What a difference two-and-a-half months make.

It was just late June when Donald Trump and Joe Biden faced off in the first presidential debate of the season. As it turns out, thanks to his disastrous performance, it was Biden’s last presidential debate ever.

Tomorrow is the second presidential debate, but it might as well be the first. Kamala Harris will be making her debate debut as a presidential candidate. She and Trump have never faced off before. Indeed, the two have never even met because Trump skipped the 2021 inauguration festivities after his failed coup attempt.

Debates are all about expectations and spin. The expectation for the June debate was that Biden would show Trump up for the blowhard he is, which is why the Biden campaign pushed for a debate so early in the election cycle. We all know how that worked out.

However, it’s hard to imagine that Harris isn’t in a much better position going into the debate than Trump is. For one thing, Trump can’t stop himself from vomiting his inner dialogue, which rightly disgusts a lot of voters. He digresses, he rambles, he struggles to put a coherent thought together. Biden’s poor performance was the spectacle at the last debate. This time out Trump won’t have that foil.

At the same time, Harris is used to arguing her case. After all, she was a prosecutor, where her job was to convince a jury. She knows how to lay out her argument and draw people into it. She knows that this time the voting public is her jury, and she will argue accordingly.

  • esc27@lemmy.world
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    7 days ago

    The “media” has spent the last week setting the bar so low that when Trump comes out hopped up on stimulants, nothing in the debate itself will matter, and he will get a huge boost from simply not appearing as old as Biden did.

  • vegeta@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    His cult will claim he won the debate, even if he shits his pants and starts talking like a baby.

    • ClanOfTheOcho@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      The Mult will just go back to wearing diapers and carrying rattles at rallies and other events. Because, as they’d tell you, that’s not weird at all. Now, tan suits, don’t get them started.

    • Cyyris@infosec.pub
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      8 days ago

      Exactly this.

      My mother continually defends that jackass every time I try and bring up how unhinged and nonsensical he sounds - such as when rambling about sharks, or Gettysburg.

      “Oh sweetie, he’s just kidding! He likes to joke and kid around!”

      No…No mom, he’s a deranged lunatic who can barely string together two coherent sentences.

      • solsangraal@lemmy.zip
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        8 days ago

        for someone who “tells it like it is,” he sure does need a lot of people to interpret when he’s “taken out of context” or “joking” or “locker room talk” or “alternative fact-ing” or any other bullshit to explain away his saying the quiet part out loud

    • satanmat@lemmy.world
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      8 days ago

      This is the point that non trump people don’t grok.

      His supporters don’t care.

      His Multists (totally stealing that from now on) won’t be swayed by data or any facts. They won’t That 1/3 of the population would vote for him even if they were being rounded up for the camps.

      • oxjox@lemmy.ml
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        8 days ago

        Or twice impeached.

        I genuinely still have no idea how we’re still talking about this guy at all never mind considering electing him as president again. This fucking country is so monumentally stupid.

  • Rapidcreek@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    He does the same ( Heads I win, Tails you lose ) crap every 4 damn years. If he does not universally suck , he “won” if the MSM says he lost it’s “rigged” . Classic behavior from narcissists and con-artists , who lots of time are one and the same.

  • reddig33@lemmy.world
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    8 days ago

    He should’ve been worried about debating Hillary. It didn’t matter. People have already made up their minds about who they are voting for.

    • finley@lemm.ee
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      8 days ago

      there are - astonishingly - a lot of undecided voters - especially those who would otherwise not have voted at all - as well as a lot of people i’m calling “Maybe-Not-Trumpers” who aren’t gonna vote for Kamala, but just might be pushed into staying home rather than voting for Trump after finally being pushed too far by him and his politics. from polling i’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, these two groups makes up enough (esp in the surprise in-play swing states of FL and PA) that it could make a real difference for Kamala.

      esp in FL and other states where cannabis and abortion are on the ballot (again, like FL), there’s expected to be huge turnout from the left that could even swing the state. i’m not getting my hopes too high, but FL could go blue for the first time in 20 years this election, from top to bottom, president to senate to state house, even in some significant local elections. Desantis fucking blew it here for the GOP, and two decades of failures have changed a lot of voters’ positions here.

    • ByteOnBikes@slrpnk.net
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      8 days ago

      The only value to come out of this is getting more sound bites of old man Trump to blast onto billboards and remind people to vote.