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Underestimating Biden Is Not Wise
I just wanted to say that I think it would be a mistake to think that President Trump is going to destroy Joe Biden in the debate tomorrow. In fact, I would be willing to bet that Joe Biden may end up “winning” the debate. Why do I think that?
First of all, in the debate, Joe Biden is going to representing the “liberal” side, and anybody arguing that side always will have a big advantage when it comes to the people. After all, all the liberal has to do is argue that the government has to do more and to hand out free stuff, and greedy Americans love that. How can any conservative compete against that?
Second, Donald Trump won’t be arguing as the outsider this time; he has been the President that past four years. All Joe Biden has to do is attack Donald Trump as “the outsider” and Trump will have no choice but to respond to protect himself. That is always the tougher place to be.
Finally, we have to remember that Joe Biden has been doing debates for decades, and he knows all the arguments in his sleep. Biden could be half awake and have full-blown Alzheimer’s, but he can spout popular, crowd-pleasing liberal tropes at the drop of a hat. Also, let’s not forget that Joe Biden is a good performer, and he uses that skill to intimidate his Republican debate opponents and make them look foolish. He did that to both Sarah Palin and Paul Ryan.
Does anybody else agree with me? To be honest, I am kind of afraid to watch the debates for that reason.
Published in General
Well, some liberals aren’t very good at presenting the rainbows and unicorns, and Trump seems to be better than most at presenting the liberty side.
But maybe we shouldn’t put too much faith in Biden’s ability to hold it together. Recent evidence suggests that he can’t.
Biden just has to blurt out some new unfounded accusation for the moderators to jump all over it. He can’t win a debate but he could derail it with the help of the moderators.
There’s two levels of judging who wins here, which are basically the media level and the level of any undecided or persuadable voters out there.
Biden’s already won the former — he could threaten to arrest any black person who votes against him or call Amy Coney Barrett the c-word in the middle of the debate and he’d still be declared the winner by the media, in hopes that any undecided or persuadable voters out there just watching post-debate highlight clips will buy their line, whether it’s true or not. The actual battle will be for the swing voters based on whether or not the see Biden as being at least theoretically able to last four years as president, and/or if the options he offers up in place of Trump are acceptable to those voters.
In both cases, the bar may not be all that high for Joe to clear — if it can just reach the level of his St. Patrcik’s Day debate with Bernie, Dems and the bulk of the media will be celebrating later tonight. But if you hear the media saying post-debate both that Biden won and that Trump was too mean-spirited to Joe, and why therefore do we need two more debates, that’s probably a sign he’s tripped himself up in their eyes, and needs all the spin he can get to come out of Tuesday looking good.
Appropriate, but was it intentional?
How can any conservative compete against that?
By being a principled and knowledgeable conservative. Trump is not.
Trump is incapable of presenting the liberty side. He loves his executive authority. He knows nothing of the founding principles.
Prior to the election in 2016 I made the same argument, saying that Trump was best understood as a 196o JFK Democrat … pro-America, anti-Communist, strong defense, allies pulling their weight, strong economic growth, Assisting American industry adversely impacted by world trade. Pro-American big government.
Even if this were true, it still would put Trump Far to the right of today’s median Democrat…and waaay to the right of the Left wing of the Democrat party. But I have changed my mind a little. I think Trump’s de-regulatory impetus, his judicial appointments, his embrace of federalism and individual liberty in the Corona-virus response and the anarchist rioting show me that he takes more conservative positions than I would have expected. He certainly isn’t the ‘despot’ he is portrayed as in the MSM.
Can rope-a-dope be a winning strategy for Biden?
I’m worried a bit that the Biden bar has been set awfully low. I wonder if the ‘Biden cognitive decline’ thing has been hit too hard…that unless Biden shows up on the debate stage in a bathrobe and drooling he’s going to look good?
You know the entire entertainment industry has been feeding the Biden campaign ideas for one-liners and catch-phrases. All Biden has to do is successfully deliver one or two and that will be declared a victory and the MSM will blanket the media with that sound bite for weeks. And Trump can absolutely be enticed to go off-script. Like all improv’s sometimes these riffs don’t work out. And in a time-constrained format like a debate those lost opportunities are costly.
Paul Ryan got his ass kicked.
Whoops – I missed that. Thanks.
He knows nothing of the founding principles? How do you come to say that?
Mind-reading, of course.
The stakes tonight are higher than the Washington Monument.
The Biden campaign has a well coordinated oppo drop to play with (and we know the moderators will take the bait). The Trump campaign is rolling with, “Biden takes drugs.” which reads more like a whiny excuse-in-advance than strategy to me…
I’m more than a little concerned.
President Trump has four years of successes to brag about. Biden has . . . trouble connecting two sentences. He also has to somehow convince Americans that the Democrat Party shock troops currently rioting on the streets of our cities are not his base. But we all know they are.
Biden’s chief advantage is that he has the media on his side. And that’s an advantage that’s hard to overcome. Can you imagine the landslide for the President if we had an honest media?
The media are already madly working on their stories for tomorrow about how Biden won the debate.
I just had an odd thought. What do you suppose the long-pre-written obituaries (and we all – hopefully – know that newspapers have them for a lot of “famous” people) say about Biden?
I mean, already. Let alone what they might say if Biden gets to be President for a few hours.
He’s been consistently making the case for liberty all summer. His Fourth of July speech at Mount Rushmore was outstanding.
I don’t think this debate will be about ideology, “liberal” vs. “conservative”.
Or rather, as you watch it, ask yourself, “Are they debating ideology here?”
I agree it is unwise to underestimate Biden’s debate performance — as a matter of strategy. We should be raising expectations for Biden’s performance, not lowering them. And that’s precisely what members of the Trump campaign have been doing, if you watch them interviewed.
I honestly expect Biden to beat Republicans’ low expectations. I also expect that no matter what happens the Democrat media narrative will be Joe won and “destroyed” Trump. Fortunately, the media has very little credibility left with ordinary Americans. There is no pravda in Pravda.
Oh, and, btw, did you see President Trump was nominated for a third Nobel Peace Prize? Two in one week and three in three weeks? How has Joe done in nearly 50 years of foreign policy experience? Hopefully Americans won’t get fooled again.
Rats!
I totally agree. If he was the wanna-be-despot the Left keeps painting him as, there’s no way he would have allowed things to remain closed the way they have the last few months nor would he have allowed all the rioting and looting that’s gone on.
Or to put it simply, as Dennis Miller sometimes says, “Trump is not Hitler. Hitler could have repealed Obamacare.”
Biden underestimated; Trump lost.