Presidential debate is a spectator sport. Biden lost a crucial match

So, that debate last Thursday.

Whoo!

(I wrote this column right after the debate and just had to get that out of my system.)

I got a call last Tuesday morning from a longtime Iowa political organizer. The organizer asked if I’d be interested in participating on a small panel of voters to be interviewed by a cable news channel and share their thoughts on the upcoming presidential campaign debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump.

Originally, I was agreeable to double-checking our external media policies and participating. Sometimes my lips curl when I see who the cable news channels find for their man-on-the-street interviews or their panels of “average voters.” I’m not sure I’d call myself the most average of anything, but … well, better me than some dope from Stanwood in a ten-gallon hat who fancies himself a political savant.

My tentative plans fell through when a producer told me the network was looking for undecided voters to weigh in both before and after Thursday night’s debate to determine if the debate swayed any of them toward either candidate.

I had to be honest with the producer: I am not an undecided presidential voter. I’ll cop to not being as enthusiastic of a presidential voter as I have been in the past, but I’m not a conflicted one. I know exactly how I plan to mark the ballot this November.

No, I don’t expect any earth-shattering revelations over the next four months that will cause me to change my mind. I mean, if nothing else has already deterred me during this general election season, then …

Sorry, I tried to find the words to finish that last sentence, but I just kept cracking up behind my computer screen.

Large majorities of Biden and Trump voters in Iowa indicated the same thing I did before the debate: their mind is made up. The most recent Iowa Poll from June 17th showed that half of likely voters in Iowa would vote for Donald Trump if the election were held that day. Of those Trump voters, 76% indicated that their choice was a firm one. Less than one-third of likely Iowa voters favored incumbent Joe Biden, but a whopping 81% of those Biden voters said they were in the bag for the Big Guy.

(I’d be curious to see another poll of the same “how sure are you about your candidate” question now that Thursday night’s debate has concluded. If you saw the debate, you know why I’m curious.)

Say the rate of certainty from the June 17 poll were the case nationwide. If Iowa’s numbers applied across the country, that would mean that about 64% of American voters’ minds were made up – firmly – before the debate even started. It seems that most of us didn’t actually need to watch it.

But we wanted to anyway. Polling by the Associated Press released last Wednesday, the day before the debate, suggested that 64% of American adults said they were at least somewhat likely to tune in live. (Television ratings for the debate were not yet available by this column’s print deadline.)

A hefty number of us apparently weren’t tuning in to inform our decision-making. That’s not necessarily surprising. Voters don’t have the same need for televised debates between presidential candidates as much as they might have when the first one took place in 1960 between John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon.

In 1960, Americans relied almost entirely on print newspapers or magazines, AM/FM radio, and TV news broadcasts that played during scheduled hours for campaign information. Campaign solicitation was door-to-door and via telephone numbers that real people actually dialed. Televised campaign ads had only begun airing eight years earlier.

24-hour cable news wouldn’t exist for another two decades. The Internet hadn’t yet been invented. People didn’t carry tiny little broadcasting devices in their pockets and purses so they could get up-to-the-minute updates on the latest outlandish thing someone said or did. They weren’t inundated with political ads on social media; they didn’t get spam texts and emails from campaigns and PACs 37 times a day.

A televised presidential debate back then was not only a useful tool for learning about the candidates and their positions, it was really the only way to learn both major candidates’ policy positions while seeing those positions (and the candidates themselves) stress-tested at the same time. With today’s endless onslaught of information, our many modes of communication and a spin machine regularly churning out the spin … geez. No wonder so many are burnt out on politics.

Now, many watch primarily to see the candidates themselves – particularly “the other guy” – taken to task. It’s largely a spectator sport anymore, and presidential debates are like mini-super bowls. The politically interested watch the debates intently to cheer on their preferred candidate, hoping to also watch the other crash and burn. Some spend the entire debate posting a string of updates with reactions to each and everything that is stated.

More than a few people wear campaign t-shirts and hold debate watch parties. Count your friendly neighborhood opinion columnist among that crowd. I joined a big room full of other party animals of the pachyderm variety to watch Thursday’s debate. We passed around debate watch bingo cards with squares to mark different situations as they occurred: Trump being called a felon, Biden tossing a “word salad,” Jake Tapper getting ridiculed, et cetera. (For their part, moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash of CNN ran the debate very well.)

If the giddy atmosphere at my gathering was any indicator, the party of elephants was pretty pleased with how Trump performed. If the mood of the MSNBC pundits was the proverbial thumb on the pulse, Biden’s stumbling performance left the party of donkeys feeling about as optimistic as Eeyore and about as tranquil as a fainting goat.

Biden actually surprised me with his overall performance. Perhaps that’s because expectations were so low to begin with that just getting through it was enough to earn him a gold star – at least in the eyes of anyone who hasn’t spent at least the last year in denial about the president’s cognitive abilities.

He did make it through, however, so I’m tempted to make a joke à la “Gimme a shot of whatever juice they gave him.” Honestly, though, I’d find it more interesting to know what magic potions the president’s campaign staff, the Democratic party and every pundit from the center to the left took to soothe their rattled nerves.

While political debates have devolved primarily into a spectator sport, the winner doesn’t get to take home a trophy or even bragging rights for the whole rest of the season. The prize in a debate victory is the momentum – the advantage of a campaign having the wind at its back as it runs toward the finish line.

Energy of that nature can be deceiving when finish line is such a long way away. The June 27 debate – set after Biden challenged Trump to two debates in a closed studio with mics that could be cut by moderators – was almost three months earlier than the next earliest in any general election cycle in history.

The Biden campaign insisted on earlier debates in part to ensure that they took place before early voting begins. In some states, early voting begins up to 46 days before a general election.

But some might claim that the campaign has had an incentive to put their wilting candidate on stage sooner than later so he can go before the public before he completely shrivels. Biden’s bumbling performance on Thursday did not do anything to discredit such a notion.

I’d even go as far as to at least ponder a theory that some campaign and party insiders wanted to push a declining president in front of the public well before the Democratic National Convention to spook the party base into finally admitting what the rest of us have been saying for months now so the party can frantically figure out a way to replace Biden as the party’s nominee. A quick peek at Google Trends reveals that the search term “replace nominee” hit the maximum possible popularity value between 10:00 and 10:30pm on Thursday, after the debate wrapped up.

That’s a long shot, but it’s undeniable that Joe Biden and the Democrats had a very bad night while the rest of America watched, some with popcorn, bingo cards and perhaps even a few risky drinking games.

Nothing is normal in 2024. We’re 128 days out, and it’s going to be a bumpy road. Debates are the sport, politics are the game, and the clock runs out when the polls close on Election Day. Whoever is declared the winner will make history, and Americans have a front-row seat to witness it.

Comments: 319-398-8266; althea.cole@thegazette.com