MILWAUKEE, WISCONSIN -- Late last week, Donald Trump made clear that he would not participate in tomorrow evening's Republican presidential debate here in Wisconsin's largest city, a move he'd been telegraphing for some time. Over the weekend, Trump appeared to rule out showing up at any of the GOP debates moving forward. Citing a CBS News poll showing him far ahead of his party's nominating field, Trump wrote in a Truth Social post that "the public knows who I am," before listing several of his accomplishments as president and declaring, "I will therefore not be doing the debates!" Debates, plural:
Trump confirms he won’t be doing any debates. (Plural.) pic.twitter.com/buTDl3fCni
— Kaitlan Collins (@kaitlancollins) August 20, 2023
Trump being Trump, this decision is of course subject to change. If his political calculations or whims shift for whatever reason, it's possible that the former president could attend one or more of the forthcoming candidate forums -- presuming that he's willing to sign the party loyalty pledge, which he's thus far rejected. He'll cook up some justification, should debating become necessary or desirable in his eyes. But in all likelihood, he's out. For all of them. I happen to agree with figures like Gov. Ron DeSantis ("he owes it to people to go up there and debate") and Vivek Ramaswamy ("fundamentally uncourageous") who believe winning the nomination must entail putting in the work and earning it. Trump is not entitled to anything -- and even though he's running like he is one, he's not the incumbent, having already lost to Joe Biden.
That being said, taking a pass on the debates very well may be a strategically sound choice. If he's really up by nearly 50 points, commanding a solid majority of GOP support, it makes sense to allow the other candidates to conduct a junior varsity discussion while the heavy frontrunner spends his time elsewhere. Trump is reportedly planning on engaging in some counter-programming on Wednesday, and it wouldn't surprise me in the least if he selects Thursday as the day for his Georgia arraignment, denying oxygen to next-day coverage of the forum he's eschewing. One of the strongest political arguments against nominating Trump for a third time is that he would put the party in a needlessly and even uniquely weak position to win next year. I tend to believe that's true, for reasons I've explained on several occasions. But you know who doesn't agree? Most Republican voters, who are somehow convinced that the man with an unfavorable rating of roughly 60 percent is the most likely GOP victor in a match-up with Joe Biden (who won this very same match-up last time):
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This is the finding from the latest @CBSNewsPoll that explains everything you need to know about the GOP primary. https://t.co/GagpyjlzuR pic.twitter.com/Ot3VjPzeEk
— Kristen Soltis Anderson (@KSoltisAnderson) August 20, 2023
It turns out that many Republican voters do prioritize electability. They just assess electability differently than many of those making the 'electability' case against Trump. As for debates and the 2024 election cycle, I raised the following thought experiment on Twitter, following Trump's announcement apparently stiff-arming the primary debates:
Thought experiment (not terribly far-fetched imo):
— Guy Benson (@guypbenson) August 20, 2023
It’s 13 months from now. The conventions are over, Biden and Trump have been nominated.
Biden leads by mid-single-digits in most national polling, tighter in key states.
Biden’s doing a basement-type campaign again & his…
Just as Trump has determined that debating is not in his political interest at this stage of the cycle, Team Biden very well reach the same conclusion about general election debates. They'd frame a refusal to 'dignify' Trump in such a setting as a 'defense of democracy,' or whatever. If that happens, it's easy to imagine the Trump campaign crying foul, inevitably inviting a blizzard of reminders that Trump did the same thing during the primaries. But this is different, they'd retort, and they'd have some valid points. Yet it's more than plausible that Trump declining to participate in debates now could lower the political bar for Biden to follow suit and duck out of them next fall. That move could conceivably backfire, of course, especially if voters see it as arrogant, or a tacit admission that Biden is simply not up to the mental task (I suspect ornery, defensive Joe would like to debate, for this reason). But if Biden's team can convince him that turning down debates with Trump, "on principle," maximizes their chances of winning an autopilot, Basement 2.0 campaign, it's a real possibility.
