President Joe Biden, right, and Republican presidential candidate former President Donald Trump, left, during a presidential debate hosted by CNN, Thursday, June 27, 2024, in Atlanta.
| Photo Credit: AP

U.S. President Joe Biden and his Republican rival, Donald Trump, took the stage Thursday evening for a debate that offered an unparalleled opportunity to define their unpopular presidential rematch.

The debate provided Mr. Biden, the 81-year-old Democratic incumbent, the chance to reassure voters that he’s capable of guiding the U.S. through a host of challenges as he moved to sharpen the choice voters will face in November. Mr. Trump, 78, had the opening to try to move past his felony conviction in New York and convince an audience of tens of millions that he is suited to return to the Oval Office.

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Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden entered the night facing stiff headwinds, including a public weary of the tumult of partisan politics and broadly dissatisfied with both, according to polling. But the debate was highlighting how they have sharply different visions on virtually every core issue — abortion, the economy and foreign policy — and deep hostility toward each other.

The two candidates strode on stage and walked directly to their lecterns, avoiding a handshake.

The first question went to Mr. Biden, pressed to defend rising inflation since he took office, which he pinned on the situation he inherited from Trump amid the COVID-19 pandemic. Biden needed to clear his throat twice during his first answer, sounding hoarse, and Trump smirked as Biden started speaking.

The current president and his predecessor hadn’t spoken since their last debate weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Mr. Trump skipped Mr. Biden’s inauguration after leading an unprecedented and unsuccessful effort to overturn his loss that culminated in the January 6 Capitol insurrection by his supporters.

Mr. Trump has promised sweeping plans to remake the U.S. government if he returns to the White House and Mr. Biden argues that his opponent would pose an existential threat to the nation’s democracy.

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Thursday’s broadcast on CNN, moderated by anchors Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, marked the earliest general election debate in history. It’s the first-ever televised general election presidential debate hosted by a single news outlet after both campaigns ditched the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which had organised every matchup since 1988.

Aiming to avoid a repeat of their chaotic 2020 matchups, Mr. Biden insisted — and Mr. Trump agreed — to hold the debate without an audience and to allow the network to mute the candidates’ microphones when it is not their turn to speak. The debate’s two commercial breaks offered another departure from modern practice, while the candidates have agreed not to consult staff or others while the cameras are off.

Mr. Trump and his aides have spent months chronicling what they argue are signs of Mr. Biden’s diminished stamina. In recent days, they’ve started to predict Mr. Biden will be stronger on Thursday, aiming to raise expectations for the incumbent.

Mr. Biden’s team too predicted that he would rise to the occasion, and expressed hope that Mr. Trump would be forced to address his positions they believe are anathema to voters.

“Joe’s ready to go. He’s prepared. He’s confident,” his wife, Jill Biden, told donors ahead of the debate. “You know what a great debater he is.”

Heading out of the debate, both Mr. Biden and Mr. Trump will travel to states they hope to swing their way this fall. Mr. Trump is heading to Virginia, a onetime battleground that has shifted toward Democrats in recent years.

Mr. Biden is set to jet off to North Carolina, where he is expected to hold the largest-yet rally of his campaign in a state Mr. Trump narrowly carried in 2020.

Being second in line for leadership of the most powerful country in the world is not an easy job. But for Mike Pence, vice president under Donald Trump, things were even harder than usual.

As insurrectionists descended on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, they had a specific target in mind – the outgoing vice president. They built a wooden gallows, and called out for him by name: “Hang Mike Pence! Hang Mike Pence!”

As the extensive congressional hearings into the insurrection later documented, the threats were not hollow. One informant told FBI investigators that “if given the chance”, certain far-right insurrectionists would have tried to kill him. Pence escaped with his life, but only just.

The insurrectionists, as a federal investigation alleges, were drawn to the Capitol by Trump, who had just lost the 2020 election to Joe Biden. They were after Trump’s VP because, as one later claimed, he had “betrayed” Trump by not refusing to certify the election results.

The job of vice president of the United States is not a normal one at the best of times. The person chosen to run alongside Trump in this year’s election will no doubt be keeping Pence’s experience in mind. It will likely be someone who can convincingly pledge undying loyalty to Trump. The former president – and his supporters – will expect nothing less.

