Tom Minear: Biden-Trump debate will remind voters only one can lose

Joe Biden and Donald Trump are both deeply flawed candidates, Tom Minear argues, which is why their rush to debate each other poses risks on both sides.

Election debates are typically tortuous to organise.

So how to explain what happened last week, when in the space of a few hours, Joe Biden ditched the nonpartisan organisation in charge and proposed two debates in June and September, Donald Trump agreed, and TV networks booked them in?

On one level, the answer is simple: the current and former presidents believe Americans are more likely to vote against their opponent once they see them head-to-head.

For Biden, however, challenging Trump 131 days before the election – the earliest debate in history – suggests a level of urgency his re-election bid has so far sorely lacked.

Donald Trump and Joe Biden during a debate in the 2020 election campaign. Picture: Justin Sullivan (Getty Images/AFP)

While Trump has been tied up in court for weeks, Biden has barely made a dent in the polls and trails in battleground states. The President complains the data “has been wrong all along” and argues “the momentum is clearly in our favour”, an attitude that suggests he is in denial about his toxic approval rating that history suggests spells defeat.

But pushing for an early debate means Biden may finally have grasped the need to jolt his campaign into action before it is too late.

As for Trump, he taunted Biden for months to debate, and he says he is “ready to rumble”. His bravado does not mean the contests are risk-free for him – in fact, it sharpens the potential downsides for his campaign.

Donald Trump has spent weeks in his criminal trial in New York. Picture: Mike Segar (AFP)

Trump savages Biden as “the WORST debater I have ever faced” because he “can’t put two sentences together”. Setting the bar so low for the 81-year-old only helps him leap over it, as he did during his fiery State of the Union speech.

By the first debate, Trump could be a convicted criminal, a verdict swinging voters have long said would turn them against him. (Whether that is to be believed is another story – Trump’s popularity increased when he was charged.)

His strong position in the polls also obscures his weakness among Republicans who have not converted to his Make America Great Again brand.

Nikki Haley dropped out of the race for the party’s nomination more than two months ago, and yet she is still bringing voters out in meaningless primaries – 21.7 per cent in Indiana, 17.8 per cent in Arizona, 16.5 per cent in Pennsylvania, 14.4 per cent in Ohio.

Trump and Biden are both deeply flawed candidates. If nothing else, the debates will remind Americans that only one of them can lose.

Originally published as Tom Minear: Biden-Trump debate will remind voters only one can lose