will usher in, we can be fairly certain that Leaning as a charge will be leveled against anyone who criticizes Trump or crosses him in any way. Also: Felonious Throat-Clearing, Criminal Side-Eying, Unlawful Eyebrow-Raising, etc. etc.
I just would not advise making funny moves around the POTUS. I doesn’t have to be “threatening” for them to take a dim view of it. They wouldn’t wait for your personal line in the sand, much less even know what that would be. .
This is getting rather silly. The debate isn’t an SNL sketch and Trump isn’t Alec Baldwin. He’s not going to move an inch from his podium and that’s the prediction I’m sticking with.