Trump risks losing next week’s debate before it even happens

“Great Expectations” is not just the name of a classic Charles Dickens novel. It’s also the fastest pathway to a political setback.

Campaigns and pundits now operate in a world where nuance is dead and the messaging has all the subtlety of a kick to the groin. Your ideas are “mainstream,” your opponent is an “extremist.”

No one expects opposing candidates to join hands and sing Kumbaya, but smart campaigns manage expectations to a reasonable level that allows them to declare victory no matter what happens. The Trump campaign and his allies in conservative media are dancing on the line of setting expectations so low for President Joe Biden that he will win next week’s debate so long as he is still alive and hasn’t soiled himself by the end of it.

During the 2000 election, Democrats were focused like a laser on convincing the American public that then Texas Governor George W. Bush was a moron, just lucky that breathing is reflexive, lest he forget to do it and suffocate right there on the debate stage.

That was the context for that year’s presidential debates — some idiot versus Al Gore, inventor of the internet. But a funny thing happened. Bush didn’t drown in his own saliva, and Gore didn’t come off like anything special. Therefore, Bush won the debates because the expectations game had been so horribly managed by Democrats. 

What made matters worse for Gore was that he only seemed to have the same level of command of the issues as Bush. That made Bush look smarter and Gore look a lot dumber, all because of a narrative his own campaign and party spent a lot of time promoting.

The shoe is on the other foot right now, with a week to go before the first debate between Biden and Trump. Conservatives rightly pointed out that Biden lost a step or two, and whole flights of stairs at certain times. He often appears in public to be lost or confused, and indecipherable gibberish regularly comes out of his mouth. 

The left used to try to chalk this up to a stutter he allegedly had when he was a child, but these aren’t stutters. They are incoherent mumblings. 

Democrats are by now aware of Biden’s tendency to wander on stage, stand still for unnaturally long periods of time and walk with an obvious old man gait. They have done what they can to deny that these things are real, even to the point of falsely insinuating, by calling them “cheap fakes,” that they are artificially generated. They even released an edited version of one video, claiming that the unedited versions don’t give the true picture.

This allows Republicans to mock Biden for his senility, but it also lowers the bar for debate performance. The bar is now so low that it might be impossible for Biden to limp over it. It also raises the bar for Trump. How could he fail to absolutely destroy a senile, doddering old man in a debate?

It’s time for Republicans to be aware of this and, at a minimum, set the bar a little bit higher for Biden. As of now, he can get himself declared the winner if he can just give answers (they don’t have to make complete sense) to all the questions, no matter their quality. And make no mistake, if there exists a concoction of pharmaceuticals and caffeine that can wake him up like he was awake during the State of the Union Address, they will pump him full of it and the result will be deemed a victory. The bar is that low.

Republicans need to remind the public that Biden has been been at this for half a century. Debate is a motor skill; reciting talking points is almost Pavlovian at this point. Raise the bar a little. Yes, be ready to point out errors and lies when he claims to have been a truck driver or a civil rights activist, but treat him seriously in the lead up to it.

As I wrote last month, this early debate is as much an audition for Biden to receive his party’s nomination as it is about the November election. Should he freeze or collapse before he is officially re-nominated, Democrats can (even it is unlikely) replace him without waging multiple legal fights to get names on changed ballots. 

Republicans would be wise to help Biden survive the night, but not by conceding the first debate. They only need to keep him in it by setting realistic expectations and then winning. 

Trump can’t do that if victory for Biden only requires his still being awake at the end. 

Derek Hunter is host of the Derek Hunter Podcast and a former staffer for the late Sen. Conrad Burns (R-Mont.).