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The earliest presidential debate in history will quickly focus the election where it belongs – on the radically different views of President Biden and former President Trump about American democracy. Biden fully supports democracy and Trump doesn’t.
The first televised debate will happen in little more than a month because Biden is eager for as many American voters as possible to understand exactly what’s at stake in this year’s election.
You might wonder: “How could they not?” Americans know more about both nominees than they have ever known about any presidential candidates in their lifetimes. That ignores the enormous number of voters who are just beginning to realize it’s an election year again because the primaries were barely more than a blip.
For millions who are just tuning in, much of the mainstream media has muddled the political message by pretending as if this were a normal presidential election. It’s not. It should never be considered normal for the Republican party to nominate a former president facing multiple criminal indictments for attempting to violently overthrow the election of the president who defeated him.
It’s a declaration of continued Republican support for Trump’s lies that millions of Americans cast fraudulent votes for Biden and Trump’s violent insurrectionists were justified in storming the Capitol to threaten the lives of elected members of Congress and Trump’s own Vice President Mike Pence for failing to join the plot. The assault led to the deaths of at least five police and seriously injured more than 140 others, many with brain damage from brutal beatings with clubs and flagpoles.
Presidential Crimes
Richard Nixon, the last Republican president found to commit crimes in office, was forced to resign by party leaders to avoid impeachment. Nixon was then pardoned by President Ford to prevent him from being prosecuted. That corrupt deal convinced Trump he could get away with committing any crimes he wanted as president.
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If Trump is elected in November, he has made it clear he will end his own criminal indictments by firing the prosecutors who indicted him, replace them with his own prosecutors to file charges against Biden and other Democrats and pardon most of those violent insurrectionists who attacked and desecrated the Capitol.
That’s why Biden took the lead in scheduling an early debate before a large national audience to discuss the profound differences between the parties in their respect for the certified election results in every state and equal voting rights and other constitutional rights for every American.
The other political advantage for Biden from debating Trump face-to-face so early is voters will see Biden in real life instead of the cartoon character created by Trump’s rightwing propaganda machine of a doddering old fool who doesn’t realize he lives in the White House. Biden refutes Trump’s lies in every major appearance including his State of the Union laying out the devastating differences between their two presidencies.
Inventing New Lies
That doesn’t stop Trump from inventing new lies on social media about Biden as “the worst debater I have ever faced—He can’t put two sentences together!” It's a big mistake for Trump to remind anyone of their debate four years ago. Most Americans still remember Biden as the calm, coherent one while Trump shouted over him and debate moderator Chris Wallace for 90 minutes making it the only presidential debate ever described as an unwatchable political disaster.
Trump also signaled exactly what would happen on Jan. 6 that night. He openly recruited violent street fighters to join the Proud Boys on national television, telling them to “Stand back and stand by” in case Biden defeated him in the election.
The only political risk for Biden by debating Trump so early in the campaign is heaven help him if he stumbles over a word. The national media will see it as a sign of cognitive decline. Never mind that Trump, only four years younger, goes off on far more puzzling tangents in his nonsensical two-hour rally speeches – suddenly congratulating “the late, great Hannibal Lecter” as “a wonderful man” and quoting Robert E. Lee talking like a leprechaun pirate advising Confederate troops at Gettysburg, “Never fight uphill, me boys!”
The sooner as many voters as possible are exposed to the actual differences between Biden and Trump the better. The complaint about politics we’ve heard throughout our lives that all politicians are alike has never been more provably false.
In an era of short attention spans, Trump’s disastrous presidency four years ago and its horrific ending are a distant memory. It needs to be brought back in living color with national media events that aren’t Trump contrived. Biden has just created and set the rules for two of them.
It also shows the confidence Biden has always expressed publicly in the ability of Americans to meet every challenge to the survival of democracy. If he’s wrong about that, we’re all in trouble.
