WHY THE DEBATES ARE COMING EARLIER. Wednesday morning was a little chaotic as news broke that President Joe Biden had rejected the plan of the Commission on Presidential Debates and challenged former President Donald Trump to two debates. By the end of the morning, Trump had accepted, and the plan, approved by both candidates, was for a first debate on CNN in Atlanta on June 27 and a second debate on ABC News on Sept. 10.
Why did it happen? Certainly both campaigns recognized, as the Commission on Presidential Debates did not, that millions of people are going to vote well before Nov. 5, Election Day. Those voters need a chance to see the candidates debate before they vote, not after. That’s a reasonable concern for all people.
But Biden has something special to worry about. It’s a two-part problem for the president: 1) He is trailing in a lot of polls, especially in key states, and 2) a lot of voters have already made up their minds. In addition, this — right now — is a period in which the voters who have not made up their minds are getting closer and closer to doing so. So if the polls don’t change by late June, when the first debate is scheduled, Biden might be facing a large, hardened segment of the electorate that will not vote for him under any circumstances. He needs to get in front of them to make his pitch before it is too late.
In every presidential election this century except one, the candidate who was leading in the polls in late June went on to win. (The exception was 2016, when Trump was behind in the polls in June and went on to defeat Hillary Clinton.)
The general election polls, of course, are very close. The RealClearPolitics average of national polls has Trump ahead by a single percentage point, well within the margin of error. Biden’s bigger problem is this: It seems likely that Trump will win all of the states he won in 2020. If he does, he just needs to win a few key states — say, Arizona, Georgia, and any one of Pennsylvania, Michigan, or Wisconsin — to win the White House. And in some of those key states, Trump has leads that appear to be both solid and durable.
Just this week, the New York Times released a poll that found Trump leading Biden in five of six key states, including Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Michigan, while leading in just one key state, Wisconsin. The new New York Times poll was very similar, indeed almost identical, to a New York Times poll from six months ago, in early November 2023. Despite everything that had happened in the last six months, such as Biden’s supposed “bounce” after the State of the Union and the beginning of Trump’s felony trial in Manhattan, Trump’s lead endured.
If that situation continues, there will be increasing pressure on Biden to shake things up. Maybe the Trump trial, if Trump is convicted, will boost Biden in the polls. But there is also the possibility Trump could be acquitted or have a hung jury — or that he will be convicted but that it will have little effect on the race.Â
In any event, in June, Biden could be the candidate who needs change. A debate will give him that opportunity. Just imagine a debate followed by a series of events similar to what happened after the State of the Union, in which a chorus of Biden supporters praise his performance against Trump and declare that he is on the comeback trail. It might not work, but if today’s conditions continue, Biden needs something.
