How Biden's Stumbles Could Prove Advantageous

Why His Debate Troubles Could Set up a Fall for the Goliath

I empathize with the collective wave of despair among Democrats about Biden’s first debate performance. It was heart-breaking in many ways.

The near universal assessment was that if he didn’t doom his chances in November, he at least seriously diminished them. The panic that ensued reinforces that collective interpretation.

I want to offer an alternative viewpoint for why this first debate could actually turn into a surprising benefit for Biden’s re-election.

To start with, Americans love an underdog. They love comebacks. They love drama. And they love a battle. Look at the movies that drive us. We always root for the Rebellion over the Empire, especially when the Rebellion is counted out.

That is part of why, I believe, so many Americans have been willing to give a convicted felon and thwarted insurrectionist like Trump another chance. A comeback is energizing and dramatic. Trump hit rock bottom after the January 6th insurrection in terms of respect in the eyes of the country. It seemed almost unthinkable that he could rise again.

Nonetheless, slowly but surely he got the entire Republican party to fall in line and rebuild his popularity. Trump made his comeback, overcame his first felony convinction and he now sits astride this race in the position of presumptive winner. Instead of seeing him as the comeback kid, he’s now the incumbent, in some ways, with a relative cakewalk to victory against a diminished opponent.

He’s now the political Goliath and Democrats are afraid Biden doesn’t have what it takes to be David.

This rise into presumptive dominance early in the election cycle shifts the psychology in certain ways, turning Biden into the longer-shot underdog, while Trump again occupies center stage in the consciousness of America.

But remember, America loves rooting for an underdog.

During Trump’s time as President a solid majority of people did not like him one bit and felt frustrated and downright angry that he occupied so much attention in our culture. It was a painful experience for much of America, with the exception of his core base.

In four years, that pain eased and people now paint a rosier picture of the Trump era than they actually self-reported at the time. For those who felt pain during the first Trump presidency, a fair majority probably convinced themselve that America simply wouldn’t do that to ourseslves again.

The first debate punctured that bubble because it finally felt that Trump was actually going to win. It broke through non-MAGA America’s defenses that such a thing was truly possible.

For the coming months, Trump has become, in the nation’s psyche, our figurehead President again, which gives everyone a chance to see just how they like that experience.

My sense is that the bigger the lead Trump gains over Biden right now and the more demoralized Democrats are about Biden’s prospects, the more people will again have to come to terms again with the visceral disdain they felt for Trump’s “morals of an alley cat” to use Biden’s term.

In other words, we get a few month “test run” of what a second Trump term will actually feel like psychologically because the race no longer seems like an even contest. Until Biden blew the debate, it was easy to cling to denial that a Trump victory just could actually happen. Now everyone can taste it.

So what I think is going to happen is that people are going to begin to experience yet again just how much they dislike everything Trump stands for AND there is still time to avoid four more years with him. It will seriously motivate people.

What may kick in is a kind of collective awakening to the potential pain in the next four years by tasting that pain more vividly over the next few months.

Biden may be increasingly old but he simply doesn’t stir the level of deep distaste and aversion that Trump does when he is in the forefront of our consciousness as a country.

Here’s what I think Biden should do: stay out of the spotlight and let Trump hog the spotlight, strut around on the stage, and generally start acting like he is already President again. Let him do his victory laps. Let him boast about his debate prowess. Don’t even try to battle him on an ego level. Let him appear so victorious that America again has to feel what having a self-centered bully in the foreground of their day to day life is like again. I believe this will lead more and more people to prefer to be bored by Biden for another four years than traumatized by Trump. Biden is never going to compete with Trump on charisma and entertainment so he has to let people experience the pain of Trump in the center spotlight again.

Instead of making it even seem like a fair fight, Biden should just focus on making good decisions for America for the next ten weeks over the summer and being a good, but boring President. I think it’s better if he slows the campaigning and refrains from trying to battle Trump as it actually diminishes him. It’s wrestling in the mud with a pig who is skilled at mud-wrestling. He should just keep making progress for Americans while the Democrats panic that he’s going to lose. Meanwhile, he should share the story of each victory in governance in an intimate way, maybe next to a summer outdoor fire so we associate it with hearing a beloved elder’s wisdom. I think he needs to occupty the role of respected elder statesman who is bringing benefit to his country while Trump hogs the media spotlight to promote himself. This will help everyone remember just how much we didn’t like having him in the Oval Office. We need to let the memories become REAL again.

Then I think Biden should make sure to take the time to rest up for the next debate so he has more vigor and power in him for the home stretch. I actually think the best thing he could do is take two full weeks of vacation before the next debate so he can rest and restore. The truth is that the Presidency is taxing for anyone, much less an 81 year old. Taking a real vacation would help him show up with sufficient vigor for the debate and prove he has the energy for the job. Trump himself does this by spending a lot of time golfing and relaxing, which raises his energy levels, which is part of why he makes for a more entertaining pugilist.

After Biden renews his energy, I believe he would come onto that Sept. 10th stage and dramatically exceed expectations set by the first debate, just as America is starting to get very sick again of Trump’s boorishness at the center of our culture.

Then I think Biden takes a much more relaxed tour of the Swing States, just doing 1 event a day to keep his energy high. Meanwhile, Trump may be on his next decline as people get really sick of him and my guess he will overreach in some way that pushes collective alarm bells again around his dictator fantasies, which are now essentially unchecked by the latest Supreme Court ruling.

Meanwhile the media would have run the last set of storylines and start to converge around a “comeback” storyline as Trump declines and Biden starts to surge back.

While obviously this is all speculative, I think it’s helpful to consider as a possibility

With this logic, it may actually play to Biden’s advantage to look beaten down for a while, to trail in the polls, to have old allies try to push him out before the convention. That actually may make him into a more sympathetic underdog while Trump struts around on the stage with his preening, self-congratulatory stream of lies.

The human psyche tends to go through pendulum swings and I think the same thing happens collectively, which is why power so often oscillates between Democrats and Republicans. We recognize that the powerful tend to overreach and then its time for those out of power take control. The longer someone is in power, the more this impulse to apply a corrective can happen.

So Trump appearing to be in a commanding lead can lead to a surge in the corrective move to swing it back.

It’s interesting to me that virtually everyone wrote off Biden in the 2020 primaries. It can be hard to remember just how written off he was - too old, too boring, too center of the road, too old school. And yet he surged back to win.

Biden knows how to do a turnaround. He’s a savvy politician and this whole apparent disaster of debate could end up setting the stage for the kind of drama Americans love: a comeback.