Democrats

The US will get confirmation that election season is under way on Tuesday night, when Donald Trump and his Democratic challenger, Joe Biden, face each other in the first presidential debate.The debate, held in Ohio, is the first of three tête-à-têtes ahead of the vote on 3 November.Both Biden and Trump have said they are looking forward to the debate, and onlookers are set to be subjected to an hour and a half of argument between the Democratic nominee and the Republican president.Here’s what you need to know.When is the debate?It will begin at 9pm US eastern time (ET). The event will run until 10.30pm ET.Where is it taking place?At the Case Western Reserve University and Cleveland Clinic, in Cleveland, Ohio.Ohio has been a swing state over the past two decades, but Trump won there by eight points in 2016. The state is seen as trending towards becoming more solidly Republican, due to its whiter, older population compared with the rest of the US.Who’s moderating?Fox News host Chris Wallace will be the man in charge. The Fox News channel has been fawning in its coverage of Trump for the past four years, but Wallace is seen as a relatively independent, straight journalist.Wallace won praise for an interview with Trump in July, when he challenged Trump over the coronavirus death count and memorably dug into Trump’s claim to have aced a cognitive test. He’s no favourite of Trump – who on Thursday baselessly claimed Wallace is “controlled by the radical left”.What’s the format?The debate will have six 15-minute segments. It will run for 90 minutes, with no breaks for commercials. There will be no opening statements, and the first question will go to Trump.Wallace said he’s hoping to let the debate flow. He isn’t expected to factcheck either candidate – it would be a mammoth, time-consuming task – and has said he will strive to be as “invisible as possible”.What about coronavirus precautions?The podiums will be further apart than usual, and Biden and Trump won’t shake hands before or after. According to CNN 60 to 70 people are expected to be in the audience, way below the usual number at a presidential debate.What’s up for debate?Wallace was in charge of selecting the six topics, and they were announced by the Commission on Presidential Debates last week. They are:The records of President Trump and former vice-president Joe Biden.
The supreme court.
Covid-19.
The economy.
Race and violence in our cities.
The integrity of the election.
How are the candidates preparing?Biden is said to have spent days preparing, and has held mock debates with Bob Bauer, campaign adviser and former White House general counsel, ABC News reported. Bauer has apparently adopted Trump’s debate style for the practice sessions.Trump has used flashcards and videos to prepare and has eschewed traditional rehearsals, CBS News reported.On Sunday, Trump said Rudy Giuliani and the former New Jersey governor Chris Christie had been helping him prepare. According to CBS, Trump aides have studied Biden’s debate habits and created an “arsenal” of material for Trump to use.How can I watch?All major US networks are airing the debate, and most news channels, so Americans are spoilt for choice. ABC, CBS, CNN, C-Span, Fox News, MSNBC and NBC are among those who will carry it live. Most of those networks will also offer live coverage online.Outside the US, viewers can watch the debate on C-Span, a non-profit bipartisan cable channel which televises government proceedings. The channel will run coverage on its website and YouTube channel.The Guardian will also be streaming the debate, as well as offering live coverage, factchecking and analysis. More

For Democrats and supporters of former vice-president Joe Biden’s presidential campaign, the hope is that the version of Biden who faced then-congressman Paul Ryan back in 2012 shows up for the debate against Donald Trump on Tuesday in Ohio.The Biden who showed up for the Ryan debate eight years ago helped turn around the trajectory of then-President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign. Ask just about any former Obama campaign alumna or Democratic strategist and they will concede that Obama’s performance against Mitt Romney in the first debate was lacking.“I would describe what he did in 2012 as a circuit breaker,” said Tad Devine, who ran Vermont senator Bernie Sanders’ 2016 presidential campaign.It was a low point in the campaign, former Obama campaign staffers recalled in interviews with the Guardian, and it was unclear whether Biden’s performance in the vice-presidential debate would help lift the suddenly faltering campaign back up or let it sink further.