Will Biden Debate Trump?

Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks at an event at the Colwyck Center in New Castle, Del., on July 21, 2020. (Drew Angerer/Getty Images)

Commentary

Look, we have to talk about Joe.

I realize the Democratic Party and Biden’s campaign staff are blithely maintaining the pretense that there’s nothing wrong with the former vice president, but what possible reason would the rest of the country have for going along with this charade?

Video clips of a mentally struggling Biden continue to go viral on social media, because even as his campaign tries to keep his interactions with others tightly scripted and controlled, the candidate himself is still saying head-scratching things.

In a Biden campaign livestream broadcast on July 22, Biden told a representative of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) that the nurses at Walter Reed hospital would blow into his nostrils to get him moving.

This is far from the most bizarre thing Biden has said during his presidential campaign over the past year.

Will Biden Debate Trump?

I’m confident making the prediction that Biden won’t be debating President Donald Trump after observing how quickly Biden’s own campaign has shut down media events that went off-script.

You can’t really script a public debate. Such an event calls for the candidates to react instinctively and on the spot to tough and unexpected questions and challenges, both from their opponent and the moderators.

Given that at all of his recent events Biden’s been limited to reading speeches from a teleprompter and then quickly exiting the room without taking any questions, he doesn’t give the impression of a strong and confident candidate up to any and all challenges.

Biden is also refusing to sit for interviews with reporters. When Fox News’ Chris Wallace requested one, Biden’s campaign replied that the candidate was “unavailable.”

During a normal campaign season, candidates are ramping up their media appearances and events at this time of year, not reducing or limiting them. But this is precisely what the Biden campaign has been doing, and there doesn’t seem to be any indication the trend will change.

Whatever one may think of Trump, he certainly hasn’t been in hiding or ducking questions from reporters. Trump has frequently made himself available for questions at almost every public appearance in recent months. Some of these conferences have lasted for more than an hour.

Trump sat for a 40-minute interview with Wallace on July 19 and answered every question thrown at him. It’s well known that the son of the former “60 Minutes” reporter Mike Wallace is far from a fan of the current president.

Having seen the tough questions Trump had to field from Wallace, it’s certainly understandable why the Biden campaign doesn’t want to subject him to such a grilling by a veteran reporter.

But the longer this campaign goes on and the closer the election gets, the more difficult it will be for Biden’s handlers to keep their candidate sheltered and away from tough questions.

If Biden is going to avoid unfriendly reporters while he’s running for the job of president of the United States, what does that say about his fitness to hold the office, should he win the election?

U.S. citizens need confidence that the person who serves as chief executive can handle any crisis that arises. While a president can duck reporters with pesky questions, he or she can’t duck Kim Jong Un, Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin, or the mullahs of Iran.

‘A Return to Normalcy’

Biden has been a Washington insider for 48 years, ever since he won the race for Delaware’s Senate seat in 1972. Let that sink in for a minute. This man has been a politician in Washington ever since then-President Richard M. Nixon made his historic visit to China.

Realizing that running Biden as some kind of outside reformer would be absurd on its face, his campaign has instead opted for a message of “a return to normalcy“ narrative.

This theme sells the idea of getting rid of Trump and all the changes he has been making in Washington and returning that town back to what it was when President Barack Obama and Biden left office in January 2017.

Had enough people wanted the Obama years to continue, Hillary Clinton would be president right now. I don’t think this is a very convincing campaign message: “Vote for me and I’ll turn back the clock and make everything in Washington the way it was when Obama and I left office four years ago.”

Trusting the Polls?

On July 21, the Trump campaign got more than 300,000 people to tune into its very first “virtual fundraiser” and took in more than $20 million.

But if you spent all day looking at the mainstream media polls and watched cable television news, you’d get the impression that Trump is not only losing the election at this point, he’s being massacred. Some polls have Biden up on the president by as much as 15 points.

Nobody learned anything from 2016. Electoral College votes cannot be predicted. Many media outlets also ignore the clearest sign of where the voter enthusiasm lies this election season. Trump not only garnered as many votes or more than Biden did in many of the state primary races; he set primary voting records running unopposed.

People who put their faith in national news media polls are once again going to be shocked by the actual election results.

Brian Cates is a writer based in South Texas and the author of “Nobody Asked For My Opinion … But Here It Is Anyway!” He can be reached on Twitter @drawandstrike.

The views expressed herein are solely those of the author. As a nonpartisan public charity, The Epoch Times does not endorse these statements and takes no position on political candidates.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times.