Here Are the Two Developments That Might Really Matter at the First Presidential Debate

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If there is one truth about our dangerously partisan era that Donald Trump’s presidency has taught us more emphatically than anything else, it is that almost no news event really matters politically. Not even, as we have seen in the latest news cycle, when the president is finally fully exposed as a fraudulent billionaire who pays little in taxes, or when his former campaign manager is hospitalized after a meltdown which apparently included at least some intent to harm himself.

In this extremely fragmented media age, where audiences for any one news outlet (all of which have lost huge amounts of credibility in recent years) have dramatically shrunk, and where every can choose their own flavor of “truth” by cherry-picking their own form of news-related therapy, it is nearly impossible for any story, no matter how large, to truly break through the clutter. The one remaining exception to this recent rule may be a presidential debate, where the live audience will be huge, and where the news media has a more limited ability to shape the preferred narrative because the voters will see everything for themselves as it happens.

However, in 2016 we saw that even the once mighty presidential debates had no discernible impact on the outcome as polls consistently indicated that Hillary Clinton “won” each of the three debates, but then she ended up losing the Electoral College to Trump. It would be wise to keep that in mind as we get ready for the first debate clash between Joe Biden and Trump.

The reality is that we now live in a fact/truth-free society. Consequently, nothing of substance that is said on Tuesday night is going to make any difference in the ultimate outcome of the race.

It will not matter how many lies either of them tell, how many factual errors they make, or how well or poorly either of them articulate their positions. Those considerations are now officially of a bygone era, and sadly just no longer relevant to the pathetically superficial and often moronic world in which unfortunately reside.

There are only two circumstances that could theoretically be game-changers on Tuesday, and neither are particularly likely.

The most obvious would be if Joe Biden clearly appears to not be up to the job. Given his advanced age (he is almost five years older than Ronald Reagan was in 1984 when his age briefly became a massive issue in that election) and his long-time vulnerability to making rather large verbal gaffes, this would seem to be a very legitimate concern for both voters and the Biden campaign.

But, perhaps out of desperation, Trump and his campaign have, by making Biden’s alleged mental decline a major campaign issue, actually played right into his hands by greatly reducing the expectations for Biden’s debate presentation. Trump himself has obviously sensed this misstep and has even, laughably, demanded that Biden take a drug test to prove that, presumably when he does NOT actually look terrible in front of the nation, that the only possible explanation is that he is that his performance was enhanced artificially.

Now, as long as Biden is reasonably functional and has no very obvious “senior moments,” it will be a win for the former Vice-President. I predict that there will indeed be a few dicey situations which, at another time and against a less toxic opponent, may have made voters uneasy about electing Biden, but that, in this unique environment, will be seen by everyone not already in Trump’s cult as no big deal.

The only other potential happening which could alter the race, as completely pitiful as it is, would be if there is a total “owning” of one of the candidates by the other in a way which is both short and entertaining enough to go viral on social media and television newscasts. Here is an area which would seem to heavily favor Trump, especially given his vast television experience and the fact that, unlike Biden, he has been doing far more confrontational interaction with the press than his opponent, especially this year where Biden has been largely hidden from significant scrutiny.

If, God forbid, I was running the extremely dysfunctional and incompetent Trump campaign, I would be arguing that there is plenty of fertile ground for Trump to pull off one of these moments in the realm of Biden being a complete captive of the Dr. Anthony Fauci school of Covid overreaction. Months ago, before America completely lost all rationality in response to the coronavirus, I actually thought that Biden would be in a tough spot when the candidates came out on stage and Trump simply offered to shake his hand, thus causing Biden, out of fear of committing a mortal sin against the Covid religion, to be forced to refuse the gesture. But it is now obvious that most of this largely gutless nation would surely cheer such a previously unthinkable act.

Again, mostly because the expectations not favoring him, especially among Trump fans for whom it is an article of faith that he will clean Biden’s clock in this debate, I doubt Trump will be able to pull off any sort of highly memorable and unambiguous owning moment of Biden (though he will surely try hard, probably in a misguided fashion). Instead, there is actually a better chance that Biden is able to win the playground battle of the viral confrontations — again because the expectations of him, like those of Reagan in 1984, are so incredibly low.

In the end, the most likely outcome of this debate is that after much anticipation and tremendous controversy, there will be very little, if any, change in the direction of a race that is still — just as I predicted in July — headed for a highly contested outcome, in which Biden eventually emerges victorious.

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.