“Obama’s performance was just miserable,” Devine said of the first 2012 debate between Obama and Romney. “Biden went in there against Ryan and, boy, he was appropriately aggressive. On point. Really drove the thing and I think staunched the bleeding.”Staffers for the reelection campaign often contrast the first debate with the vice-presidential debate. “Obama had flubbed the first debate and there was a lot of pressure on [Biden] to deliver and he nailed it and I know he sort of cold-cocked them,” a top reelection campaign adviser recalled.The stakes for Biden’s performance are far higher in 2020 as he now tops the Democratic ticket and faces off against a norm-shattering figure such as Trump in a momentous election the whole world is watching. “The first one is almost the whole ball game because we have a polarized country, everyone knows who they’re going to vote for except for a small group of people and they’ll watch the first debate and make a judgement,” said Bill Daley, a former chief of staff to Obama who also advised Biden on one of his earlier White House bids.But the Biden who took the stage alongside Ryan, Mitt Romney’s nominee for vice-president, surprised some. He was energetic policy literate. And he didn’t produce the verbal missteps that for years he was famed for. As Ryan ticked off statistics or delivered his carefully crafted attack lines, Biden switched between stern seriousness and exasperated eyerolls. Seven minutes into the debate Biden used one of his trademark phrases – “Malarkey!” – to parry a remark by Ryan.“Not a single thing he said is accurate,” Biden said with a determined smile on his face before he went on to detail how Ryan, as chairman of the House ways and means committee, had a hand in cutting off funding for a US embassy in Benghazi.Whereas aides on the Obama campaign knew the president was not delivering in the first debate, the staff for Biden in the makeshift war room at Centre College in Kentucky flooded the spin room, where reporters interview candidates and surrogates after a debate, to capitalize on Biden’s performance.“The first hour, hour and a quarter had been so good it didn’t even matter what had happened next,” a former Obama campaign staffer recalled of that debate. “We wanted to convey that.”Similarly, at the Obama campaign reelection headquarters there was a strong sense of relief and optimism, according to multiple former staffers from that campaign. The campaign seemed to have overcome one of the bleaker periods.Eight years later, the stakes are different. Biden is now the Democrats’ presidential candidate. One of Donald Trump’s favorite attacks is to knock the 77 year old on his age or vivacity (though Trump himself is 74). Biden also benefits from being the underdog.“He benefits from low expectations going into these debates,” said David Wilhelm, who served as Biden’s Iowa campaign manager in his 1988 presidential bid. “Expectations can shift of course even from debate to debate. He’ll benefit from that.”Biden has made a habit of keeping his top advisers close to him for years. Ron Klain, the former vice president’s chief of staff who helped prep him in 2012, has been involved in coaching him this time around. Sheila Nix, another longtime aide who was involved in preparation in 2012, is now a top staffer for California senator Kamala Harris’s staffing contingent of the Biden campaign. Mike Donilon, another longtime Biden adviser, and Biden campaign deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield are also involved.Veterans of working with Biden and other campaigns argue that the former vice-president usually does better in head-to-head debates rather than multi-candidate ones. He also likes to get into policy without getting too wonky, recalled a top Obama campaign reelection adviser. But in preparation for debate he “just wants the backup to make the points that he wants to make”.“He was terrific in the 2012 vice presidential debates and I think that would be a better model for this than where he had ten people or eight people on stage,” said Bob Shrum, a veteran Democratic strategist who has advised Biden in the past and helped run rival Bob Kerrey’s 1992 presidential campaign.Biden and his team have been readying for this debate for weeks, but only in the past few days has the focus increased, according to a Democrat with ties to the campaign. Biden himself acknowledged that recently.“I’ve started to prepare but I haven’t gotten into it really heavily,” Biden said Wednesday while talking to a group of reporters. “I will beginning tomorrow.”He’s set to spend most of the final days before the debate preparing for it. Devine warned that the worst case for Biden is if voters come out of the debate questioning Biden’s capacity to be president. Devine stressed he didn’t think that would happen but “that’s how low they’ve set the bar”. More