This Is What A Win Looks Like For Biden At Tonight's First Presidential Debate: Strategist

6 months ago

On "Forbes Newsroom," political strategist Adam Goodman discussed what would make tonight's presidential debate successful for President Biden.

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Transcript

00:00President Biden, when we saw him at the State of the Union, once again, the bar seemed by the media, by Republicans, set so low.

00:09Can he go out there and deliver a speech? And by those standards, he achieved that he went out there. He seemed to have high energy.

00:17He was around shaking everyone's hand at the end. Do you think what does a win look like for him tonight?

00:24For Joe Biden, you know, we saw the State of the Union address and the same questions are being asked about whether or not over 60 to 75 minutes, the president could hold forth.

00:37I think he did a very good job there in terms of looking, you know, energetic, looking, you know, kind of dialed in.

00:44So if he does the same thing tonight, I think that's a score for the president, which is kind of silly when you think about it,

00:51that we would we would give him a partial win just on the fact he could get through 90 minutes.

00:57I mean, forget his policies, forget what he's doing or not doing to advance the ball in the interests of every American and of the world.

01:04We're thinking, can he stand for 90 minutes? That's that's kind of where we are.

01:09And what does a win for Donald Trump look like? Because as we've talked about, I mean, he can go two avenues.

01:14He can go the Donald Trump route of the nicknames and the comments and the potential nastiness that people think is beneath the dignity of the office.

01:24He could take the more professional route. What's a win look like for him?

01:28Donald Trump's could be Donald Trump. So what we've seen is what we're going to get to some degree.

01:34The question is, what message is he delivering tonight, Brittany?

01:37And the message he should deliver is the one we talked about 15 minutes ago.

01:42Are you better off? And he's got so much material to play with.

01:45And I feel the president has very little in comparison to come back with.

01:50If he does that, I think he scores the win both substantively and in the debate.

01:56And I think ultimately, elections are all about the future. They're never really about the past.

02:01It's who can take me forward, who can lead us forward in a way that I can support.

02:07And in that regard, the challenger, when you look at two out of three Americans down the map about just about everything,

02:13the challenger absolutely has the edge and the advantage.

02:17To score the win tonight for Donald Trump is to remember that.

02:21This debate is unusually early. We're in June, election day's in November.

02:26Donald Trump right now is up by a hair in national polls, but really it's anyone's game here.

02:31So how much will this matter come November? And how much stock are voters putting into this?

02:37Will this move the needle?

02:39Well, it seems early, but as one of my partners, our partners pointed out,

02:43the ballots are going out right past Labor Day.

02:46So we're not that far from the actual vote starting to happen in America.

02:51With that said, think about it. After this debate, you have the sentencing in New York.

02:55You have the sentencing in Delaware. You have the Republican Convention.

02:58You have the Democratic Convention. You've got all sorts of other non-political events.

03:04Believe it or not, there are things happening in the world that aren't political.

03:07All those are going to happen before we even get to Labor Day.

03:11So will this matter? I think it's important in terms of maybe setting the bar where this race could go.

03:19Will it ultimately determine winners and losers in the fall? I don't think so.

03:23I think we know these two contenders very, very well.

03:26I think a lot of the impressions are already baked in.

03:29We're looking for reinforcement, especially among the soft leaners, one way or the other.

03:33A reinforcement is something we're already feeling.

03:36In that way, maybe the debate is important, but I don't think with everything to come afterwards,

03:42it's going to be remembered as the transformational moment for mankind.

This Is What A Win Looks Like For Biden At Tonight's First Presidential Debate: Strategist

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