Tonight’s Presidential Debate is unique in the history of presidential debates.
It is the first ever presidential debate where two people who have served as president are debating each other.
It is also the first presidential debate that has taken place before either candidate has been offically nominated as their party’s candidate (although both have already won sufficient delegates to secure said nominations).
It is also the first presidential debate featuring the two candidates of the respective parties where the moderators will have the ability to mute the microphones of the candidates at will.
That last point is going to be the most interesting thing we see. It’s generally assumed that the CNN moderators who are about as in the tank for Joe Biden as you can get will be censoring Trump, keeping him from either going on or countering if Biden says something completely off, but the real interesting thing to watch for will be if they use their mute buttons to cut off Joe Biden if he starts to ramble or carry himself like the doddering old fool that he is.
That’s going to be the real tightrope walk for Tapper and Bash, their goal is to hinder Trump’s ability to get his message out to those few watching who have not already made up their minds, without being so obvious as to garner him sympathy. Their second priority is to carry Joe Biden without making it clear to the audience that they are doing so. That might actually be the harder task of the night
That’s really the only mystery here. I suspect there are actually very few undecided voters in this election. Americans have lived through the Trump years and the Biden years so they have an actual basis for comparison that has not existed on election day since the election of 1892 when Grover Cleveland faced Benjamin Harrison. People know what the choice is and I suspect most have already made it.
Furthermore the Trump people are going to vote for Trump come hell or high water and the Trump haters would vote for a wooden plank if it ran against Donald Trump which pretty much is the case as I suspect very few people think Biden is in charge of anything and when the debate is over as long as Joe Biden doesn’t drop dead or throw up all over himself everyone in the media will declare (at least publicly) that Biden won the debate with a strong performance.
That’s why I don’t think this debate really matters much except for the people actually running this administration who will use it to decide if they are better off keeping Joe Biden or dumping him.
That’s how I see it.
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