On Thursday night, the first Presidential debate will occur. As mentioned before, I never watch debates or speeches firsthand, never have. Particularly here in this case, we have years of history and analysis to best understand and choose between the two candidates so assessing these performances will be nothing more than hanging around to watch the train wreck or almost wreck.
What I note here is not a prediction, but I do have a few grounded observations and a far out contingency if you please. Here we go.
There are media ‘tools’ that have and will try to game the event for the ‘big guy’. This is always the case. Half of the media blood sport here is watching to see how severely they try and how obvious it is. People will talk about this aspect Friday morning as much as about Biden and Trump. Herein is a wildcard. It is now with significant regularity that 3rdparties cut in to rescue Biden when he starts to falter. This happens now in most of his appearances. Will they pull the plug if things get too hot for Biden? If they do, this will be the end of the Biden campaign, at that exact moment.
There is talk of replacing Biden on the ticket, discussion about the difficulty in doing so, and those swearing up and down that it’ll never happen. Ignore. I found it interesting that Biden is reported to not be planning to return to the White House before the debate. I spy with my little eye, a nuclear contingency: What if this were not old man Joes’ choice for his optimal preparation, but rather, an administrative plan to be ready in case the debate ends in tragedy for Joe? What if Joe has already stepped into the White House the last time? What if his porters and guardians leave that debate to take him back to his Delaware residence while they ready the office for Kamala Harris?
I’m not saying this will be the outcome but at this moment, I’d give it a full 50/50 chance of occurring on June 26, 2024. Those are pretty heavy odds.
There is only one real class of people that has any real interest in the debate. There are really no true oblivious ‘undecided’ voters; there are only a set of loyal Democrats that may be watching to make the decision if they should change their vote. Those are the undecided. There are hard core Democrat, Biden voters. There are hard core Trump voters. There is not a significant group waiting to decide if they should abandon Trump. There are only those trying to decide if things are so bad that they must leave Biden. We might usually say that if Biden doesn’t completely freeze, go all angry Hitler into the TV camera, mutter some insanity about the deceased Beau Biden, whisper into the microphone, or shit himself, that he ‘wins’, but I think we’re past that stage. The Democrats ready to leave Biden have seen enough. This debate is whether he loses them for good on Thursday night. There is no upside, no more votes to win. That and whether a special car and chopper will be waiting for him to take him home and put him to bed. That is what is at stake for Joe Biden