It's not a stretch to envision something like this: "The Biden campaign will actually say 'we do not feel we owe debates to someone facing multiple indictments in multiple jurisdictions and who tried to upend the peaceful transfer of power our country has enjoyed for over 200 years.'" Last cycle (which, granted, was highly unusual because it was playing out during a pandemic), one of the three scheduled debates simply never happened. In the 2022 midterms, we saw fewer debates across the board, and a number of Democrats outright refused to debate their GOP opponents. Perhaps the most prominent example of this involved the strikingly untalented Katie Hobbs turning down any debates against Kari Lake in Arizona's gubernatorial contest. Hobbs cited Lake's election denial as a core reason to sidestep an in-person confrontation. Lake pummeled her for it. And Katie Hobbs is now Governor Hobbs. The Hobbs campaign realized they'd take their lumps for declining a debate, but determined the move would ultimately be a net positive. That guessed right. Bidenworld undoubtedly watched that example pretty closely. The New York Times is already seeding this narrative ahead of next year:
One of the arguments that the Republican National Committee chairwoman, Ronna McDaniel, made to Mr. Trump that day was that by skipping the debate, he would give President Biden an excuse to get out of debating Mr. Trump should they meet again in 2024, according to two people familiar with their conversation. Mr. Trump apparently disregarded the warning...the argument appealed to a key focus of the Trump campaign as it looks ahead to a possible rematch with Mr. Biden: getting both men onstage. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said publicly that he wants debates with Mr. Biden, and Mr. Trump’s advisers view face-offs with the incumbent president as vital to Mr. Trump’s chances of winning...a Republican strategist added that “the end goal is as many debates as possible between Donald Trump and Joe Biden,” and that the Trump campaign would do whatever was necessary to achieve that goal.
A senior Biden official, who was granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, said that there have been no senior-level staff meetings about debates yet, nor any discussions with the president himself. But people in Mr. Biden’s orbit had their own frustrations with the C.P.D. in 2020, in particular its handling of Covid protocols...David Axelrod, who was a top adviser to former President Barack Obama during both of his presidential campaigns, said that the challenge for Mr. Biden’s team is that even if the two camps agree on debate criteria, Mr. Trump refuses to follow rules...Axelrod said that the notion that Mr. Biden could use Mr. Trump’s avoidance of debates as a reason to avoid them himself was a “valid” question, noting that “whether you feel in a close race you could get away with that — and whether the public would accept it — is another question.”
If this reporting is correct -- and a few of the story's bylines are reporters who famously have significant access to Trump -- it seems as though Team Trump believes head-to-head debates against Biden will be "vital" for their chances at victory, even as they backhand primary debates now. If Trump is lagging Biden next fall, the former president's campaign may feel a certain desperation to debate, rooted in a desire to alter the race's trajectory. Meanwhile, "people in Biden's orbit" are already muttering about their "frustrations" with the Commission on Presidential Debates, with no less a figure than David Axelrod preemptively complaining about how Trump doesn't follow rules, and entertaining the notion of Biden skipping general election debates as "valid." It's far too early and premature to make any solid predictions, but it's at least safe to say that the scenario of zero general election debates is a live one.
Parting thought: As long as Trump is clobbering all comers in the GOP field, his anti-debate position will continue to make a certain amount of strategic sense. But what if the polling changes? I'll leave you with this:
IOWA 2024 POLL: @DMRegister
— InteractivePolls (@IAPolls2022) August 21, 2023
Trump 42% (+23)
DeSantis 19%
Scott 9%
Haley 6%
Pence 6%
Christie 5%
Ramaswamy 4%
Burgum 2%
Hurd 1%@jaselzer (A+) | 406 LV | 08/13-17https://t.co/mAw87OGJhN pic.twitter.com/GoIwH6ZzVd
That Sezler poll is good for Trump, but it's not consistent with the view that his nomination is more-or-less inevitable.
— Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) August 21, 2023
Stipulating that Trump is the favorite to win the GOP nomination, there does seem to be a potential path for some of his rivals.
— Steve Kornacki (@SteveKornacki) August 21, 2023
Start w/ our new IA poll. Trump is up by 23, but DeSantis actually has the highest favorable rating & Scott has the best fav/unfav ratio... pic.twitter.com/F5By9yyzpz
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