It’s a sorry sight to see: The Democratic National Committee (DNC) announced this week that the historically unpopular president will not debate his opponents regardless of format, place or time.
No doubt this was done to ensure that President Biden’s path to the nomination and to a second term is as smooth as possible.
In February, the DNC announced that Iowa will no longer be the first nominating contest in the nation, as it has been since 1972. But Biden has never performed well there in presidential contests, finishing 5th in 2008 and 4th in 2020.
So, the DNC changed the schedule, no doubt at least in part to give Biden the proper momentum. Which state is now first? South Carolina, which saved Biden’s candidacy in 2020.
Democrats must figure Biden needs all the help he can get. A recent USA Today/Suffolk University poll shows that Biden hasn’t exactly earned the right to bypass the debates. The poll found that 67 percent of voters would vote for Biden in a Democratic primary.
But 14 percent prefer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., while 5 percent goes to Marianne Williamson and 13 percent to “someone else.”
Worse for Team Biden, a recent NBC News/Wall Street Journal survey shows 70 percent of voters saying they do not want Biden to seek a second term. You read that correctly: seven in 10. But here’s the real eye-popper within the same poll: Most Democrats (51 percent) also say they don’t want him running.
Eighty-six percent cite the president’s age (he’ll be 82 on Election Day) as their primary reason for not wanting him to run. Yet the DNC wants to send Biden directly to the political version of the Super Bowl without having to earn it in the regular season or playoffs (the debates). It’s the DNC’s own witness protection program.
Such debate skipping isn’t limited to Biden. Now-Arizona Gov. Katie Hobbs (D) refused to appear on stage with her Republican opponent, Kari Lake, and received very little pushback from local and national media for not doing so. Now-Sen. John Fetterman (D-Pa.) refused several invitations from local news stations to debate his Republican opponent, Dr. Mehmet Oz, and waited until tens of thousands of votes had been cast before agreeing to one debate just a few days before Election Day. Both Democratic candidates won.
On the Republican side, Donald Trump is already throwing down the gauntlet against debating, citing his “seemingly insurmountable lead” in the GOP primary.
But Trump’s lead in NBC’s latest poll of Republican voters is just 15 points. The 45th president doesn’t even break 50 percent in said poll. That’s hardly insurmountable considering that his chief rival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, hasn’t even officially declared his candidacy.
Trump has played the victim before in avoiding debates, dropping out of two in 2016, citing moderator bias.
But if he’s confident in his arguments, why run from the stage? Unless the plan is to try to sit on a lead and avoid being uncomfortable. Another thought is that Trump would rather sit back and watch his opponents beat each other up rhetorically while he mocks them on Truth Social from afar. But that would do him no favors when he gets to the general election and needs to court independent voters in the weeks before the election. Debates are often watched by 70-80 million people.
We may ultimately have two presidential candidates who avoid participating in even one debate in the primaries or the general election campaign. This simply cannot stand. It isn’t how the process has ever worked. But the campaigns and parties don’t seem to care. It’s all about avoiding risk now on both sides.
Safe spaces used to be confined to college campuses. Now they’re being embraced by two grown men seeking the Oval Office who don’t have the courage to debate.
Joe Concha is a media and politics columnist.