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Well, they are going to debate at least as far as we know, right now, two debates scheduled between Donald Trump and Joe Biden for the presidential campaign, one at the end of June and one in the first half of September. We didn’t know if this would happen. And part of the reason we didn’t know if it would happen is that traditionally, presidential debates, not the primary debates, which are organized by the parties, but presidential general election debates are organized and produced by the Commission on Presidential Debates. These are open source debates, meaning that the Commission organizes them. And a single feed is distributed to every network and channel that wants to broadcast the debate. This is also important in terms of our story here today, with regard to what the audience is going to be for these forthcoming debates. Trump has said for a while he believes the commission is biased against them, and they’re bad, and he’s not going to do any debates with them. It wasn’t clear whether this would mean no debates at all, or whether Joe Biden would agree to debates outside of those organized by the Commission, Joe Biden has agreed to do debates not organized by the Commission, the first of which will be on CNN on June 27. Now, as I’ve said before, I don’t believe the format of the debates lends itself to learning about policy, we’re not going to get any deep impressions about how Trump and Biden’s education policy perspectives differ in any serious way. We’re not going to learn about objectively what tax rate maximizes government revenue, we’re not going to learn any of that. And I wish we could. But that’s not the way the debates are set up often with 9060, or even shorter 62nd or 32nd. rebuttals and statements, we’re not going to learn about any of that. That all being said, I still want there to be debates. because to the extent that the debates allow the underlying personalities, and frameworks and visions of the candidates to come through, they can be instructive. And the way that the candidates relate to each other the way that the candidates talk about issues the way that the candidates get triggered, potentially by things that their opponents say all of this is relevant and can certainly impact voters. Now, my mind has been made up in the sense that I understand the competing visions, the guy who tried to circumvent democracy to stay in power, Trump versus Biden, who believes that the winner of the election should be president, right? Like, I mean, you could almost stop there. But of course, on so many different issues, I believe Biden is is the better option. But are there undecided voters out there, who maybe don’t care as much about policy, who maybe are busy working and raising families to pay attention to politics, but they turn it on, and they get an impression about the candidates who really cares about the country, versus who cares about themselves, etc. So I think that it is still a good thing to have debates, even if on substance, we don’t get that much out of them. Now, what about the risks, because there was a lot being said about Trump or and or Biden’s cognitive state, and that they could fail and not be able to speak and it would be absolutely embarrassing and humiliating. I think that there is much more downside risk to debating than upside. And what I mean by that is the following. If you are, there are people who are voting Trump and people who are voting Biden, let’s put them aside for a moment. If you are a soft supporter of Biden’s, or a soft supporter of Trump’s are undecided. If your candidate you’re leaning towards has a good performance, it might not do very much to reinforce or to secure your support. But if you’re a soft support or unsure, and one candidate absolutely does terribly cognitively, the way that some are worried could happen. You might say I can’t vote for this person. And it actually pushes you the other way. And in that sense, I believe that the there is asymmetrical risk here where the potential downside is way higher than the upside. However, the bar has been set so low for Joe Biden for so long by Republicans who couldn’t claim that he has dementia, that all he has to do is show up and do fine. And he is going to dramatically over perform what many Republicans are expecting. Now this goes back four years. If you go back to the primary debates of 2020, in advance of Biden and Bernie, debating, you had so many people on the right saying Biden is going to fall apart, he won’t be able to get a word out, it’s going to be terrible for him. He’s going to forget everything. He’ll forget what day it is. And Biden did fine. And he ultimately became the nominee. And then in advance of the 2020 debates against Trump. You heard the same story. Biden can’t speak, he can’t think he’s a mess. And Biden did fine. And while it’s not obvious that either candidate really benefited hugely from those debates, Biden did fine. And the bar was like he’s not going to be able to speak and he does fine. And it actually ends up helping Biden the State of the Union a few months ago. speculation that Biden is going to do terribly. He can’t speak for 90 minutes, and he did fine. In fact, Biden ended up doing so well that now the new story is the reason that the speeches are so good rather than so bad is Biden is on a drug that makes the speeches good. They’re so good. They must be be drug enhanced, despite having no evidence of that whatsoever. So I look forward to the debates. I don’t know that we will learn a thing about policy, but hopefully we learn a little something about character. Let me know whether you’re interested in the debates what you expect to see
