On June 27, CNN will be hosting the earliest general election debate in presidential history with the presumptive party nominees Democratic President Joe Biden and Republican former President Donald Trump, a few weeks before the Republican nominating convention in Milwaukee on July 15-18 and almost two months before the Democratic convention Aug. 19-22.
Since 1976, all general election presidential debates occurred in September and October of the election year. The debates in 1960 were all in September and October as well. Before that, there were no general election debates. And there were no debates between 1964 and 1972.
To be certain, there’s never been an election year debate between the presumptive party nominees prior to the conventions. But why so early?
The New York Times’ Reid J. Epstein and Shane Goldmacher’s reporting on May 15 was instructive that Biden’s goal in pushing the debates forward by three months is to turn the race around: “President Biden, trailing in polls, is hoping to shake up the race and mitigate political risk… Tens of millions of dollars of advertising has not changed President Biden’s polling deficit. Donald J. Trump’s criminal trial has not altered the race’s trajectory. And Mr. Biden’s significant cash and infrastructure advantages have yet to pay political dividends.”
And so, Biden wanted the debate to be earlier: “the Biden campaign shook up the race, publicly offering to bring forward the first presidential debate by three months. The move was meant to jolt Americans to attention sooner than later about their consequential choice in 2024. Mr. Biden’s advisers have long believed that the dawning realization of a Trump-Biden rematch will be a balm for the president’s droopy approval ratings.”
Epstein and Goldmacher added, “[It’s] a bet that an accelerated debate timeline will force voters to tune back into politics and confront the possibility of Mr. Trump returning to power.”
Surely, there’s more than enough time between now and November for voters to figure out who the candidates are going to be — as if they are living under a rock — and to change voter attitudes via a traditional campaign with the debates occurring after Labor Day.
But 2024 is no traditional election year, with the Democratic prosecutors in the Biden administration and New York and Georgia bringing criminal cases against Trump with the presumed intent to imprison the leader of the opposition party in an election year, while attentive media and polling outfits continually probe what political impacts the trials and convictions are having on Biden’s reelection prospects.
So far, not so good, with Trump having led the race nationally since Sept. 2023, currently with a lead of 45.4 percent to 44.6 percent, according to latest average compiled by RealClearPolling.com. The five-way race doesn’t help Biden, either, with Trump still ahead 42.6 percent to 39.7 percent, and Robert Kennedy, Jr. garnering 7.4 percent, Jill Stein at 1.6 percent and Cornell West at 1.3 percent.
And so, the early debate and doing it before the conventions must be political, too. That is, if after the debate, the race still looks much like it has for the past several months, with Biden behind and with poor approval and favorability ratings, given Biden’s age at 81 years old, the goal may be to replace the incumbent president at the last minute at the August nominating convention.
Although Democrats might want to think carefully about that. Not many polls have been done lately on this matter, but Trump leads Vice President Kamala Harris in national polls as well, 49.3 percent to 42.7 percent. California Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom fares even worse, with Trump leading 48.6 percent to 38.3 percent. In other words, the only candidates who do worse than Biden is just about everyone else.
It didn’t work out too well for Democrats in 1952 and 1968 either when Harry Truman and Lyndon Johnson opted not to seek another term, with Republicans winning both contests fairly easily. Besides lack of a good candidate as an alternative to a sitting president, the other reason is simply the show of weakness of replacing a sitting president from within one’s own party because things had gotten so bad politically for the incumbent party.
That said, all of the elements for gauging Biden’s performance in the June 27 debate and to replace him if necessary are all in play with more than enough time before the convention to stage a political coup on the convention floor. A lot will depend on how Biden and Trump (who might not even be able to attend the Republican convention if New York City judge Juan Merchan sentences him to jail on July 11) are able to perform, and then what the mood of the respective parties are to unleash a dark horse candidate. As usual, stay tuned.
Robert Romano is the Vice President of Public Policy at Americans for Limited Government Foundation.
