There's no debate with Donald Trump

Why would Biden even bother?

Next week, for some reason known but to God and CNN, the first presidential debate will take place on June 27.

These guys aren’t even technically the nominees yet.

I’m not quite sure what the strategic reason was for scheduling a debate this early, but here we are. I guess we’re just going to have to gut out this hyper-extended campaign, which seemed to start on January 6th.

Here’s the debate I want to see: Ninety minutes of Bible knowledge between actually observant, Catholic Joe Biden and obvious religious phony Two Corinthians Donald Trump, who observes about 20 percent of the Ten Commandments.

Briefly, here’s what each candidate has to accomplish is this debate:

TRUMP: Speak coherently in a linear fashion.

BIDEN: Speak coherently in a linear fashion.

Now I’ll give you the over and under on each candidate:

TRUMP: His speaking style, part Borscht Belt comic, part escaped mental patient, part withdrawing from some weird hallucinogen, isn’t made for close-up television. It’s made for large, uneducated, drunken crowds who otherwise would be watching WWF on some upper cable channel. Oh, sure, he might start out sounding like he can control himself, but he literally can’t. If you watch Trump television appearances from 25 years ago, he’s not bad. Now?

“PersonwomanmancameraTVsharkbattery…”

BIDEN: His speaking style is made for leaning into Mitch McConnell’s face and saying, “Buddy, can we throw out the high and the low and work this out in conference committee?” He’s great one-on-one. He can’t do one-on-one with 320 million people. Biden isn’t a knock-out public speaker, honestly. He’s fine. If you watch a video of him from about 50 years ago, you can see that as a young guy, wow, was he good. Now? Get ‘er done. Period. Actually, Biden’s biggest problem isn’t his speaking, it’s his gait and appearance. If he can avoid taking the (shark or battery) bait, he’ll be perceived as the winner.

I don’t see any universe where this debate doesn’t hurt Trump. He hasn’t debated since 2020. He completely blew off debating his 2024 primary opponents, all of whom would have skinned him alive. Had Nikki Haley been allowed to get Trump one-on-one, she’d probably be the Democratic nominee. No, that isn’t a typo.

Also, and I know it seems impossible to believe, but Trump can go too far. And he will, because he’s now desperate.

Debates in and of themselves can be useful but not necessarily decisive. John F. Kennedy, of course, performed very well, mostly because he looked like a movie star, his navy suit, blue shirt, and navy tie went well together against the debate set background, and Richard Nixon looked like he had emerged from a bar fight after a three day bender 15 minutes before airtime. And since Nixon was wearing a grey suit, a glaring white shirt, and a grey tie, ideally not suited for the grey TV set background, his head almost looked like some Dickensian disembodied floating skull that needed a shave.

Interestingly, Kennedy was 43, and Nixon was still a kicky 47, thirty five years younger or more than our current choices.

How did Kennedy and Nixon prep?

Kennedy was on his bed for two days while Richard Goodwin and Ted Sorensen walked him though their boxes of materials.

Nixon prepped by cruising on his confidence that he was a superior debater, having his knee get infected, being hospitalized for ten days, knocking said infected knee on his car door into the studio, and forgoing makeup because Kennedy, a chronically tan part-time resident of Palm Beach, didn’t get any.

Nixon chose something called “Lazy Shave,” a makeup stick, and it dribbled down his face all night while he sweat under the television lights.

HOW TRUMP CAN WIN THE DEBATE: Biden dies on stage.

HOW BIDEN CAN WIN THE DEBATE: Don’t say any combination of, “Folks, listen. Here’s the deal. My dad used to say, Joey, a job isn’t about a paycheck”. However, “Come on, man” can be effective, or his classic, “Shut up, man.”

One thing I’d like to see Biden do is call Trump a “goddam liar,” which he is. Just once. SAY THE WORDS. Play up Scranton and Pennsuhvania. Don’t mention Hunter except to say what’s been said: he loves his son. Trump will go there, clumsily. Maybe take a swipe at Don Junior and Eric’s shady-ass business dealings. Don’t say what you did on the economy, go populist and smash corporate COVID profiteers for jacking up inflation, and not just here, but all across the planet.

I suspect this debate will probably be something like Biden’s State of the Union speech earlier this year, where he did really rather well, particularly in his handling of the House GOP Lunatic Qaucus. Biden doesn’t have to kill it; he needs to effectively pitch his message, which should be: look at this effing clown to my left.

There was a little cable chat show contretemps this afternoon about why, precisely, Biden chose the right podium instead of taking the closing statement. Hilarious. No one gives a damn. Who had the closing argument during the 1976 Carter-Ford debate?

I will tell you what was the main story coming out of the first Carter-Ford debate. A capacitor in the sound system blew out with eight minutes to go in the debate, and it took 27 minutes to fix it. Both candidates stood silently and didn’t engage at all with each other. Seemed weird at the time, but what do you say?

Hey, Jimmy, thanks for the previous 82 minutes where you intimated I was too dumb to be president?

Funny thing is, when you actually listen to Ford in that debate, he sounds very good. Ford’s big gaffe was that he said “there is no Soviet domination in Eastern Europe, and there never will be under a Ford Administration.”

Huh. CBS Newsman Ed Bradley said, basically, well, there goes the Polish vote in Milwaukee.

(Speaking of Milwaukee, I would hope Biden would make that Trump quip about a third of his remarks.)

Fast forward to the 1980 Carter-Reagan debate, and Reagan burps up a lot of canned lines, the most “devastating” of which was, “there you go again.”

Clever rejoinder.

Then, in 1984, poor Fritz Mondale had to debate a professional movie and television actor. The 56 year old (oh to be 56 again) former vice president vastly outperformed Reagan, who, at 73, was obviously drifting. First Lady Nancy Reagan blamed his handlers for “brutalizing” him with debate prep and facts, which he dutifully burped out.

The next Fritz/Dutch debate featured Reagan delivering another canned line about not holding his opponent’s youth and inexperience against him. Mondale gamely laughed, but of course our National Shiny Object-Obsessed TV news media ate it up.

Note Mondale lost 49 states.

At least it didn’t keep him awake at night.

The only debate that anyone ever walked away from at this level was the slow-motion agree-to-disagree debate between Sen. Joe Lieberman and then-former Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. So very civil, no audience, sitting down at the same desk close to each other.

It seemed refreshing, but it was mostly because Lieberman was a fellow GOP traveler who loved codependent bipartisanship.

Lieberman didn’t really disagree much, because he kinda agreed with Cheney. You can be civil and make your case, but that debate was like two brothers arguing about what Mom’s best pie recipe was.

I often wonder how the power play would have worked if Biden had not agreed to debate this clearly mentally ill felon? I suppose it could cut both ways, but it might have been a net plus. Biden’s calling card is that he isn’t Trump.

Trump goes down when he’s in the news—he constantly reminds sane people that he isn’t sane. Since the conviction, and Trump’s constant blather, note that Biden now has a rather small but perceptible lead in the most recent polling.

He’ll win the debate and the election, write it down, but I wish I could just go into a coma until Election Day.

There’s no debate about that.