Creating Despair Was Not a Side Effect of Trump’s Debate Performance; It Was the Intended Effect
By: Michael Austin
Tags: Politics, Trump, Elections, Debate, Biden

If you are at all like me, the first debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump left you feeling icky. Very little of substance was said and very few actual questions were answered. I would have rather spent the evening watching chimpanzees throw poop at each other because at least chimpanzees have some sense of irony about what they are doing. This was a dumpster fire inside of a train wreck, and all I wanted to do when it was over was never think about politics again.

To win re-election, Trump must convince Americans that the system is so broken that there is no reason to vote and the future so bleak that there is no value in hope.

For one of the participants in the debate, despair was actually the intended effect. We were supposed to feel dirty. We were supposed to feel depressed. And we are supposed to be so turned off by our broken system that we want nothing more to do with it. Because that is the only way that Donald Trump can win.

Presidential debates have never been about policy issues. At their very best, they have been image contests about who can look the most presidential. But last night’s debate was not even about that. The sitting president acted like a kindergarten bully. He taunted, jeered, provoked, and interrupted both Biden and the moderator until they both responded in exasperation. If this had been any kind of contest with enforceable rules, it would have been stopped, and Trump would have been kicked out of the game.

But it was not a contest with enforceable rules. The moderator had no power to moderate, and the normal social imperatives about civil behavior in public have never applied to the current president. But this was not simply Trump being Trump. It was a well-executed strategy to gain the low ground and force Biden to engage him on his own terms. Whenever Biden responded in kind, Trump doubled down. He didn’t ever say “I know you are, but what am I” — but it would not have been out of character if he had.

If you are not already a Trump supporter, then everything you have seen so far in the president’s campaign has been designed to convince you not to vote.

But why did Trump do this? Why would he take the risk of appearing so unpresidential and bad-tempered just a few weeks before the election? To answer these questions, we need to step back and consider two related questions: 1)Where does Trump stand in the current race? and 2) What role debates play in presidential contests?

The answer to the first question is that Trump is seriously behind. Polls currently show him 7–10 points behind Biden in the national election and behind by similar margins in most battleground states. Yes, Trump was behind Clinton in 2016, but only by 2–3 points, well within margins of error. No presidential candidate since the invention of polling has made up as much ground as Trump needs to make up in the time that is left.

But perhaps the more important fact is that Trump has never once in his presidency had an approval rating above 50%. Most presidents fluctuate over a wide field in the course of four years. Trump has remained fairly steady, never going over 50%, but never falling very far below 40%. And there are almost no undecided’s left. Just about everybody int he country has made up their mind about the President, and their minds have changed surprisingly little in four years. Polling has also revealed an “enthusiasm gap” between Trump’s and Biden’s supporters. Trump supporters are more enthusiastic about their candidate and more likely to vote.

So, the shape of each candidate’s support looks like this:

Some portion of the electorate that is below 50% supports Trump no matter what he does, and this segment of the population is highly likely to vote.

Another portion of the election that is above 50% does not support Trump and supports Biden, but are less committed to Biden than Trump’s supporters are committed to Trump.

When we frame the question in the terms of Trump’s current standing, we can see that the best way for Trump to win it to convince people not to vote. In theory, this should disproportionally disadvantage Biden, since Trump’s voters are more committed and more enthusiastic about voting than Biden’s voters. If you are not already a Trump supporter, then everything you have seen so far in the president’s campaign has been designed to convince you not to vote. This is why Trump has railed against mail-in voting during a pandemic. It is why he has called out to armed militia groups to intimidate voters. And it was the only thing he was trying to accomplish in the first debate.

You see, if you are not going to vote for Trump, then it does not matter to Trump why you stay home. The best way to prevent people from voting is to make them think that there is nothing to vote for — that the system is so irredeemably broken that there is no hope of ever making it better. If the system is hopelessly broken, then there is no reason to try to fix it. If politics are ugly and disgusting, then we might as well do something fun. If we despair for our country, then there is no reason to participate in civic life. A candidate who profits from low voter turnout has every incentive to make our experiences with politics hopeless, disgusting, and depressing.

When Americans watch a debate between two presidential candidates and see nothing but bickering pre-schoolers, our natural reaction is to reject the entire system that they represent and cry in despair for our broken country. This is not a side-effect; this is the intended effect. To win re-election, Trump must convince Americans that the system is so broken that there is no reason to vote and the future so bleak that there is no value in hope. We all need to remember that this is just another one of Donald Trump’s well-documented lies.