What Biden must do to win the first debate, according to top House Democrats
By Michael Jones
We’ve arrived at the biggest inflection point in the general election to date: The first presidential debate, which will take place tonight in Atlanta between former President Donald Trump and current President Joe Biden.
And no, your calendar isn’t deceiving you. The debate comes almost three full months earlier than any previous iteration of the event featuring both major party candidates.
The accelerated timeline was requested by the Biden campaign, an acknowledgment that the president’s message has yet to break through on the national stage—if current polling and anecdotal evidence from folks who aren’t terminally online political obsessives are to be trusted. And since Trump repeatedly said he would debate his successor anytime and anywhere, his camp had little choice but to oblige.
The hope within Bidenworld is that a performance on par with his State of the Union address in March will energize his base heading into the dog days of summer, when both parties will officially nominate Trump and Biden at their conventions in Milwaukee next month and Chicago in August, respectively.
People within the president’s orbit quietly expect Trump to deliver an unhinged enough performance to jog people’s memories of the worst parts of the latter’s administration—from his poor response to the pandemic to his inflammatory rhetoric in the wake of the George Floyd protests and the insurrection he incited at the US Capitol – the building where I’m writing to you from.
Both candidates have their work cut out for themselves, to be honest. But former President Donald Trump has a baked-in advantage since his base is far more homogeneous in identity and ideology than Biden’s. Sure, his most loyal supporters alone won’t be enough to return him to the Oval Office. However, his isolationist populism still speaks to their spirits as deeply as it did when he descended that Trump Tower escalator nine years ago into presidential politics.
On the other hand, the Democratic Party has historically won because of its big-tent nature: a multicultural bloc united by a collective pursuit of a broad social safety net, fair tax code, and economic, social, and environmental justice.
It’s against this backdrop that President Joe Biden will seek to connect to all sides of the tent as he draws the contrast against his opponent and demonstrates the vigor required to perform the job at his advanced age for four more years.
It’s a challenge, but one that’s not insurmountable based on more than a dozen interviews this week with more than a dozen House Democrats, representing a cross-section of the coalitions Biden will need to turn out in November to maintain American democracy as we know it.
Since the last presidential election, 16 million Americans have reached voting age for the first time and are poised to influence the domestic agenda with millions of registered millennial voters.
“I’m really looking forward to hearing the president’s positive, forward-thinking vision about what he’s going to do to address particularly the costs that so many young people are facing right now,” Rep. Sara Jacobs (Calif.), the youngest member of the House Democratic leadership, told me.”To me, that really is around housing and health care.”
Jimmy Gomez, another member of California’s congressional delegation and the founder of the Congressional Dads Caucus, highlighted the economic barriers Biden must address to show his policies will help young people start families and parents get ahead.
“Right now, the American people are still dealing with increasing costs of specifically child care and rent. And I think he needs to talk about what he’s done and what he’s going to do,” he said. “And these are issues that are not going away. When people talk about inflation, it really comes down to [those two things].”
Gomez agreed with Jacobs that the president must outline a vision for his second term that resonates with disaffected voters.
“Those costs are gonna crowd out a family’s finances when it comes to the ability to buy a home, to start a business, and put a kid through college,” he said. “It’s gonna really hurt in the long term. So I want to hear him talk about what he’s done, but what he’s gonna do for a second term.”
Democratic Women’s Caucus Chair Lois Frankel (Fla.) said the president should also address other economic issues, including paid family leave and long-term care for older Americans.
“I think that’s top of the list because those are the kinds of things that we can really affect,” she added.
Abortion will certainly emerge as a hot topic during the debate, which comes three days after the second anniversary of the Dobbs Supreme Court decision that overturned the national right to abortion care.
Rep. Dianna DeGette (Colo.), who co-chairs the Pro-Choice Caucus with Rep. Barbara Lee (Calif.), told me that Americans need to hear from President Biden about how since Republicans took away for the first time in American history a freedom women had for nearly 50 years, his administration and congressional Democrats have worked to restore federal protections.
