In many ways, the June 27 debate cannot happen fast enough for the president Joe Bidencountryside.
In a race where Donald Trump criminal trial blotted out the sun for weeks, during which Biden struggled for months in most battleground polls and during which The Democrats insisted Potential voters have forgotten what Trump’s years in the White House were actually like, so the Biden team sees the opportunity for him to take on his nemesis as a likely catalyst moment.
This is especially true if Biden runs with the same kind of energy that he brought to his State of the Union Address in March, many Democrats say.
Finally, Democrats and Biden officials hope, the public will be able to put aside the caricatures of the candidates and see them side by side.
“President Trump’s ‘out of sight, out of mind’ concept is real. I think people forget the way he interacts, the way he communicates, the inaccuracies of the things he says and promises to the American people,” said Democratic strategist Amanda Loveday, an adviser to the pro-Political Action Committee. Biden Unite the Country. “A debate like this removes any distractions and allows people to see them next to each other, answer questions consecutively and be able to compare them.”
During the campaign, aides believe Biden takes the stage with the upper hand. Their mandate will primarily be to let “Trump be Trump,” which they say will reveal extreme tendencies and a less stable Trump than four years ago. Biden is likely to portray Trump as obsessed with revenge and retribution and recall political violence during the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the U.S. Capitol, a campaign official said.
Biden, now consecutive European trips, is to return to the United States only to go to Los Angeles to raise funds. Once Biden returns to the White House, said a source familiar with his debate preparations, he should have a 10-day window to hunker down and engage in lengthy preparatory sessions. They could include more intensive sessions at the presidential retreat at Camp David, Maryland.
Trump’s team has portrayed Biden as an incompetent politician who can barely follow a teleprompter and whose leadership includes entangling the United States in two foreign wars.
“This is going to be the most important debate since JFK-Richard Nixon” in 1960, said Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster who regularly holds focus groups with voters. Luntz said the first debate could be a pivotal moment that sticks in the public’s mind in a race riddled with accusations from each side with little opportunity to compare the two candidates on the same stage.
“We all have a chance to see if Joe Biden is as weak as Trump claims. We all have an opportunity to see if Donald Trump is as unhinged as Joe Biden claims,” Luntz said. “This is our chance to test the candidates’ worst accusations against each other.”
For months, the frame of the race has leaned more towards a referendum on Biden, with frustrated collaborators and allies…
