Tomorrow after Tonight's Debate
I'll be white-knuckling it through the next 24 hours. So here... we... go...
Cassidy Steele Dale forecasts and contextualizes the present to equip us to make a better, kinder future…
… and one of those ways to forecast tonight and tomorrow.
Professional futurists try not to make forecasts (a) about specific people (b) who are competing or in conflict with each other, particularly when (c) they’re both undergoing real-time whitewater-rapid changes, and (d) both are so old they shouldn’t buy green bananas, but here we are.
So, for example, back in the 1980s, the Global Business Network — one of the groups of great futurists — were hired to figure out the futures for a particular country based on the competing internal tendencies of its president. They put the scenarios in the mail on a Friday and the next Monday the guy was assassinated.
I only one time against my better judgment allowed a student to do scenarios for the future of a place rooted in the competing internal tendencies of its visionary leader. Right after I gave the student his (good) grade the leader was fired.
(Lesson here should be that if you want to bend the universe to get rid of a guy, do scenarios on him. Or rather, don’t, because that would be mean. And bad theology.)
My point is that forecasts based on individuals are fragile. In fact, scenarios based on small groups of people — fewer than, say, 500 or so — are fragile for similar reasons. This is why I try not to forecast the actions of Congress or the Supreme Court: their numbers are too few and some of them are an unpredictable species of rabid badger anyway.
Anyway, I’m working on scenarios for futures of the GOP but they haven’t gelled yet because so much of the future for the GOP depends on how the next few weeks turn out for two people (Trump and Biden) and nine people (the Supreme Court). There’s a set of rapids immediately ahead — next two weeks-ish — that’s gonna be crucial to that whole forecast.
Tonight is the first presidential debate. I’ll come back to that in a minute.
Then there’s the Supreme Court rulings today/soon on whether Trump is immune from criminal prosecution and on whether the Executive Branch will still be able to, you know, execute laws made by the Legislative Branch.
Then Trump will be sentenced for all 34.
Then immediately after that he’ll become the Republican nominee for President of the United States. And how he accepts the nomination will matter a great deal.
Oh, and right before-or-after that Trump will announce his vice presidential pick.
All of those could serve as hinge points for the election and for the futures of the two parties.
So — as a futurist — when I look at hinge points like debates I care less about Who’s gonna win? as much as I ask What will change? and What will be the new normal tomorrow and going forward?
And by about noon tomorrow I think most of the country will have cemented into one of a few options:
Biden is old but still capable of everything we need him for. He’s just gonna need to do it from a rocking chair, that’s all. Trump, however, is an incoherent, whirling Tasmanian Devil of rage and meanness and revenge who had to be herded by dinosaur trainers back to the car.
Biden is too old and stiff to be reliable in a crisis but Trump is still quick and mean enough to be quick and mean for us.
Both are fine and still competent enough to stand trial and/or for election.
No one is home in either skull and both parties are going to be calling any able-bodied person down out of the hockey stands and onto the ice.
So while I’ve been trying to psychically enter the minds of both’s debate prep teams, I’ve also been trying to anticipate what sorts of things might yank the public into one of those four conclusions/mini-scenarios.
There’s the obvious, of course — Biden could have a brain lapse (or appear to) or stutter at the wrong moment or generally appear old and frail. And Trump could implode by exploding or have a shark-battery moment of incoherence.
And both could snark at each other about it. Which may be what all this boils down to.
So I keep thinking about killswitch quips like when Reagan replied to Carter in their debates There you go again, and Are you better off than you were four years ago? — which reframed that entire election and won it for Reagan.
What happened in that case was that it was clear the country wanted a new paradigm for governing. Carter presented the Same Old and Reagan presented the New. In 2016, Hillary Clinton presented the Same Old/Stability and Trump presented the Horrifying-but-New.
This election so far has mostly been about Old versus Old — even though it’s actually not.
