The Biden-Trump debates at the height of political drama

A rare analyst to have glimpsed Hillary Clinton’s defeats against Barack Obama and Donald Trump, Marie-Christine Bonzom has covered seven presidential elections and five presidencies. At the invitation of Dutyshe occasionally puts her expert eye on the 2024 presidential campaign.

The presumptive nominees (we’ll return to this important term) of the parties that control the American political and electoral system — sitting President Joe Biden and his predecessor, Donald Trump — are among the most unpopular president-candidates since World War II. worldwide. This is also the first time since 1892 that a former president and his successor have faced each other. In addition, the Republican Trump is the first ex-president to have been criminally convicted. For his part, Democrat Biden is the first president to have a son convicted in criminal proceedings. Between now and the November 5 vote, Trump and Hunter Biden have other meetings with the law that could influence the election.

Also for the first time in the history of American presidential elections, a televised debate will bring together a Republican and a Democrat not yet officially endorsed by their respective parties. Until now, this type of debate only took place after the conventions, the investiture conferences which are held in the summer. Again in 2020, the first Biden-Trump debate did not take place until September 29.

This is because in 2024, Biden and Trump are particularly looking forward to meeting. The primaries closed on June 8 to general indifference. Despite the extraordinary unpopularity of Biden and Trump, it has already been months since the combined steamroller of the two major parties and the media close to them have imposed them on the country as the inevitable duellists, thanks to primaries designed to favor these candidates and characterized by participation rates among the lowest ever recorded.

Apart from the leaders and the ultra-militant base of the Republican and Democratic parties, Americans are not enthusiastic about a duel whose dynamics have been frozen since the fall: neck and neck at the national level and Trump’s advantage in the states keys. The majority have negative views of both Biden and Trump, and want neither. Only 64% are “very interested” in the campaign. This is the lowest proportion noted by NBC since 2008, when this media began surveying on this point.

But the major parties and the American media want this duel, and quickly. Because it dramatizes the issues. Because these parties are no longer able to convince on the basis of their ideas and their merits, because they hope that dramatization will end up mobilizing voters. Because the duel allows the duopoly to continue to avoid questioning its role in the crisis of American democracy.

A toxic and codependent couple

Today, the duel has become existential for Biden and Trump. Like a toxic couple, they are codependent! They need each other to stay on the political and electoral scene. Even more than in 2020, when Biden found in “anything but Trump” his salvation for the Oval Office, each of the two men uses the other as a foil.

The genesis of the debates agreed by Biden and Trump, that of Thursday on CNN, the other on ABC on September 10, is also political theater. For months, Trump had been calling on Biden to debate. During his campaign rallies, he even set up an empty podium on stage as an emblem of Biden’s refusal. Until very recently, the outgoing president said that he would not debate with a “criminal”, even before Trump was convicted by the Manhattan court. Two weeks before the verdict, Biden suddenly proposed two debates, which Trump immediately accepted. The American press indicates, however, that the two camps have been negotiating since mid-April.

Despite the apparent agreement, the two candidates, who have not debated with anyone since their face-to-face meetings in 2020, each provide a way out. Now that Trump has been recognized as a “criminal” by the New York justice system, will Biden refuse to debate with him again? As for Trump, he wants him and Biden to take a cognitive exam and a drug test before taking the stage.

If they take place, the debates will take place earlier than ever before in a presidential campaign. For the first time, a debate, that of Thursday, would be held even before the investiture conventions. Biden and Trump know that their parties have changed voting methods so much that voters will vote from the beginning of September. They also know that televised debates are much more followed than conventions which have long become spectacles of a cult of personality.

Furthermore, the debates agreed to by Biden and Trump will mark a new climax in the vortex of polarization into which they and their parties have dragged the American people. For the first time, the organization of the debates is directly dictated by the Democratic and Republican candidates, whereas, since 1960, it has been supervised, in turn, by the major television channels, an independent association, then an entity formed by the two major parties.

Towards a first locked debate

The latter, the Commission on Presidential and Vice-Presidential Debates, will not be missed. Vilified for decades by independent candidates or small parties, this entity, with a name evoking a public status, is in fact a private organization intended to overprotect the candidates of the major parties and to exclude all others.

Since 1960, only two third-party candidates have been able to participate in presidential debates. In 1980, John Anderson was admitted by the nonpartisan debate association, which led Democratic President Jimmy Carter to boycott the first debate between Anderson and Ronald Reagan. In 1992, the Commission on Presidential Debates had to deviate from its role of cerberus because excluding Ross Perot, who between March and June gathered as many voting intentions as President George Bush and more than the Democratic competitor Bill Clinton, would have removed all credibility to this organization.

The ousting of the Commission on Presidential Debates is therefore a positive event, but not the system that replaces it.

The conditions of access to the tremendous audience of the televised debates (73 million viewers during the first Biden-Trump debate in 2020) and the details of their progress remain dictated by the Democratic and Republican candidates, especially by Biden who chose media pro-democrats.

Additionally, CNN adheres to the notion of “presumptive candidate” (presumptive nominee) put forward by the contenders of the major parties, but not recognized by the Federal Election Commission (FEC), a real public entity this time. Moreover, the institution confirms that this notion “does not appear in the federal regulations relating to debates”, the regulations only relating to the final candidates, whether they are independent or nominated by a party (presidential nominee).

This is why Robert Kennedy Junior, the former Democrat who became an independent and the only third-party candidate to worry Biden and Trump, seized the FEC by judging the debate on CNN “illegal” and “undemocratic”. Especially since Biden and Trump specified to CNN that they would refuse any debate including RFK Jr.

Unless the FEC rules in favor of Kennedy before Thursday, Biden and Trump will have succeeded, with the help of CNN, in locking in the first debate, always the most followed. Their agreement will have ensured that other presidential aspirants, even officials like RFK Jr, who is credited with nearly 10% of voting intentions on average in national polls, or the libertarian Chase Oliver, candidate of the largest of the small parties , are excluded. One more time.

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