President Joe Biden may be weighing his own version of the famous Hamlet question as fall approaches: to debate or not to debate.
Since 1976, the answer to that question for every major party presidential nominee has been “yes.” But there are rumblings from within the Democratic Party that Biden should turn that precedent on its head — particularly if his 2024 Republican opponent is former President Donald Trump.
“I would think twice about it,” Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL) recently told the Hill. “[In 2016] I watched him do outrageous things and say outrageous things. It’s just an opportunity for him to display his extremism.”
There are prominent and recent examples of politicians skipping debates without damage, something that will surely factor into Team Biden’s decision-making process.
One obvious parallel is that Trump himself has skipped all GOP primary debates and has only seen his polling numbers rise as a result. If debating doesn’t help, why do it?
There’s an old adage in politics that incumbents don’t debate, on the premise that doing so puts the challenger on a level playing field with the champion in the eyes of voters. Biden himself is refusing to debate his small field of intraparty challengers, most notably Rep. Dean Phillips (D-MN), as have most presidential incumbents during primary season.
Trump is different, at least in theory. Booted from office in 2020, he’s running in an open primary, yet his status as a former president seeking a nonconsecutive second term — unique within living memory — grants him a sort of semi-incumbency, which he’s used to his advantage.
Trump polled at 55% on Aug. 20, according to the RealClearPolitics polling average, just before the first Republican primary debate. Nearly a half-dozen Trump-free debates later, he’s now polling above 62%.
But Trump insists he’s willing and eager to go against Biden, telling radio host Hugh Hewitt in typical Trumpian fashion that he’d “look forward” to facing Biden in 10 debates rather than the traditional three.
Democrats aren’t so sure.
Publicly stated concerns include the fear that Trump will say or do something erratic during an appearance with Biden, along with cautions against “platforming” views that most left-leaning voters view as extreme.
“I was in the room for one of the debates in 2020,” Sen. Chris Coons (D-DE) said. “The former president in no way at all respected the rules or the tradition or decorum [of presidential debates]. … It was a disaster.”
Coons cited Trump’s comments about immigrants poisoning the blood of the nation, which the senator described as “hateful, fascist remarks,” as the kind of thing that should not be uttered on a debate stage.
Neither the Biden nor Trump campaigns responded to questions from the Washington Examiner about whether their candidate would agree to debates.
Despite Coons’s concerns about tradition and decorum, televised presidential debates do not have as long of a history as some might assume. The first ones were held in 1960, a famous episode featuring John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, after which some reports held that people who listened on the radio thought Nixon won, while those who watched on TV favored Kennedy. A total of four Kennedy-Nixon debates took place that year.
Another 16 years passed before the next general election presidential debate was held, and they have been a regular fixture since the 1976 election.
Changes in both technology and the political landscape may endanger the three-debate format in 2024 and beyond, and not everyone thinks that’s a bad thing.
“Refusing to participate in the presidential debates would be one of the few decisions Joe Biden has made since 2020 that I would endorse,” said William Voegeli, a senior fellow at the Claremont Institute. “America elected presidents without face-to-face debates from 1792 through 1956. The evidence from 1960, and then 1976 through 2020, argues that the debates have done more harm than good.”
Recent precedent showcases one path Biden may follow.
Gov. Katie Hobbs (D-AZ) refused to debate her Trump-tinged challenger, former news anchor Kari Lake, during her 2022 campaign. While she took some heat for the decision, Hobbs emerged victorious.
Biden faces some of the same issues as Hobbs. Trump is a former television star comfortable in front of a camera, and Biden could potentially lean on the danger-to-democracy arguments he’s been making to say that appearing onstage with him is too dangerous.
The risk for Biden is twofold. One is that ducking debates could further notions that Biden is too old and enfeebled to handle the duties of the presidency. The other is that it would undermine his presentation as the candidate who respects traditions and norms in contrast to the unhinged Trump.
“Oddly enough, Biden, who’s running as the guy who promises to be more like a normal politician, might look worse for threatening to skip a debate than Trump would,” said Rob Boatright, director of research for the National Institute for Civil Discourse. “Debates are really one of the few things that people expect in a presidential campaign.”
If debates do go the wayside, Boatright said it’s hard to separate out whether rising partisanship or changes in technology away from television and toward the internet played a bigger role in the shift.
One 2020 debate was canceled when Trump refused to go virtual after testing positive for COVID-19. Otherwise, Trump and Biden’s status as a former and current president, along with their exceptionally long tenures in the public eye, mean that most voters have little to learn from seeing the pair together onstage.
“We all know Trump, we all know Biden, so in one sense one may argue debates are less consequential than in prior years,” Boatright said.
What ultimately happens may come down to who is leading in the polls over the spring and summer. Biden currently trails Trump in a number of swing states, which traditionally means he should be more eager to take the debate stage if that holds.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
But Voegeli predicts that Biden may decide not to debate this fall — and that doing so won’t hurt him.
“[Biden’s] age and forensic limitations are priced in at this point,” Voegeli said. “He won in 2020 by running a basement campaign, and may be able to win in 2024 by running a Rose Garden one. The press has been protective of him, and will likely become even more so as Election Day approaches.”