Predictions of The First 2020 Presidential Debate
Luca Katzen, ‘22
With the pandemic, protests and everything else that is going on right now, it seems like the first 2020 presidential debate is the least important thing on our minds, yet here it is. This year and campaign season have been filled with seemingly endless disasters and world issues that make it hard to focus on anything, let alone electing a new president. Regardless, it is at times like these that a struggling nation needs a strong president and the presidential debates help to shape voter’s minds on which candidate is most suited for office. The topics that the candidates are likely to debate are: COVID-19, health care, climate change, immigration, race and equity issues, tax records of the candidates, and election integrity. But the official topics released by the moderator Chris Wallace (Fox News Anchor) are : "Trump and Biden records, the Supreme Court, COVID-19, the economy, race and violence in our cities and the integrity of the election.” With that in mind, here are some of my predictions on what will happen in the debate.
COVID-19:
At this moment Donald Trump has no COVID-19 plans on his campaign website but he has said numerous times publicly that the virus will go away soon and that we will have a vaccine by October 1st. On the other hand, Joe Biden has a clear three step plan on his website detailing how if elected he plans to combat the pandemic. These steps are to “Listen to science, ensure public health decisions are informed by public health professionals and restore trust, transparency, common purpose, and accountability to our government.” From this, I am assuming that Trump will make the point that he has led the United States into flattening the curve of Coronavirus cases and has more experience in leading the country through times of crisis than his opponent. Biden will probably respond along the lines of all the success Trump has claimed in battling the coronavirus pandemic were due to the CDC and state governments not Trump. It is also worth mentioning that new polls show that Trump’s response to the COVID-19 Pandemic has extremely low support (less that ⅓ of the population supports it) and many Americans feel that Trump is downplaying the virus as a whole.
Climate Change:
Donald Trump denies that climate change is an issue. Trump has a huge coalition with coal miners (no pun intended) and fossil fuel companies so he has no interest in abolishing these economies to stop climate change. Joe Biden acknowledges that climate change is a huge issue for the future and promises to sign executive orders to bring US net emissions to 0% by 2050 and make the United States a clean energy economy. It should be mentioned that Biden has stated that he will not ban fracking (a harmful practice of injecting oil into the ground to extract natural gas and oils) which was a major issue in the 2012 election. I predict that this debate will largely be an argument about science and whether to believe it rather than plans for how to stop climate change. Donald Trump most likely will continue to deny that climate change is an issue and Joe Biden will counter with statistics and data proving that it is. Joe Biden may also mention that the clean energy market is a growing economy and it will only create jobs and help stop climate change in the future.
Race and Equity Issues:
Once again, Donald Trump has no information about race or equity issues on his campaign website. However, Trump has called Black Lives Matter protests and civil rights activists, criminals. He also supports the ‘All Lives Matter’ movement which opposes the black lives matter movement and claims that there is no racism in the United States. Biden on the other hand supports the Black Lives Matter movement as well as many other civil rights campaigns in remarks he has made in interviews but has nothing about it on his website. It should be noted that in numerous interviews Biden has ‘slipped up’ and ‘accidently’ said some controversial things about race. In addition Biden has gained a lot of support amongst black and latino voters since he announced that Kamala Harris (the first black woman to be nominated for vice-president) would be his running mate. I predict that once again Donald Trump will deny there is an issue about race in the US and refute evidence like the police murder of George Floyd and the racially motivated murder of Ahmaud Arbery (to name a few victims) when Biden argues that something needs to be done. Biden has not released a plan on how to make the United States more racially equitable so maybe he will use the platform of the debate to do so.
As the 2020 presidential election nears, it will be very interesting to see how these candidates try to persuade voters to choose them. What will be the biggest issues of the debate? Which candidate will sway more voters? Regardless of the outcome of the debate please be sure to go out and vote if you are 18 or encourage your friends and family to vote. This election is crucial in determining when the COVID-19 crisis ends and when the US economy can get back to normal so it is more important than ever to vote and make your voice heard. By the time this article is published the debate will already have happened but be sure to watch recaps on YouTube if you missed it!