Even The Debates Will Be Irrelevant

I think the single most cogent and succinct take on Biden's announcement that there will be debates is from New York WOR radio host Mark Simone in the clip from the Kudlow show above. At 1:55, he says,

Whenever somebody suddenly demands debates, it means they're way behind. If he's behind in the rigged public polls, he must really be behind in the private polls. I think Saturday is what made this happen. I think that panicked them that Trump got 100,000 people. We've never seen 100,000, I think that really scared them.

Now, why so early? We've never had a debate before the convention. I think the Biden people know he could be a disaster, and they'll need time to fix it if he is. And also, the people running Bidenworld, they gotta decide if they're gonna keep him. If they switch, it will be at the convention. They wanted to test him out.

Pollster Richrd Baris said on his People's Pundit Daily podcast on Rumble at 37:15:

Biden's team, the Biden White Hoiuse, would not agree to these debates at all if they didn't believe they were behind. They would hide Joe, we know this. And not only is it conventional political wisdom to not expose your leading candidate to potential damage, but it's also part of the Biden campaign's history of thinking. So we know for a fact that if they believed they were in a stronger position than the polls were showing, they would not have done what they just did.

At 1:58:13:

He was already signaling during the primaries that there was no reason to debate. He was already signaling that, so give me a break.

Nate Silver, whose February advice to the Biden campaign I've quoted here frequently (and which the campaign hasn't followed, because it can't) generally agrees with these assessments in his latest Substack essay:

[T]he Trump campaign, after agreeing today to the two debates proposed by Biden, asked for two additional debates in July and August for a total of four. The White House refused[.]

. . . So the White House unambiguously wants fewer debates rather than more. And that’s a bad sign for Biden — part of a pattern where the White House has continually tried to minimize his exposure to unscripted moments.

. . . By moving the first debate to before the Democratic convention in August, Democrats increase their option value. Here’s what I mean by that. If Biden totally and irrecoverably screws up in the June debate — he’s just obviously no longer ready for prime time — then he can step down and Democrats can pull the Ezra Klein break-glass-in-case-of-emergency plan and hold a contested convention. It’s not ideal — that’s an understatement — but it’s much less bad than going into the final months of the campaign certain to lose.

The consensus here is intriguing -- the early first debate gives the Democrats an option, but let's keep in mind that that option consists of Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom, J B Pritzker (well, he's Jewish, so that's no longer open), or Gretchen Whitmer. Those are even worse than Joe.

But here's the problem that won't go away for me. If the current polling aggregates are any indication, the campaign season began last fall, incredibly early. The debate scheduled for June is the first ever before either party's nominating conventions in the summer. Nate Silver more or less alludes to this issue when he says,

I can tell you with confidence that polling bounces created by things like debates, conventions and primary wins have a shelf-life. See for instance, Mitt Romney and the first presidential debate in 2012. He was widely regarded as the winner of the debate and then pulled into a near Electoral College tie with Barack Obama. But within a few weeks, the polls reverted back to where they had been before.

By pushing one debate into June, therefore, Biden has made it much less impactful. Whatever effects it has will probably be drowned out by the conventions and then the stretch run of the campaign and umpteen other shifts in the narrative.

What he's implying is that given the unprecedented early extension we're seeing of the campaign season, the debates are irrelevant, and if they're early, it just makes them even less relevant. The biggest problem I see is that the price of the bargain burger at my local fast food joint has gone up twice in the past three months, and this is what people see every day. Frankly, this is why 100,000 people showed up last Saturday for a Trump rally in South Jersey. If anything, the real view of the public is that the election can't come soon enough.

This is why even the rigged public polls have been the same for the past six months, but the other auguries, like the 100,000 in South Jersey, are beginning to be even more troubling. The New York trial has been a circus, but even though the Biden handlers had expected it to be dispositive, its outcome will also be irrelevant -- except that if Trump is convicted and jailed, the 100,000 in South Jersey will be nothing in comparison.

The Biden campaign is in a panic over their position six months before the election, but nobody's looking at how things will shape up just in coming weeks and months, especially if prices keep rising, the border stays open, and there's a major defeat in Ukraine. My take is that the debates will have been overtaken by events even before they can happen.