“Donald Trump, he’s gonna be all over the map because he just wants to get elected,” DeGette said. “But his record shows he appointed [three] of the justices that caused Roe vs. Wade to be overturned, and he has supported state laws that would ban all abortions from the time of conception—no exceptions for rape or incest. So his record is pretty clear.”
Annie Kuster, a retiring New Hampshire Democrat who heads the center-left New Democrat Coalition, said the impact of the fall of Roe on American lives across the country can’t be overstated.
“By the way, not just people seeking to terminate a pregnancy people seeking to have a healthy pregnancy when they have complications and they can’t get the health care that they need involving IVF involving access to birth control—these are issues that impact men and women young and old in every corner of the country,” she said.
Biden told donors at a fundraiser a few weeks ago that the next president could nominate two justices to the Supreme Court. Meanwhile, pundits have speculated that if Trump wins back the presidency, embattled Justices Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas could step down and be replaced with young nominees who could serve for three or four decades.
“I think that he does need to tie Trump to this court a lot tighter,” Rep. Jasmine Crockett (Texas), a member of the newly formed Court Reform Now Task Force, told me about the president’s messaging on the high court. “What you should understand is that this Supreme Court is Trump’s Supreme Court, and they have attacked you and there’s only going to be more attacks upon you.”
The bottom line, according to Crockett: “It’s not about picking your best friend. It’s about picking yourself and deciding that you are worthy of something more than what it is that we’re getting from the powers that be.”
Robin Kelly, an Illinois representative and member of the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, told me Americans are worthy of a nation free from the scourge of mass shootings and preventable firearm-related homicide, suicide, and accidental and law-enforcement deaths.
“I think he’s not so much talked [about] but shown his action actually by opening for the first time ever an Office of Gun Violence Prevention. And he’s a person that respects the Second Amendment, but I think that by passing and signing into law the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act [two years ago], she said of the president. “If you have your gun legally and you’re not trying to hurt yourself or anybody else, I don’t think you need a military-style weapon. People are not trying to take your gun away.”
Several members told me it’s not enough for Biden to discuss the issues in broad strokes. They say he must also personalize them to diverse communities so voters within them feel seen and heard.
Congressional Black Caucus Chair Steven Horsford (Nev.) said that translates into differentiating from Trump a plan for the future to build Black wealth and economic prosperity at a time when Black households have less than one-fourth of the average wealth of white households.
Immigration policy will impact the Latino community and Congressional Hispanic Caucus Chair Nanette Barragán told me Biden should lean into his record on the issue.
“One is going to go and deport as many people that look Latino as possible, even if they’re American citizens. And he’s even said that he’s gonna round up people and some of them were going to be innocent and even talked about a poor, innocent woman with children that would at some point make it in the news,” she said. “So just remind people about the differences, because there’s only one clear choice here to advance a Latino agenda.”
Another reminder Biden should make, according to Rep. Judy Chu (Calif.), is of the xenophobia Trump unfurled toward the Asian American community during the pandemic.
“What I tell all Asian American audiences is that we cannot afford to have Trump back in office. He’s the one that put a target on our backs during COVID-19 and called COVID-19 ‘Kung flu’ and ‘China virus,’ ‘Wuhan virus,’” Chu, who chairs the Congressional Pacific Asian American Caucus, told me. “He is the one that I hold solely responsible for the 11,500 anti-Asian hate crimes and incidents that occurred during that period where we suffered so much.”
And as Pride Month comes to a close, Congressional Equality Co-Chair Mark Pocan (Wisc.) said Biden should talk up his pro-LGBTQ+ record a day after First Lady Dr. Jill Biden hosted the White House Pride Month celebration on the South Lawn and Biden pardoned thousands of service members convicted under the military’s previous ban on consensual gay sex.
“He’s got a proven record and he’s got an agenda going forward where Donald Trump will probably be all over the place,” he said. “The Equality Act is our 800-pound gorilla of advancement and it’d be great if he found a way to mention that if the questions come up that allow him to.”
Michael Jones is an independent Capitol Hill correspondent and contributor for COURIER. He is the author of Once Upon a Hill, a newsletter about Congressional politics.
