The Debate, and a Live-Blog
Do we even know what to expect?
Before the June debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump, my expectation was that it wasn’t likely to affect the race much. We’d seen these candidates debate plenty of times before, we knew pretty much all there was to know about them, the electorate is highly polarized, and debates almost never actually change anything.
Anyway, funny story…
Tonight, Vice President Kamala Harris will debate former President Donald Trump. And again, we’ve seen these candidates debate plenty of times before, and the electorate is highly polarized, but whew I’m not comfortable making predictions on this.
Others have made this point, but I think it’s reasonable to expect some variation on the debates Trump had with Hillary Clinton in 2016. Clinton approached those debates in the style of an attorney prosecuting a case against Trump. She had all sorts of evidence and strong arguments ready at her fingertips in response to Trump’s erratic, boastful, occasionally predatory style, and she wiped the mat with him. Harris, similarly, will likely be approaching this as a prosecutor, and Trump will be trying to intimidate her and throw her off her game.
Will it matter? Well, my updated claim about debates is that they generally don’t matter unless they really, really do. Yeah, I’m sure that’s helpful.
Anyway, my occasional collaborator
and I will be live-blogging the debate tonight starting just before 9PM EDT. I hope you can join us at the link below — please feel free to chime in with questions and comments!