Thumb War 2024: Debates
As much as US presidential politics is my favourite blood sport, I’ve rarely cared for debates.
Without a doubt there are some good examples of the form, and the 2016 cycle provided something like a masterclass (or car crash) in how debates can matter.
Generally though, the debates don’t move the needle. Part of that is increased partisanship (as true in the US as it is in the rest of the world these days) so there are far less swing voters than there once was. Part is that the audience to a debate comes with their priors and the debate just reinforces them.
Plus the candidates are just spewing forth canned lines that have just been focus grouped to death (heck, Vivek has such a line about canned lines in the first GOP primary debate this cycle).
I can accept that there can be value for some. Most people are low information when it comes to politics. They aren’t dumb by any stretch, they just aren’t plugged into the machine in the way that politics junkies are. So that can mean the debates provide a useful platform for those people to get a sense of the candidates.
Particularly in the primary cycle, there is value there. Some names on stage will be known quantities to the audience before the debate (think Pence, think DeSantis, think Christie) due to a previous national profile. Others though will be unknown (do a quick poll of your friends that aren’t reading Politico on a daily basis if they’d heard of Asa Hutchinson prior to the first debate; now ask them if they can pronounce Vivek’s last name and whether they needed to watch the debate to get the pronunciation down).
Political Science, though, keeps telling us that they don’t matter.
There might be a short term, minor bump like Vivek got from the first debate but generally polls will trend back to where they were previously. There are exceptions, notable ones but they don’t reflect the general nature of debates.
So with all of that said, what the fuck are we doing here?
I get that given the Dems hold the White House that the GOP needs to go through a primary (and chances are there will be something that looks like a primary for the Dems as well but it’s always different when your party has the incumbency).
And I guess if you are going to do a primary then you should probably do debates.
But if Trump isn’t there, and who can blame him given his commanding lead in the polls, then what is the actual point?
As a GOP candidate this cycle, you could have the most amazing debate performance ever and it simply will not matter. Because the question isn’t how you will beat those sharing the stage with you, it’s how will you beat Trump.
It may have been refreshing to have a debate that actually talked about policy and demonstrated differences between the candidates (at least the first debate did that, the second was just boring) but we don’t live in a parallel universe where this is a normal primary and you can just demonstrate your conservative credentials and expect anything to happen.
The pundit class and GOP donors seem to be hoping that the field will narrow down (and quick) and the mainstream wing of the party (if such a thing even exists these days) can coalesce around a candidate - the money is on Haley or DeSantis.
Even that is unlikely to do anything.
Pence thinks that the former GOP still exists and so is trying to sell his credentials as a conservative - while somehow trying to thread the needle on taking credit for achievements in the Trump administration while not tying himself to the Orange God King. And everyone hates him.
Vivek thinks that running a MAGA campaign in a primary that includes Trump makes anything approaching sense. There are no votes to peel off Trump down that path, Vivek! I’m Trump but maybe slightly more rational isn’t a thing.
Plus Vivek is like a human version of the South Park underpants gnomes meme.
Every policy statement is just ‘it would be easy and I’d get it done’ about things like election reform and foreign policy.
DeSantis is a cooked brain that has been fed the right wing online world for far too long. He acts like a robot. That fucking smile. He decided to take on Mickey goddamn Mouse! The man, even if he could get somewhere in the primary, is such a lunatic that he’s a non starter in the general.
Haley is running as the adult in the room, which is not something the modern GOP wants around. Plus, see Pence.
Christie is loathed by all and just doesn’t seem to have enough left in the tank these days to properly savage Trump (which is about all he could hope for from this run, he’s not going to be president).
No one is winning at these debates. You know who always make the top of the list the day after when pundits write their ‘X winners and Y losers from last night’s debate’? Trump wins.
What these candidates don’t get is that Trump makes his base feel something. He is a master at pushing on voters buttons. Their fear. Their anger. Their concern that their country is disappearing in shifting demographics and they are being replaced.
He is a man that they trust more than their priest.
(Source: Washington Post)
It’s bizarre that given that the rest of the party has spent the past 7 years appeasing Trump for fear that they will have the base attack them that they don’t get what they need to do here.
They need to fight Trump.
And none of this pussy footing sub tweeting milquetoast bullshit ‘fighting’.
Post the second debate, there has been some of that. Pence is actually using Trump’s name now, so is DeSantis. Took them long enough.
But it isn’t enough. Saying that Trump isn’t pro-life enough, or that he isn’t conservative enough, or that he was the one that oversaw the COVID vaccine being made, none of that matters to his base. He makes them feel something. They believe (not just think but believe) that the 2020 election was stolen from him. They believe that his indictments are evidence of a witch hunt.
Many forget but there were two major reasons he won in 2016:
Hilary ran a crap campaign, she just wasn’t good at it.
Trump ran a populist campaign that while deranged had enough progressive elements (in an economic sense rather than social) that he could appeal to a wider base than Hilary and her robotic ways.
Oh shit! Hilary was DeSantis.
The man is a populist, not a conservative. He is their Orange God King, so while it may require cognitive dissonance from them they are able to rationalise virtually everything he says whether it aligns with their general position on those things.
That’s why they don’t care about the trials. That’s why they don’t care what his views on abortion are (plus, he put 3 Supreme Court justices on the court that voted to overturn Roe v Wade, they aren’t going to care about his personal views on the matter).
There is one line they could try on Trump that might peel some voters away from him.
“The election was stolen from Trump and he tried his best to keep our country safe and take it back from these demonic forces on the left… but he just wasn’t good enough. How can you trust that next time when the deep state is coming for your country that he won’t drop the ball again.”
Of course, if you try that on while picking up some votes, you may end up fracturing the party and I can’t imagine you’d have a hope in hell in the general.
But unless you’re using a line like that, I can only see a few reasons you’re in this race:
You hope that he gets convicted, is in jail for the election, and for some reason finally shuts up and doesn’t try to run from prison.
You are actually running for VP. Of which I can only imagine that Vivek would be someone that Trump would want to have as a running mate.
You are hoping for a cheeseburger of destiny1.
Nothing else makes sense. This is just pantomime (“Vivek, he’s behind you!”)
This is going to be a demented (both in the sense of being deranged, and in the sense that the leading candidates have dementia) election, and these yuks are up on stage for no good reason.
Meanwhile, the GOP in the House are eating themselves and Trump has decided that his strategy for having to attend trials during the campaign is to do a stump speech every morning in front of the court house. Cool beans.
Strap yourself in, fill your glass with the finest whisky, it’s about to get strange.
Required Reading
Blaming the Democrats for McCarthy’s Fall is Bullshit - No shit.
Mike Davis is a clown to be scared of - I read a bizarre thing the other day that said Trump wasn’t an authoritarian cause he’s not ordered or disciplined. While true, it’s beside the point. He wants to do authoritarian things and even if his alignment is chaotic evil, it’s still evil.
Live Players vs Dead Players - Odd way to look at game theory and I don’t think it gives quite the framework for the race that the author believes but an interesting read none the less.
Cocaine Mitch gets a piece written about him that makes him sound reasonable - Fuck this guy. Seriously, McConnell laid the foundation for the modern GOP that Trump was able to leverage. Fuck this guy. Oh, he wants to make sure Ukraine get support, good. Doesn’t stop him being a douche knuckle.
When the day comes and a cheeseburger does knock Trump off, you watch all the conspiracies that are going to spring up over that thing. And the endless coverage of a patty between two buns that will flood the right wing mediasphere for days on end.