Biden’s campaign proposed that the first debate between the presumptive Democratic and Republican nominees be held in late June and the second in September before early voting begins. Trump responded to the letter in an interview with Fox News digital, calling the proposed dates “fully acceptable to me” and joked about providing his own transportation.
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Yeah, and that will be another problem. Even with this format, most people aren’t going to watch the debate. What they’ll watch is clips from the debate from their favorite media outlet.
Biden isn’t a great debater, so I’m sure there’ll be plenty of clips of him looking like an idiot. And, well, Trump is an idiot and his supporters know and don’t really care about that… So… Yeah. These debates will ultimately be pointless. The two are known entities that really don’t need exploring. A format change, though, would hopefully help with the 2028 elections.
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I worry that not doing debates for this cycle would be the start of a tradition of not doing them anymore, ever. To some degree, I’m in favor of doing them even knowing they’re only ceremonial.
But even as I write that out, I wonder if the whole thing needs a facelift. This kind of televised debate was made up in a world where television had the broadest media reach. It was a public service to broadcast debates, and there was a time when that might make up the majority of what a voter knew about the candidates.
Now we have the Internet and no need to shoehorn a Very Formal Debate into a prime time slot. Debates could be shorter and focused on the details of particular issues, allowing the candidates to converse more directly on topics. I would listen to a whole year of weekly podcast episodes like that leading up to an election.
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