So this election is ripe for a reframing, and the competition may not be between who has the best quips but who has the best quips that reframe the whole damn thing.
This would actually be easier to forecast if the debate were between Trump and Vice President Former-California-Attorney-General-Will-Kick-Your-Ass Kamala Harris because the first time Trump tried to shout over her she’d thunder at him CONVICT, STAND ON THE LINE and then say more sweetly And you should start getting used to hearing that. And Trump would then self-immolate down into a crisp on the stage out of rage and the rest of the 2024 campaign would become a contest between Competent Law and Convict Orange Crisp.
So I suspect both camps are practicing their quips. Recent reporting suggests that’s Trump’s only debate prep (which is terrifying) while Biden is substance-and-quip prepping (which is also terrifying).
I suspect Trump’s quips will be in the family of Having trouble there, Joe?
I suspect Biden’s quips will be in the families of (a) You got nothing there for the American people then, do ya? and (b) If you didn’t want to be prosecuted/convicted, you shouldn’t have committed all those crimes, then and (c) Dana and Jake, I’d like to respond to him but what he said was so incoherent I don’t know where to start — or simply What the hell? (which will really work if the entire country is also sitting there at home asking themselves What the shark-battery hell did Trump just say?)
And if Biden wants to punch hard and take the high road as soon as Trump throws Hunter at him, Biden may say I love my son and he has a problem. Didn’t you love your brother, Donald, even when he was drinking himself to death and you couldn’t save him? Don’t we all have a family member we love who has a problem? Hunter is the only son I have left and parents shouldn’t outlive their children and so I’m going to love the hell out of him no matter what this election brings and no matter what comes next. Just like you would have if your brother had survived. Just like many of us out there do every day. And we should. Because there’s no worthy alternative.
I suspect moderators Dana Bash and Jake Tapper will half-serve as steer-ers of the conversation and half-serve as audience surrogates. I suspect their quips will of two kinds: (a) reality/fact-check-based Sir, you lost the 2020 election and Sir, you actually are an adjudicated rapist and a felon convicted by a jury of your peers 34 times over and Sir, no… just… no; and (b) confusion/clarity-based like I don’t know what to do with that answer, Jake. I got nothing either, Dana. Woof. Let’s go to the next question.
Audience surrogates? Remember that their first-minute on-air reactions after the disastrous first debate between Trump and Biden in 2020 were exactly what most Americans were thinking at the time:
Anyway.
All of this means that as soon as tomorrow — if anything changes at all — the election may get fully reframed as:
Smart Benevolent Grandpa Ice Cream versus Convict Orange Crisp (Biden’s goal for reframing)
Steady-and-Presidential versus Danger-raging-Tasmanian-Devil-whirling-out-of-control-while-holding-scissors-and-torches-while-indoors-with-low-ceilings-and-holy-crap-I-live-indoors-and-my-whole-country-is-flammable (Biden’s goal)
Competent and Coherent versus Shark-Battery (Biden’s goal)
Gives You Rights and Democracy versus Takes Them Away (Biden’s goal)
Senile-and-Slow versus Whip-Crack-Snark (Trump’s goal)
Good versus Evil (maybe the goal of both)
Senile-and-Slow versus Shark-Battery (Nobody’s goal except whoever gets called out of the hockey stands and already has his skates on)
So in the next day or two — and another week or two — we’re going to have a lot of what we’ll need to forecast a whole hell of a lot for a whole long time ahead.
Regardless, if both of them are on their A-game tonight — and if they’re consistent with everything they’ve always-ever said before — they’re going to default back to their own defaults. In which case we should expect two things:
When Tapper and Bash ask Will you accept the election results?
Trump will say Not unless I win, and if there’s not massive fraud.
Biden will say Yes, I will. Because I believe in our elections and I believe in American democracy and I believe in you.
And both will launch and/or conclude with:
Trump will say My Fellow Republicans, this election is about Us versus Them.
And Biden will say My Fellow Americans, this election is about All of Us versus him.