Outside of President Obama, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton, no one else in the Democratic party attracts such vituperation from Donald Trump than Joe Biden. Simply because Biden is the only thing standing between Trump and his get out of jail free card. After trading barbs from afar for months, the two men will meet face to face on the debate stage later tonight in Ohio–and things are going to get ugly.
Donald Trump needs this, he’s trailing in every poll, his campaign is broke, the economy is in shambles, millions are out of work and over 200,000 Americans are dead due to his incompetence. Trump quite literally has no record to run on, he’s desperate and cornered and he will lash out.
Biden does not need this as much as Trump. His only goal in this debate is not to keel over on stage while he makes the case as to why Trump should not be re-elected, which is not that hard to do.
The unprecedented nature of the rapid spread of the coronavirus has fundamentally changed the nature of political campaigns. We only get to hear from Joe Biden once maybe twice a week, three times if we are lucky. On Tuesday night, Biden needs to talk directly to the American people and Trump will no doubt try and interfere with that since he has failed to convince us to give him a second term.
After four years of listening to Donald Trump, I have no interest in hearing what he has to say now. If he could not convince me in the past 3.5 years, I doubt he’ll be able to do it in 90 minutes. So, I will be tuning in to the debates to hear Joe Biden and his plans on how to make our lives better.
This is Biden’s debate stage. Unlike Donald Trump, he does not have the power of the incumbency. He does not have the press following and reporting on his every move and hanging on to his every sentence then broadcasting them to millions of Americans every day. This audience for the debate is the biggest Biden will ever get. Millions of Americans will be watching and in the words of Sen. Kamala Harris, ‘we do not want to witness a food fight, we want to know how we’re going to put food on our table.’
This is the time for Biden to reintroduce himself to millions of Americans who are just tuning in to the process, as the Democratic party nominee for president of the United States.
He has some good policy ideas on a number of hot button issues like climate change, police reform, and healthcare but most Americans are unaware of them and they won’t be if he allows Donald Trump to drag him down to his level.
The less Biden interacts with Trump on the debate stage, the better it is for him. Make it a debate about policy instead of a game to see who can have the best clap back.
It will be difficult for Biden to do, he wears his heart on his sleeve, and Trump will be coming from all angles with the personal attacks. But he must remain firm, forceful and push back on Donald Trump on policy, shut him up if he must to get his point across, I’m sure most Americans would appreciate that.
We are done with Donald Trump. His routine that was considered funny 4 years ago will no longer fly in 2020 after he managed to screw everything up so horribly. This is Joe Biden’s debate, no one other than his base is tuning in to hear what Donald Trump has to say.
This is a moment Biden has been preparing for his entire political life, he should not allow Donald Trump and his silly antics to ruin it.
