Here’s how to immediately determine the winner of Thursday night’s presidential debate: search “Joe Biden” and “drugs.” If social media mentions are spiking, the current president has out-maneuvered the former president, and the Republican slime machine has revved into top speed, just as it did back in March by suggesting the 81-year-old Democrat must have been juiced to deliver such a high-energy State of the Union speech. “We’re data people, so that’s the metric I’ll be watching,” a Democratic strategist says, only half-jokingly. “If right-wing Twitter goes crazy saying he’s hopped up on stimulants, you’ll know we won.”
Popping Adderall might be tempting, because Biden will be facing a high-risk, high-reward moment in Atlanta. His job approval numbers have been below 50% for nearly three years; currently, they’re hovering around a dismal 39%. He’s been blamed for high inflation and immigration numbers; he hasn’t gotten credit for high employment numbers. And looming over everything is voter unhappiness about Biden’s advanced age, making it crucial that he perform crisply and coherently when facing off against the nearly-equally-aged Donald Trump.
Yet the first debate arrives at a moment of serious opportunity for Biden. His head-to-head poll numbers have been creeping up since a New York jury found Trump guilty on 34 felony counts last month, with a meaningful share of independent voters appearing to shift toward Biden. A new poll by Fox News, of all places, even shows Biden edging past Trump nationally. “The first debate in 2020 had an impact because Trump was so chaotic and it reinforced for voters, particularly moderate suburban voters, all of the worst things they already believed about him, at a time the race was already trending away from him,” Kate Bedingfield says. “This debate could be a moment for Biden to really gain, to build on the momentum that he’s seen in the polling.” Bedingfield has a high degree of expertise in these matters: Four years ago, she was a member of the Democratic candidate’s inner circle, helping Biden prepare for debates. After a stint as White House communications director, she is now a commentator at CNN, which is hosting the first showdown.
It’s impossible for anyone, let alone Biden, to predict or control Trump’s behavior, and Bedingfield believes there’s a chance the former president will be “more disciplined” than he was in 2020. What the incumbent’s team can try to control is how much their guy uses his time in front of a large TV audience to push the campaign’s broad, core themes: the improving economy and the threats Trump poses to democracy and other rights. The campaign will also attempt to target debate audiences in six pivotal electoral college states, so expect Biden to include some local shoutouts. “I would be surprised if there weren’t some references to his connection with Pennsylvania, or to showing up on the autoworker picket line in Detroit,” a Biden insider says. “But you’ve got to be careful. You don’t want to come off as pandering.”
A larger difficulty for Biden will be hitting notes that resonate across wildly varied terrain, other than the Supreme Court’s invalidation of legal abortion. “It’s such a schizophrenic battlefield this cycle because you’ve got three classic blue-collar, industrial states in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, and Michigan, and then you’ve got three high-growth, diverse, younger states in Nevada, Arizona, and Georgia,” the Democratic strategist says. “Those places are experiencing this economy very differently.” One universal, of course, is that no one likes higher prices, so Biden needs to express empathy and sell the idea that Trump would make things worse. “His task is to show people that he understands high prices at the grocery store are a challenge for middle-class families,” Bedingfield says. “But he’s got to really draw a contrast on what a second Trump term would mean to the economy. Based on the tariff proposal Trump put forward, it would mean higher prices.”
A mastery of policy specifics will matter. It is likely to matter less, however, than performance skills, especially because Trump’s allies have spent the past few weeks deceptively editing video and hyping rumors to suggest Biden is feebleminded and possibly incontinent. “Republicans, I think, have made a pretty big mistake of attacking the president on age. That has lowered expectations,” the Biden insider says. “Ron Klain is leading the debate prep, and they’re working with the president on how to quickly respond to that stuff in real-time. As long as he comes out strong, which he will, he will win the debate.”
The substance and quality of Biden’s answers are key, but the fact that he will deliver them live and unfiltered elevates their influence and raises the stakes. “A surprising amount of people watch these things, way more than [they] watch a rally or a Rose Garden press conference. And I think this time people are actually tuning in to do the eyeball test on Joe Biden,” the Democratic strategist says. “If they see him looking normal for 90 minutes, that’s going to be a pretty important judgment.” Bedingfield will be applying a more specific standard to evaluate the outcome. “Because everyone is so fatigued, because of double-haters and all of that,” she says, “whoever the media perceives as having screwed up, whoever the narrative is about coming out of the debate is probably the loser.” Which would be yet another strange but fitting twist for the often underestimated Joe Biden: an incumbent president winning by being ignored.