Is the Biden-Trump debate intended to force Joe out?
What’s the story behind the upcoming debate? Stupidity? Desperation? Cold logic? Setting Biden up for replacement?
Biden agreeing to debate Trump means one of two things.
One — and this the more likely and boring option — he’s realized he’s cruising to a bruising and it’s time to get out in front of cameras and make his case for keeping the job.
While his team has been steadfastly pushing back at persistent rumors that his health and/or faculties are failing, they’ve also been doing exactly what they would be doing if either/both of those were true.
Biden has been doing exclusively softball interviews, in controlled environments. Public appearances have been scripted and brief.
Even people who think it’s more likely due to his longstanding habits of saying stupid things and making up ridiculous lies about himself — such as myself — might consider it worth raising an eyebrow over.
The math here is simple:
Problem:
People are concerned Biden is too old to be President.
Statement:
Biden is physically and mentally fit, never been better.
IF TRUE:
Put Biden out in public and in front of cameras as much as possible,
IF FALSE:
Limit access to Biden.
So far, his team has been aggressively, proactively, and unwaveringly limiting access to the president. And that’s weird. The President is fine. He’s never been sharper. There is no war in Ba Sing Se!
So the sudden change of heart on the debates could simply have been an acknowledgement of this disparity and an attempt to course correct for this self-own.
But there’s a far more interesting interpretation.
Let’s say you have a guy running who absolutely can’t be allowed to win. But your guy is unpopular, maybe losing a step . . . or the ability to take steps . . . and he just will not drop out.
What do you do? The latest round of polls, these coming from a paper that has proudly given up journalism in favor of a creepy groupthink leftist cult, have just come out and they are calamitous. Your guy isn’t just losing, he’s got to sweep every single state he’s losing by less than three points to keep the White House.
This leads us to option two — and this is the more interesting possibility.
- You put your guy in the spotlight.
- You get him to agree to a debate.
- You do it under the stipulation of rules that will prevent the opponent from accidentally helping your guy out.
- There’s no audience, so his pauses and gaffs can’t be blamed on anything they say or do.
- The mics will only be on for a candidate when it’s there turn/time to speak, so your opponent isn’t going to speak over your guy.
- And, finally, you make sure the first debate is scheduled a few weeks before your party’s official convention.
If Biden nails it, good for him, if not . . .
This debate is already Biden interviewing to keep his job.
Biden is going to walk out on stage with two clear goals.
First, to remind everyone that two years of Trump was no picnic, however nostalgic they may feel about them while forking over $10 for chicken eggs, then selling their own for gas money.
Second, to put to rest notions that he’s a doddering old fool. That’s going to be tricky whether or not it’s true, since Biden has always said stupid on the regular. Suddenly stopping to talk about how his uncle was eaten by cannibals (he wasn’t) isn’t really out of character. It just hits different when the guy saying it looks more and more like the Crypt Keeper with each passing day.
Is it a trap?
If Biden doesn’t nail the first debate, given his polling, that’s the excuse Democrats need to replace him at the convention. Now, this doesn’t mean it’s Plan A. They’ve just arranged the debates in a way where, if their candidate loses badly, their bets are hedged.
It’s cold, calculating, and clever, as such things go. It’s also the smart move, as the same polls showing Biden slowly drowning are just fine for Democrats in general. 2024 would be a reasonably close contest between any two candidates, but every indication is that the odds of Trump taking his old job back go up when he’s running against Biden.
Well, except for the one glaring flaw: Biden’s likely successor, Harris, is one of the few people who polls worse than him.
And she’s, as a woman and a minority, is in a position where she could absolutely raise hell on any attempt to push her out in favor of more popular options. As risky as Biden is, having a civil war at the convention just to nominate someone with an equally poor election outlook doesn’t seem worth it.
Unless, of course, Biden really is failing, and at this point it’s as much about not admitting they’ve been covering for him. That really does feel like something that would’ve leaked by now, though.
Biden’s still been meeting with politicians, donors, dignitaries, etc. and it really only takes one Democrat billionaire or allied dignitary coming out and saying, “Whoa, yeah, I love the guy, but someone needs to pull the alarm on this.”
We may have arrived at the point where Democrat powerbrokers and high-power donors think it’s worth rolling the dice on. Or, hey, maybe they’ve already started working it out behind the scenes, and Michelle Obama’s agreed to run.
Personally, she’s always struck me as too sensible for that, and I just don’t know why she and Barrack would disrupt their perfectly comfortable retirements to step back into this mess.
So which is it?
Well, I’m firm believer that we should never ascribe to malice what can be explained by stupidity, so likely it’s the first option: A course overcorrection by the same team that’s been misreading the national room for the last year.
But there’s also no reason it has to be one or the other, or that everyone who weighed in on this has to have the same underlying motivations and goals.
I can tell you this much: June 27 will be interesting, but June 28 is the day I’m really curious about.
