The Trump-Biden Debate Is Going To Matter | Opinion

We haven’t even had the major party nominating conventions in this 2024 presidential election, and everyone I know is already sick of this race already.

Aren’t you?

No one should be surprised by voter fatigue. The two main contenders in Donald Trump and Joe Biden are extremely unpopular. They’re extremely old, not just chronologically, but also because they’re extremely old and familiar to the public. Trump has been the GOP nominee for three elections in a row. Biden is the current incumbent who’s also been in the American political world for well over 50 years. If you want “new blood,” we don’t got it!

This is the most basic reason why a lot of election pundits are preemptively pouring cold water on Thursday night’s first Trump-Biden debate contest of three scheduled overall. They’re basing that conclusion on the fact that these candidates have baked-in support, and nothing will change that in a one-hour televised debate.

But they’re making a big mistake. Because while they’re right that not many people will change their vote based on just this debate, that’s always been the case anyway. What makes this debate so important is that because these candidates are so unpopular overall, and because this election cycle provided no drama in the primaries, this debate will absolutely play a key role in how enthusiastic voters will be by the time November rolls around.

By “voters,” we of course don’t just mean the very enthusiastic thousands who continue to defy the odds and pack Trump rallies across the country. We also aren’t including those fervent left wing protesters who have taken to the streets and campuses so often this year, vowing to make the Hamas-Israel war their main reason to vote for or against all standing candidates.

But we are talking about that much less enthused, or at least much quieter portion of Americans who are not as jazzed about this election and got to sleep it off so far because of those aforementioned non-contentious and boring primaries. Thursday night will wake them up and give them a chance to decide whether they’ll just quietly vote or get more active in the form of at least talking about their choices in public or on social media.

There will be many good excuses provided by the debate to do so, the biggest one being President Joe Biden’s coherence and apparent mental fitness or lack thereof. If Biden is clear and seems relatively robust, all those millions already poised to vote for him will be that much more likely to talk about it. Every pollster and political campaign strategist will tell you that matters.

If Trump remains calm, projects himself as a commonsense candidate, and stays focused on the key issues, many of his more silent supporters will also be much more likely to speak out in the weeks that follow.

Remember that Trump has been demonized by the news media for so long and now has been convicted in his New York “hush money” trial. In some states, neither of those things matter. But in many others, it makes his silent supporters stay silent more often. It’s just too easy to push back and slam a Trump voter in America, isn’t it?

But a solid debate performance will provide some semblance of a shield against that inevitable vitriol. Anyone who really understands politics in America since 2016 will not underestimate that.

There’s one more reason why this debate will really matter. It’s not just the candidates who will be scrutinized. CNN is on the spot too.

Remember that this debate will include no live audience and CNN and its control room will thus be in complete control of what hundreds of millions of Americans will see and hear Thursday night. That’s in addition to the debate moderators, who many will be watching even more closely than the candidates to see if they ask fair questions and follow ups. If CNN appears unfair to a majority of the viewers, the very future of presidential debates as we know them could be finished forever.

So yes, America. This debate is a big deal even if it doesn’t change one voter’s mind about how they’ll be filling in their ballot. It will still undoubtedly be a major factor in how they decide to act and think about almost everything else connected to this election.

Jake Novak is a political and economic analyst with 30 years as a veteran producer of national and local TV news.

The views expressed in this article are the writer’s own.