The 1st Trump-Biden Debate: Who Really Won?

The state of American politics is best illustrated by the fact that the most memorable U.S. media reaction to the televised debate between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden was the emotional response of CNN reporter Dana Bash. She described the debate with an expression that is thoroughly unprintable and untranslatable in Russian, pertaining to a toilet.

Remarkably, opposing sides of American society were unanimous in their view about the content and style of the debate. Judging by the reactions on social media, both Democratic and Republican supporters still loathe each other with equally genuine viciousness. However, they are now united by a feeling of shame for the general state of American politics. Renowned American political strategist and sociologist Frank Luntz, who worked with a voter focus group on the night of the debate, tweeted, “The most common voter response I’m hearing so far: “I’m so sad for our country.”

The reaction of the international finance community is well described in a letter from Paul Donovan, a British chief economist at UBS Global Wealth Management. He wrote the following in a note to the Swiss bank’s clients: “Perhaps the only point worth mentioning is that the debate may have increased expectations for a contested election result. International investors have been prepared to entertain some extreme views on this topic (just as they entertained extreme views on the future of the euro area in the past). Given the importance of international investors to U.S. markets, this may add volatility around the election.”

From a cynical point of view, it turns out that the event was not a debate in a political sense. Instead, it was more reminiscent of the traditional press conference “trash talk” and “stare down” before professional boxing fights. In the case of Trump and Biden, however, the fighting will not take place in the polling stations, but in the courts and possibly on the streets of American cities.

The most memorable parts of the debate were the moments of utmost rudeness as both candidates traded personal insults. Biden ordered Trump to “shut up,” called him a “clown” and described the U.S. president as Vladimir Putin’s “puppy.” Trump accused Biden of wanting to introduce “socialist medicine” in the U.S., and stressed that Biden is beholden to “the radical left” of his own party. In addition, Trump scolded Biden for the fact that his son “received $3.5 million” from Elena Baturina, a Russian businesswoman, and also held a paid position on the board of the infamous Ukrainian gas company Burisma.

In a sense, both polemicists had impressive success. They hardly convinced anyone to vote for them, but they triumphed in creating an extremely negative image of the American political class as a whole.

It is hard to determine who “won” this debate. It is even more challenging to gauge which candidate will benefit the most from any alleged debate victory since the correlation between results in TV debates and winning an election in the U.S is not entirely clear.

CNN claimed Biden won by a landslide, reporting that “Six in 10 debate watchers said former Vice President Joe Biden did the best job in Tuesday’s debate, and just 28% say President Donald Trump did, according to a CNN Poll of debate watchers conducted by SSRS.”

Even if we assume that CNN, despite all its obvious political bias and hatred of Trump supporters, conducted an honest poll, then it is worth remembering a relatively recent and paradoxical experience.

In 2016, the same TV network, after the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Trump, reported the following poll data:

“Hillary Clinton was deemed the winner of Monday night’s debate by 62% of voters who tuned in to watch, while just 27% said they thought Donald Trump had the better night, according to a CNN/ORC Poll of voters who watched the debate. That drubbing is similar to Mitt Romney’s dominant performance over President Barack Obama in the first 2012 presidential debate. Voters who watched said Clinton expressed her views more clearly than Trump and had a better understanding of the issues by a margin of more than 2-to-1.”

Judging by the experience of 2016, the best that a presidential candidate can do is to lose the first debate, and to lose it specifically from the point of view of the CNN polls or from the perspective of the specific demographic which is surveyed.

We can’t overlook the fact that the only part of the debate of any real importance was the heated exchange over COVID-19 and how best to deal with the pandemic.

Trump formulated the difference in the candidates’ positions in a rather crude but logical way. He advocated for the full reopening of the economy and expects that the vaccine will soon receive the necessary approvals from the relevant regulatory authorities. Biden, however, took the exact opposite approach, arguing for new restrictions and refreezing the economy for the sake of fighting the pandemic.

The Democrats’ position on COVID-19 is perfectly logical. They need to portray Trump as the man who murdered the elderly and as the person to blame for the hundreds of thousands of deaths due to the pandemic in the U.S. Moreover, the Democrats need an excuse to conduct a mass (and probably fraudulent) mail-in vote. But the problem is that in the COVID-19 era, the election may turn into a referendum on the economy. An increasing margin of unemployed voters is so tired of the pandemic that it is willing to do anything for a salary and return to normality. Hence, such voters may well decide that another four years of Trump (even if they do not like him) is much better than another full lockdown and a further loss of livelihood. However, this situation may be so demoralizing for some voters that they will not vote at all.

As Luntz noted, “This debate has actually convinced some undecided voters to not vote at all. I’ve never seen a debate cause this reaction.”

These positions show that to some degree, the debate has already benefited humanity as a whole. After watching this shameful political travesty, few people on earth envy the celebrated American democratic system and Washington politics.