I Thought Only Politics Geeks Cared About Tonight’s Presidential Debate
BONUS: Debate Bingo Card Included Today
Hoo, Boy My morning visits to news and opinion outlets surprised me.
Despite the fact that it’s summer and even those of us voting by mail have three months to make choices, the Associated Press, via polling, says 6 in 10 U.S. adults say they are “extremely” or “very” likely to watch the debate live or in clips, or read about or listen to commentary about the performance of the candidates in the news or social media.
Given our national propensity for kicking the can down the road, people are paying attention. I think that’s a good thing, especially for people not caught up in MAGA-world.
My hope is that once people see Donald Trump in an environment he cannot control, they’ll realize just how much a failed human being he is.
Perhaps this debate is appealing to people in the manner of a sporting event, one with an underlying element of danger. Maybe it’s like the gladiator match in ancient Rome.
So consider this post to be like a pre-season prognosis, sharing tidbits of predictions and observations about the Main event.
In case you missed it, my contribution to this pre-game show was published on Tuesday: Debate or Debacle?
The first clash of verbal swords will take place at 6pm PDT. It will be broadcast by CNN, and shared by just about every visual medium that features news, including NBC, MSNBC, Peacock, NewsNation, Newsmax and Newsmax 2, Telemundo and Scripps News, CBS News, C-SPAN, ABC News, PBS, the Grio, and Fox News.
The Biden campaign will take the opportunity to spend millions to advertise their wares.
Via Politico, they intend to:
Blitz the websites of BuzzFeed, USA Today, CNN, El Tiempo Latino, Telemundo, theGrio, and the Atlanta Journal Constitution with ads in the headers and margins.
Take out a full-page ad in USA Today that reads, “The choice — a convicted criminal who’s looking out for himself, or a president who’s fighting for you.”
Push out QR codes on social media, billboards and cars, inviting voters to scan and read more about “Project 2025” — what they’re calling Trump’s “insidious and destructive plans” for the country if he’s elected.
The show of force comes as the Biden team has reserved more than $2 million worth of ads in swing states for today alone — a sum that dwarfs the mere $100,000 the Trump team has spent in swing states for the debate, our colleagues report, citing AdImpact.
The Trump campaign launched a new website — factcheckbiden.com— claiming “Biden has made a career of lying on the debate stage.”
Here are some snippets of what I saw this morning.
Politico (V.1): Dems to Biden: You must out-populist Trump at the debate
Those Democrats believe there is a genuine opportunity for Biden to frame the race during the debate as a contest between the wealthy and the working class — and to plant himself firmly on the side of the blue-collar voters most likely to swing the election.
“Poll after poll shows that cost of living is a major concern, and that most people lay the blame at the feet of corporations,” said Bharat Ramamurti, the former deputy director of Biden’s National Economic Council. “So show what Biden is doing on that exact set of issues.”
Los Angeles Times: Trump wants mass deportations. Can Biden sell a more nuanced approach during the debate?
Earlier this year, House Republicans heeded Trump’s demands and killed a bipartisan border security bill after months of negotiations in the Senate. The negotiations also exposed divisions among Democrats and reflected the two notes Biden will need to hit Thursday: How to speak to voters who think the southern border is too porous while also emphasizing the contributions of immigrants already in the country.
“Every American should know that Trump proudly killed the strongest bipartisan border bill in a generation — siding with fentanyl traffickers over the Border Patrol and our security,” said campaign spokesperson Kevin Munoz, hinting at an avenue of attack Biden might utilize Thursday.
NBC News: Biden campaign crafts digital debate strategy aimed at amplifying clips beyond Thursday
The Biden campaign headquarters is hosting 18 creators with a combined social media following of 8 million people for its own digital war room, where they’ll have briefings with the campaign’s rapid response team before the debate and be able to use the campaign’s own studio to record content for their channels.
In Atlanta, the campaign is deploying other content creators to the spin room after the debate to both share their own views of the key exchanges and talk to Biden officials. Separately, the campaign is hosting a content creator watch party in Atlanta where the campaign team will also be working to amplify key debate moments and messages.
Dan Fieffer at The Message Box: How Biden Wins Tonight's Debate
As I wrote earlier this week, Biden isn’t debating Trump; he is debating the public’s concerns about his age and vitality. Questions about the viability of an 82-year-old serving another four years in the most high-pressure job in the world are more than fair, but the specific questions around Biden are fueled by dishonest Right Wing propaganda, out-of-context clips pushed on social media by bad faith actors, and a media environment that makes it hard for non-news junkies to see the President speak.
Until the debate scheduled for September, tonight is the best opportunity for Biden to counter this image of “Sleepy Joe” and assuage concerns about his age. Being fine is good, but blowing past expectations (like in the State of the Union) is ideal. What the Biden campaign wants more than anything is a bunch of people expressing surprise at Biden’s skills on social media to drive a meta-conversation about his performance.
The New Republic: MAGA Loses It Over Game-Changing Announcement on Biden-Trump Debate
Trump supporters are outraged that Thursday’s presidential debate will be fact-checked. On Wednesday, CNN senior reporter Daniel Dale posted that he’d be live fact-checking the debate, an extension of the work he already does fact-checking things Biden and Trump say.
