Greenery

On June 27, about four weeks from now, we’ll get to watch the first presidential debate for the 2024 election. Or not.

The announced changes to the debate process this year are so great that the proposed sequence could end up being sidetracked, for a number of reasons.

President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump surprised most political observers earlier this month by quickly reaching agreement on the format and the dates for a pair of debates. The planned dates are June 27 and Sept. 10, both significantly earlier than the standard round of debates conducted by the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates.

A big reason for the schedule change is that the two major party candidates are taking control of the debate process themselves, and bypassing the bipartisan commission, which has governed the presidential debates for many years.

Both Biden and Trump are unhappy with the commission’s conduct of the debates in 2020. So when Biden proposed rules for the June 27 event, to be conducted by the CNN cable news network, he made some big changes. 

One of those is that there will be no studio audience — the debate venue will include just the two candidates and the CNN moderators, Jake Tapper and Dana Bash. That will eliminate the distractions of cheering and jeering from the crowd, allowing candidates and moderators alike to concentrate on the debate questions. 

Another frustration for Biden in the first of the 2020 debates was Trump’s outbursts and interruptions, which those moderators were unable to contain. Biden proposes that the upcoming June 27 event impose strict time limits for answers, equal speaking time with candidates taking alternative turns to speak, and microphones that allow each candidate to speak only in his own turn.

Whether Trump is willing and/or able to live within those rules is a question in many observers’ minds. Although he agreed to Biden’s terms, Trump still wrote on his Truth Social network, “I would strongly recommend more than two debates and, for excitement purposes, a very large venue, although Biden is supposedly afraid of crowds.”

If Trump agrees to the format and rules for the first debate, and then refuses to abide by them, Biden might decide to scrub the September confrontation, which is planned for hosting by ABC TV with moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis. 

Biden wanted the June debate set so early in order to allow Americans to see it before early voting begins. It also will come a relatively short time after Trump’s trial in New York on charges of election fraud involving the Stormy Daniels payoff, thereby keeping the trial fresh in voters’ minds.

Another complicating factor: the networks’ debate rules provide that the events will be open to any presidential candidate who gets at least 15% support in four separate approved national polls between March 15 and June 20, as well as getting on enough ballots to have a mathematical path to win a majority of the electoral college votes, and agreeing to the debate rules.

Those guidelines would theoretically make possible a place on the debate stage for independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. But Biden’s team has told CNN that Biden will participate only in two one-on-one debates with Trump, and Trump reportedly agreed to that requirement. That’s despite Trump’s desire for more than two debates, maybe for as many as one per month leading up to the November election.

Kennedy has more than 15% favorability in two of the mandatory four nationally recognized polls so far, and is diligently working on qualifying to be placed on the ballot in enough states to give him the possibility of achieving more than the 270 electoral votes necessary to win the election. 

Consequently, the Kennedy team is reportedly contemplating filing a lawsuit against the Trump and Biden campaigns, and possibly the participating TV networks, if RFK, Jr. is frozen out of the debates. 

Biden also proposed a July vice presidential debate, after the Republican national convention and before the Democratic one; that confrontation is still in the talking stage.

The numerous changes to the previous debate rules, bad blood between the Trump and Biden campaign teams, and the Kennedy wild card all make for a shaky platform for the June 27 debate, and probably for the Sept. 10 face-off as well. It would not come as a surprise if something arose in the next four weeks that induced one candidate or the other to say, “Let’s call the whole thing off.”

So the Commission on Presidential Debates is still planning for four debates this fall, starting Sept. 16 with the first one in Texas, to be carried by major broadcast and cable news networks. We’ll see if that fallback position yet proves to be the one that wins out, as it has done since 1988.

Rick Morain is a reporter and columnist with the Jefferson Herald.