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09/09/2024 | News release | Distributed by Public on 10/09/2024 15:55

The First Presidential Debate Led to Biden’s Exit. Now It’s Harris vs Trump

The First Presidential Debate Led to Biden's Exit. Now It's Harris vs Trump

Two BU experts revisit their June predictions and assess this week's face-off

Tonight's debate will mark the first meeting of Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, both seen at summer campaign appearances. AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast

Politics

The First Presidential Debate Led to Biden's Exit. Now It's Harris vs Trump

Two BU experts revisit their June predictions and assess this week's face-off

September 9, 2024
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The June 27 face-off between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump may have been the most consequential presidential campaign debate in history. Tonight's showdown between Vice President Kamala Harris and Trump could eclipse it.

Amid questions about his age, Biden's poor performance against Trump-"halting," "rambling," and "doddering" were among words used to describe it-led to his departure from the race soon after. A sitting president's recusal mid-campaign was unprecedented, but Harris quickly moved to take the baton, and Democrats reacted with excitement to their new nominee. (She raised a record $81 million in the 24 hours after Biden announced he was dropping out.)

And now, with less than two months until election day, Harris and Trump will go head-to-head in a debate that, with the polls much closer than in the previous (Biden-Trump) matchup, could change undecided voters' minds.

We asked BU experts Lauren Mattioli, a College of Arts & Sciences assistant professor of political science, and Andrew David (CAS'05, GRS'18), a College of General Studies lecturer in social science and a historian, to look back at their predictions about that first debate and to share their thoughts on this one.

The presidential debate will be held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Tuesday, September 10, and will be broadcast live starting at 9 pm ET on ABC, and stream live on ABC News Live, Disney+, and Hulu. ABC anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis are the moderators.

Q&A

with Lauren Mattioli and Andrew David

BU Today:So, was that first debate the most consequential presidential debate ever?

Mattioli: I stand by what I said before. Joe Biden had to show that he was young enough to be president, and he didn't. Those were the stakes, and I think they were widely agreed upon, and he didn't deliver. I said most people who watch debates-the base-have already made up their minds about who they're going to vote for, and it would take a really unusual debate performance to change anything. And that's exactly what happened. Biden stepping down, and Kamala taking his place, is very much the work of the true believers, the decided voters and the democratic elite, who I described as like the cheerleaders who watch the debates normally. I don't think it changed anybody's policy views, but it changed their views of the candidate, it changed their level of support for him so dramatically.

I hope he doesn't torture himself with watching that [debate] back. But I'm sure he'll think about that as one of those moments in his career that was decisive.

David: It is hard to think of a more consequential debate. That one really mattered.

I had said part of what [Biden] was trying to do was to look engaged and to look kind of peppy, to look like he was in control. I mean, he wasn't even reaching that level. That's the thing that was shocking. He was stumbling through. There was substance there, but it was not great, to say the least. If Biden had put in a stronger performance, there would have been more analysis of what Trump didn't do well, but as it was, he didn't have to do that much.

BU Today:What does the change of Democratic candidate mean for tonight's debate?

Mattioli: I think it changes a couple of things. First is just going to be the visual contrast between two old white men standing next to each other on stage, versus now a white man and a Black and Asian woman. To women, to people of color, that's huge. This is a historic moment in terms of a woman of color debating for the presidency. It also introduces a number of dynamics in the debate that didn't exist before. Kamala speaks differently than Joe Biden does. She doesn't sound exactly like every other presidential candidate we've ever had; she communicates differently from a white male candidate, so that's going to be really different.

The political position going into the debate is also very different. Before, Trump thought he was in a really good position, a really good spot to win in November. And now there's good evidence that they're within range of a statistical tie, and that maybe Harris is pulling ahead, depending on which polls you read. Trump is not as comfortable as he was.

It feels like a year ago, but it was what, two months ago? May we live in boring times again.

David: I would say, for the Harris campaign, in one way the bar is extraordinarily low. She has to go in there and put sentences together and just prove that she's better than Biden. And at the same time the bar is also high, because, of course, the country and the Democratic party have been primed for the fact that she can walk into this room and put on a performance that is going to demonstrate the difference between the Democrats and Republicans and show that the Democratic party is resurgent. So there is a challenge here that she has to grapple with, and I think she really does have to put in a strong performance. Everyone's expecting this sea change, and if she can't deliver in the way that people are expecting, that's going to be seen as a disappointment.

BU Today:The stakes are high.

Mattioli: The event itself is going to be sort of like the Olympic finals for political rhetoric. Visually and message-wise, I don't know how you can find a sharper contrast in the elite levels of American politics than Kamala Harris debating Donald Trump in a presidential debate this close to the election, and after this major political upheaval.

David: If Trump can sort of stay focused, and somewhat do what he did in debate number one, he might actually [do well]. However, it does seem like Harris might have gotten under his skin to a certain extent. Especially because the playbook has gone out the window.

The comments about gender that almost went unnoticed during the 2016 campaign, those are getting called out now. And so the idea that he could kind of do that in the debate, and not have that come back on him, seems unlikely in 2024.

BU Today:Is there also a double standard for women candidates?

Mattioli: I firmly believe there is no way for a woman to do political debates and not be accused of violating a gender norm simply by existing in the public sphere and telling somebody something they don't want to hear. And in a very gendered, sexist way, that immediately goes to them as people rather than them as politicians. So people viewing the debate should be thinking about that, and even checking themselves, like, 'Am I having this reaction to Harris? How am I perceiving it?' I remember [in 2016] hearing people say, 'Oh, yeah, I agree with a lot of what Clinton says. There's just something about her.' And I'm like, I bet I know what it is. I bet it's the second X chromosome.

I firmly believe there is no way for a woman to do political debates and not be accused of violating a gender norm simply by existing in the public sphere and telling somebody something they don't want to hear.
Lauren Mattioli

So when she snaps back on Trump, for example, [people] will be, like, that was bitchy or that was harsh or that was shrill. You know, all these really gendered terms that people use. Would we say the same thing about Biden in a debate? Probably not. So that's something we have to practice, viewers have to practice. And it's good to keep in mind if people are watching the debate with their friends or their kids or their spouses.

BU Today:What about the idea of letting Trump be Trump, giving him enough rope to see if he'll say something that will turn off swing voters?

Mattioli: I think it'll depend on his kind of state of mind. The prep. What his team's telling him about the polls. What his emotional state is going in. Because Harris could turn on her prosecutor skills and get him there if she wants to. And I don't think it would take that much pushing. I think we all feel it's like right under the surface. I don't know what the Harris team is thinking. But the Democratic Convention showed that Democrats are going to be a little bit more cutthroat. They're not gonna let 2016 happen again or say, 'When they go low, we go high.' No.

David: She's going to have to work on that prosecutorial persona and really bring that to bear. That is the kind of thing that probably would set him off. The fact that the debate almost fell apart over the fact that the Democrats want an open mic, I think that tells you everything you need to know about how they're going to approach this. They want everything caught on tape, with the hopes that they are going to get him to go off the rails, and that this will provide some juicy sound bites so that they can say, 'You don't want that guy in the Oval Office again.'

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  • Joel Brown

    Staff Writer

    Joel Brown is a staff writer at BU Today and Bostonia magazine. He's written more than 700 stories for the Boston Globe and has also written for the Boston Herald and the Greenfield Recorder. Profile

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