Dale’s post sparked immediate outrage from Trump supporters, who insinuated that facts aren’t real if they come from CNN. Stephen Miller, Trump’s former white nationalist adviser, went so far as to claim the process of fact-checking the debate is an effort to “smear and spin for Biden.”
Kerry Eleveld at Daily Kos: Gaffes, vibes, and wild cards: What to watch for in the debate
Biden and Trump are both old, and they will both make mistakes in the debate. The difference is in the type of mistakes.
Biden has suffered from a lifelong stutter, and he occasionally stumbles over his words. But Trump not only garbles words regularly but also falls far into incoherence, such as his recent, long-winded ramblings about how he’d rather be electrocuted by a boat’s battery than eaten by a shark. Certainly, that’s the Trump whom the Biden campaign is hoping will show up to the debate.
After all, Trump’s disjointed remarks are not normal for a candidate for the country’s highest office—and there’s a good chance that any such moments will jog the memories of Americans who might have forgotten these glaring deficits of his personality and character.
The Washington Post: The first televised U.S. presidential debate was between two women
Against the backdrop of war in the Middle East and the Russian invasion of a neighboring state, two prominent American politicians met for a presidential debate ahead of the November election.
Both were women.
The joint appearance on CBS’s “Face the Nation” by Democratic doyenne Eleanor Roosevelt and Sen. Margaret Chase Smith (R-Maine) on Nov. 4, 1956, is widely regarded as the first televised presidential debate.
Roosevelt and Smith served as surrogates for Democratic challenger Adlai Stevenson and Republican President Dwight D. Eisenhower, four years before John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon would hold a much more famous televised debate, the first between presidential candidates.
The Daily Beast: How Gen Z Will Really Watch the Debate
In a recent survey, Americans said they were more likely to view clips from the debate than to watch it live. That’s likely even more true of Gen Z.
“Young people are 1,000 percent invested, and recognize that the outcome of this election will impact them directly,” Arellano said.
“Now, whether they'll be tuning in to the live broadcast debate is a different question. We recognize that Gen Z is a digital generation that has been prioritizing consuming their information online, and so what I think will happen is Gen Z will definitely consume the recaps of the highlights from tomorrow's night's debate online.”
BINGO CARD Via @ LindaLou5150 on Threads
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Thursday’s Noteworthy News Links
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Packaged and Repackaged by Parker Molloy at The Present Age
The consequences of this shift are significant. As Fisher pointed out, if young people don’t develop a habit of consuming news directly from primary sources, they may never do so. This threatens the survival of news-gathering institutions and undermines the very foundation of an informed citizenry.
Moreover, suppressing news links on major social platforms further exacerbates the problem. By pushing users toward influencer content rather than direct news sources, these platforms dilute reliable information. This is not just a problem for journalism; it’s a problem for democracy.
To preserve the integrity of journalism, we need to value and support the work of professional journalists. This means subscribing to newspapers, supporting independent media, and being critical of our information sources. It also means demanding transparency and accountability from tech companies that control online information flow.
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Kenya's problem is now Haiti's, too By Jonathan M Katz at The Racket
In this case, the mission was doubly outsourced: After nearly a century of direct U.S. interventions in Haiti, the U.S. started outsourcing the role to United Nations peacekeepers in the 1990s and 2000s. But the main U.N. peacekeeping mission, MINUSTAH, which lasted until 2017, was such a debacle — sowing cholera, fathering out-of-wedlock children, killing protesters — that the U.N. wasn’t going to take on such a role again under its own aegis. The U.N. and U.S. thus went looking for a third-party nation to lead the mission. After Canada, and possibly a few other countries, passed on the honor, the Kenyans — eager for a superpower alliance, prestige, and possibly some debt relief — bit. It was no coincidence that, after President Ruto agreed to lead the U.S.-sponsored mission, he was rewarded with “non-NATO major ally” status and the aforementioned White House state dinner.
In other words, the newfound Nairobi-Port-au-Prince axis runs straight down Pennsylvania Avenue NW, with stops along the way at the World Bank and the Oval Office. So outsourcing or no, whatever this new Kenyan force does in the First Black Republic, we will own a large piece of it.
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Private Prisons Want You To Go Directly To Jail via The Lever (Remember this article when you’re asked to “roll back” Prop 47 in November.)
As states across the country adopt harsh new sentencing laws, private prison companies are celebrating, telling investors that they soon expect more people in their prisons — and even higher profits.
From Mississippi to California, many states have taken a decided “tough on crime” tack over the past two years in a strengthening backlash to criminal justice reform efforts in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in 2020. This year, Louisiana passed a package of harsh sentencing laws that will keep some people in prison for years longer. A new parole board in Mississippi is keeping people in prison for longer terms by denying early release. In March, Washington, DC, enacted a sweeping anti-crime package.
These laws, advocates warn, threaten to reverse years of progress in the fight against mass incarceration. Instead, they would again trap people in prison for lengthy terms, ripping apart communities and exacerbating racial and socioeconomic inequality — while enriching the private firms that manage prisons and their shareholders.
