By: Gayatri Panda
This article will include a brief summary of both the presidential debates and the vice-presidential debate.
First Presidential Debate - September 29th, 2020
President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden faced off during the first presidential debate on September 29th, 2020. They discussed the pandemic, violence in terms of race in the United States, and various other current issues. The 90-minute discussion has popularly been reported as “the most chaotic in history” due to both the candidates constantly speaking over each other. The general debates are usually presented to the public to swing the undecided voters to either the Democratic or Republican sides. Unfortunately, the first presidential debate of the 2020 elections did not provide new perspectives for the undecided voters and probably confused some of them. Due to the current circumstances, the Coronavirus was a major topic discussed during the CNN mentions, commenting that “President Trump defended his response to COVID-19, which has brought an explosion of sickness and death all on his watch,... as a political punchline to deflect from his failures” (9&10 News). On the other hand, Joe Biden stated that “He [Donald Trump] knew it was a deadly disease. What did he do? He’s on tape acknowledging [that] he knew [about] it. He said he didn’t tell us or give people a warning because he didn’t want to panic the American people. You don’t panic; he panicked” (9&10 News). In response to this, Trump responded by saying that “We got the gowns, we got the masks, we made ventilators, you wouldn’t have made ventilators, and now we are weeks away from the vaccine” (9&10 News). His response to these statements was to continually state that Joe Biden would have done worse in the same situation. When questioned about the current violence and racism in America, Biden included details contrasting himself from the incumbent, promising to address systemic racial injustices if he were elected to presidency. One of the promises includes his commitment to provide increased support and resources to benefit more effective training for law enforcement. “Trump stood firmly by his current approach to handling recent nationwide protests, citing support from law enforcement officials,” and when given the opportunity, he declined to denounce white supremacist organizations (9&10 News). |
First Vice Presidential Debate - October 7th, 2020
One week after the presidential debate, America witnessed the first vice-presidential debate of 2020. In that one week period, a significant event took place; the President himself contracted COVID-19. This spurred the Vice-Presidential candidates to take the stage with 12 feet and plexiglass barriers between them, as demanded by Senator Harris, since more than thirty-four White House staff officially contracted the virus as well. The first and last debate between Senator Kamala Harris and Vice President Mike Pence was significantly calmer than the first presidential debate. However, both sides had aggressive tones when discussing COVID-19, jobs, climate change, trading, and foreign relations with Russia and China. Although Vice President Pence, Senator Harris, and moderator Susan Page were on the stage, President Trump and Former Vice President Joe Biden were the primary targets of the discussion. Both the candidates repeatedly dodged questions and instead focused on one thing; correcting the issues that took place during the first presidential debate. Based on the first Presidential Debate, each candidate had their own goals and missions to accomplish during their own debate. According to ABC News, “For Democratic vice presidential nominee Kamala Harris, the goal was to defend presidential nominee Joe Biden’s record and hammer the administration’s response to coronavirus.” For Vice President Mike Pence, the goal was to express the [Trump] administration’s economic success pre-pandemic and erase the disheveled, at times, disrespectful, debate from last week, spearheaded by President Donald Trump’s constant interruptions” (ABC News). When starting the discussion and answering the first questions that had to do with the coronavirus, Senator Harris stated that “the American people have witnessed what the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country is” (ABC News). As the debate shifted focus toward economic issues (where Trump has succeeded during his four years of the presidency), Pence offered his sharpest critiques of Biden’s policy record. When Harris slammed the Trump administration’s trade war with China, the vice president responded: “Joe Biden never fought it.” Following the Vice Presidential Debate, a panel of undecided voters spoke with CNN's Sara Sidner about what they thought of each candidate's performance. When the group was explicitly asked to choose a winner between “California Sen. Kamala Harris or Vice President Mike Pence, it was a tie; four thought Harris won, four thought Pence won, and the rest thought the debate was a wash” (ABC News). Hopefully, the next two presidential debates will answer all the unanswered questions that undecided voters are interested in. |
Second Presidential Debate (Cancelled) - October 15th, 2020
