Biden’s got the upper hand going into the first presidential debate — but Trump can still dislodge him from the lead.
“Biden can’t put two sentences together,” the president claimed in July. “I don’t know if he’s all there,” he said last week.
So Step 1 for Biden is clear. If he performs as cogently as he did in the final primary debates in March or during his appearance at a CNN town hall Sept. 17, he wins.Trump’s goal is to knock Biden off stride — to rattle him with wild attacks, distract him by distorting his positions or make him angry by attacking his son Hunter’sBiden has a temper, and when it gets the better of him — as it did last year in Iowa, when he called a voter “a damn liar” — he doesn’t look presidential.
For more tips on strategy, I consulted two political professionals who have prepared candidates to debate Trump before: Philippe Reines, who advised Hillary Clinton in her 2016 presidential campaign, and Alex Conant, who worked for Sen. Marco Rubio in that year’s GOP primaries.Reines — who in Clinton’s prep sessions played the role of Trump, in an ill-fitting blue suit and too-long red tie — told me Biden needs to find a measured way to parry the president’s attacks.
“Trump will do everything he can to make that difficult by throwing the kitchen sink at Biden,” he added. “You can’t ignore him, but counterpunching doesn’t work, either; Trump loves it. So Biden needs to dispense with Trump’s attacks without playing Trump’s game. We never really figured out how to do it.”For Biden: Don’t try to land a knockout blow; Trump has done a fine job defeating himself without your help.
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