These Debates Might Actually Matter

The 2024 presidential election season was rocked by President Joe Biden’s surprising (and pugnacious) challenge of Donald Trump to a pair of debates, a challenge that was, perhaps even more surprisingly, almost immediately accepted.

For most Americans, the argument against caring about these debates is an easy one. Selecting a president, as I say in my second book, Picking Presidents , is the most consequential decision in the world. And like any other important decision, if you want to make the best choice, you need to do your research. But in this case, we seem to have all the information we need. We know what a Biden presidency looks like — we’re living through one. We know what a Trump presidency looks like because we had one only four years ago. What’s the point?

Even though debates aren’t terribly predictive — post-debate polls suggested that Hillary Clinton won all three of her encounters with Donald Trump, for example — debates endure as a hallowed part of American political campaigns, sanctified by most Americans’ vague memories of what they learned in high school about Lincoln and Douglas. Presidential debates draw huge ratings — the first of the two debates last year had more than 73 million television viewers and additional millions over streaming.

Despite our apparent familiarity with the contenders, the massive audiences these debates will draw provide Biden a significant opportunity — one that more than justifies holding them. If he uses the debates to bridge the single greatest divide in American politics, he can reshape the race in his favor.

That crucial divide is not the one between liberals and conservatives, Democrats and Republicans, left and right, or really any ideological difference at all.

It’s between people who pay attention to politics — and people who don’t.

For a very large fraction of Americans, the political world is unknown territory. At the most basic level, for example, a 2023 survey by the Pew Research Center found that 37% of Americans did not know which party controlled the Senate, and 34% did not know which controlled the House. On the economic front, nearly three in five Americans wrongly believe the US is in a recession . And for what might be the most important issue of this presidential election — abortion — the numbers are just as staggering: 17% of voters blame Biden for the overturn of Roe and only about two-fifths of Republicans give Trump responsibility for it — even though Trump himself has said that he was “proudly the person responsible ” for it’s overturn. This misunderstanding is substantially more prevalent among Trump supporters than among voters at large. Similarly, surveys of battleground states which report leads for Donald Trump also report that “his strength is concentrated among irregular, disengaged voters who do not pay close attention to politics and may not yet be tuned into the race.”

To someone who is interested in politics, the contours of the first Trump Administration, the scandals constantly surrounding Trump, and even the specific content of his promises about what he will do in his next administration, are likely still fresh in their memory. But to many Americans, these are little more than hazy recollections.

Think of it like sports: If you’re an NFL fan, you probably remember what happened in the last Super Bowl. If you aren’t, you might remember who won, but you’re unlikely to know any more than that. When it comes to politics, many Americans have much more in common with the second group than the first.

This, then, is President Biden’s opportunity. The debates are a chance for him to remind voters — many of whom have forgotten — of everything that happened during the Trump presidency that they hated, and all the things that Trump is promising to do that they will oppose. And here he will have a target-rich environment. He must spend a significant amount of time on abortion.

But that’s only the beginning of what Trump offers him. On taxes, for example, Biden is proposing raising taxes on the wealthiest Americans, while Trump wants the “biggest tax cuts” but has offered no specifics. Which of those positions is a political winner? Raising taxes on the rich isn’t just popular with Democrats — it’s popular with Republicans, particularly in the critical swing states that will decide the election. But a plurality of those same voters trust Trump, not Biden, on taxes, despite their agreement with Biden’s positions. Similarly, Trump’s attacks on democracy are a political weakness that has not yet made its presence fully felt because most uncommitted voters are unaware of them — in fact only 31% of voters in four swing states had heard “a lot” about Trump’s various threats to democracy.

It is possible that knowledge will make no difference. Many of Trump’s supporters, after all, are fully aware of his record and his intent. Many other voters, however, simply are not. It won’t take many of them to swing the election, one way or the other. If enough of them are reminded — or even learn for the first time — of who Donald Trump was when he was president and who he is now, then the debates will have served a crucial role in this election.

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