Fortunately or unfortunately, the second Presidential Debate was canceled after President Donald Trump refused to participate in a virtual debate despite his COVID-19 diagnosis. As soon as the president refused to speak at a virtual debate, former Vice-President Biden’s spokeswoman “swiftly said that they would have agreed to a virtual format for next Thursday's contest, but because the President had seemingly bailed, they would book another format for the former vice president to take questions” (CNN Politics). Later that day, ABC News claimed that they would be hosting a town hall with Biden. The cancelation was an overall culmination of arguments for 48 hours between the commission and both the parties. "Vice President Biden looks forward to making his case to the American people about how to overcome this pandemic, restore American leadership and our alliances in the world, and bring the American people together," Biden campaign spokesman Andrew Bates said Friday in a statement (CNN Politics). "It's shameful that Donald Trump ducked the only debate in which the voters get to ask the questions -- but it's no surprise.” In response to the statement by the Democratic Party, Trump’s campaign issued three statements that “slammed the commission, pushed the Biden campaign to agree to an in-person debate and said they would be willing to push the October 15 debate back a week to October 22 and then move the third debate to October 29, just days before the November 3 election” (CNN Politics). Biden’s campaign rejected this proposal and stated that “Donald Trump doesn't make the debate schedule; the debate commission does” (LA Times). In the end, it was up to the Biden campaign, and since they said no, it officially got canceled, so there will only be one more debate. |
Final Presidential Debate - October 22nd, 2020
After spending most of their time arguing and interrupting each other, President Trump behaved unexpectedly during the second and final presidential debate of 2020. He began the debate calmer but “didn’t manage to maintain that tone throughout the allotted 90 minutes. But the calmer approach at least allowed voters to follow the proceedings” (CNN News). The Republicans and Democrats viewed the debate very differently. “Biden just had to appear presidential, and he did,” said former Democratic Vermont Gov. Howard Dean. “Trump wasn’t as nutty as he was the first time, but he ended up reminding people of what they didn’t like about him” (LA Times). The Republicans, on the other hand, were glad that President Trump did not return to the final debate as a trainwreck and maintained his composure through most of the debate. Some Trump allies also had hoped the President could shake up the contest with attacks on the foreign business dealings of Biden’s son Hunter. “But the much-ballyhooed accusations fell flat, fizzling in a flurry of details incomprehensible to anyone not already steeped in the questionable accusations that Trump’s lawyer, Rudolph W. Giuliani, and his allies have tried to push” (CNN News). When discussing their relationships with other countries, Biden commented on Trump’s relationship with Russian President Vladimir Putin saying, “I don’t understand why this president is unwilling to take on Putin” (LA Times). He pushed much harder on the president’s tax returns — which showed Trump paid little or no federal income tax in recent years — than he had in the first debate. Donald Trump began to lose his patience and attempted to label Biden as a Socialist. Later during the discussion he stated that “I’m not a typical politician,” after deriding Biden’s repeated tactic of speaking directly to the camera as if to address voters. “That’s why I got elected” (LA Times). At the end, Biden’s closing statement was that “You know who I am. You know who he is. You know his character. You know my character. Our characters are on the ballot.” That overall summed up Trump’s issue: “Voters by now know who he is and what they think. The second debate was a master class in Trumpism that reminded voters who love him and loathe him why they feel the way they do” (LA Times). Trump, however, needed an event that would impact the way a majority of the voters view him, not reinforce it. It’s unclear whether anything would achieve that goal at this point; almost certainly this debate did not do it. |
Additional Research Sources:
https://www.9and10news.com/2020/09/30/recap-1st-2020-presidential-debate/
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/key-takeaways-vice-presidential-debate/story?id=73466213
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/09/politics/second-presidential-debate-canceled/index.html
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-10-23/trump-biden-final-presidential-debate-analysis
https://www.9and10news.com/2020/09/30/recap-1st-2020-presidential-debate/
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/key-takeaways-vice-presidential-debate/story?id=73466213
https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/09/politics/second-presidential-debate-canceled/index.html
https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2020-10-23/trump-biden-final-presidential-debate-analysis