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CANCEL THE DEBATES? REALLY? There are three presidential debates scheduled before the November 3 election. The first will be on September 29 at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland. The second will be October 15 at the Adrienne Arsht Center for the Performing Arts in Miami. And the third will be October 22 at Belmont University in Nashville.
Although the Kennedy-Nixon debates made history in 1960, general election debates were not a regular feature of presidential races until 1976. They’ve been held every election year since then. From Ford-Carter through Trump-Clinton, they have played a sometimes critical role in elections, giving millions of voters a chance to evaluate the candidates standing on the same stage.
But now a few Democratic voices are urging Joe Biden to skip the debates with President Trump. The most prominent is former Clinton White House spokesman Joe Lockhart. In a July 28 op-ed published by CNN (Headline: “Joe Biden Could Still Lose This Election“), Lockhart argued that Trump has made so many false statements that it would be “a fool’s errand to enter the ring with someone who can’t follow the rules or the truth.”
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“In 2016, Hillary Clinton showed a mastery of the issues,” Lockhart argued in an appearance on CNN. “I think she on every point was more honest and bested Trump. But Trump came out of the debates, I think, going better because he just kept repeating the same old lies: We’re going to build a wall and Mexico is going to pay for it. We’re going to keep all of those Mexican rapists out of the country. We’re going to make great trade deals.” Lockhart does not want to give Trump the opportunity to make his case again.
Last month, New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman said Biden should withdraw from the debates unless Trump agreed to two things: 1) release his tax returns and 2) endorse a “real-time fact-checking team” to work during the debate. Those were obviously deal-killers, so Friedman’s call was in essence for Biden to cancel.
On July 27, after the University of Notre Dame withdrew (over coronavirus concerns) from the debate that will now be at Case Western Reserve, NeverTrump activist Bill Kristol tweeted, “Good. No need to go to any trouble to replace this debate. I gather Biden’s already all booked up with zoom calls in those weeks. Also, the Jewish holidays. And the new Perry Mason series. Too bad!”
Behind the snark, the message was clear: Some Democrats don’t want to see Biden debate. Of course, Lockhart, Friedman, and Kristol are not exactly high-ranking party operatives or officials of the Biden campaign. Still, they are not voices out of nowhere. So why would they want to skip perhaps the voters’ best opportunity to judge the two presidential candidates side-by-side?
Simply put, some Democrats do not want debates because they do not think Biden will win them. The former vice president did not do particularly well in the Democratic primary debates. Still, Biden did not dodge those debates; he took part in 11 high-pressure faceoffs between June 2019 and March 2020. Even though he was shaky at times, there’s no reason he should not take the stage with Trump. And even if he were not up to the job, Biden is the Democratic nominee, and the Democratic nominee will have to debate the Republican nominee.
No, the real issue is that Biden is doing very well in the polls now — up 7.4 percentage points over the president in the RealClearPolitics average of polls. Why risk a big mistake in a debate watched by tens of millions of voters? In 2016, Trump dominated the supposedly better-prepared and certainly more experienced Clinton. Who’s to say that wouldn’t happen again? The question now is whether more Democrats will float the idea that Biden should skip the debates.