Speculation over who that person might be is heating up, and Trump, as usual, is relishing drawing out the process in order to gain as much attention as possible. So, who – and how – will he choose?

Making race a priority

A vice presidential candidate is usually chosen based on a political calculation. For instance, the running mate can be seen to offset a presidential nominee’s weaknesses (be they real or perceived).

The relatively young northerner John F. Kennedy, for example, chose the much more politically experienced southerner, Lyndon B. Johnson. Barack Obama, running to be the first Black president, similarly chose the older and more experienced – and reassuringly white – Biden.

In his first run, Trump settled on Pence to offset his perceived weakness with evangelical voters – a critical mobilising base to any Republican candidate.

Viewed through this lens, the commonly accepted wisdom is that Trump has both a race and a woman problem, and that he should choose a VP candidate who can address at least one of those concerns.

In the first category, the leading candidates appear to be two men who ran against Trump for this year’s nomination – Tim Scott and Vivek Ramaswamy.

Scott – a South Carolinian that Bloomberg has dubbed “Trump’s New Black Best Friend” – is the only Black Republican in the Senate. He has certainly indicated he is keen for the job, professing his love for Trump and recently announcing his engagement (being single is generally regarded as a political liability).

During the Republican campaign for the presidential nomination, Ramaswamy had presented himself as the newer, shinier Trump. In one memorable moment in the debates, he was first to raise his hand when the candidates were asked who would still support Trump if he is convicted of a crime. Ramaswamy also quickly endorsed Trump when he dropped out.

Trump would no doubt be pleased with such public professions of loyalty. But there is no indication Trump considers race to be a problem for his candidacy – in fact, quite the opposite.

Trump has been leaning in to increasingly extreme racist rhetoric. If he thought race mattered to his chances, he would likely be behaving differently. Trump’s political rise began with his racist “birther” conspiracies about Obama. It is not a stretch to suggest many of his supporters would baulk at a ticket that wasn’t entirely white.

Why a conservative woman might make sense

In the second category, the accepted wisdom is that Trump’s “woman problem” is a direct result of the signature achievement of his administration: the appointment of three conservative justices to the Supreme Court, which subsequently led to the overturning of Roe v Wade.

As Biden put it recently, candidates underestimate the political and electoral power of women at their peril.

Among the leading women Republican VP candidates are Elise Stefanik, a congresswoman from New York, and Kristi Noem, the governor of South Dakota.

The fact both are considered leading candidates reveals the political calculations behind Trump’s possible selection. While Trump has flip-flopped on abortion restrictions himself, both Stefanik and Noem have extremely conservative positions on reproductive rights.

And given what we know about Trump’s views on women, it seems likely his judgement would be almost entirely aesthetic. There is a very specific political reason why Noem has grown out her hair and gotten new teeth.

Congresswomen Marjorie Taylor Green is often added to this list, but may have slimmer chances. While she literally wears her Trump loyalty on her head, she attracts a lot of attention. And Trump does not much like to share the spotlight.

It’s also entirely possible Trump will go with a wildcard candidate. He is increasingly resentful of what we could loosely characterise as “establishment” political advice designed to curb his worst instincts. His campaign is now almost entirely based on a desire for revenge and retribution against the people he believes held him back.

There has never been a reason to believe Trump will follow conventional political wisdom.

The stakes are higher than usual

Given the cult of personality that has developed around Trump, some argue his choice of running mate is unlikely to shift many votes. As a result, it doesn’t actually matter all that much.

Other keen watchers of American politics, though, argue the opposite. Given the advanced ages of both Trump and Biden, the VP pick is more important than usual, not least because of the higher-than-normal chance this person could be elevated to the Oval Office at some point.

In Trump’s case, some argue that if he wins, he will be a “lame duck” president from day one since it would be his second term in office. So, all eyes will be on his VP as the presumptive nominee for 2028.

This glosses over the very real questions about the continuity of constitutional law under a second Trump presidency, and ignores the noises Trump supporters are already making about trying to remove presidential term limits. It also assumes that, like Pence, Trump’s next VP would choose to put their own political future or American democracy above being an enthusiastic supporter of Trump’s authoritarianism. This is unlikely.

Like everything this time around, the stakes are higher than usual.

(Author: Emma Shortis, Adjunct Senior Fellow, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT University)

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)