In a move that surprised approximately no one who has been conscious since 2020, President Joe Biden has announced he will not participate in the traditional Democratic primary debates, largely on the grounds that he has already secured the presumptive nomination and also because his main challengers have polling numbers that suggest even their extended families might not be voting for them.
Biden’s campaign confirmed on Thursday that he will instead accept two debates against former President Donald Trump, thus skipping the part of the 2024 election cycle often referred to as “the warm-up act” and heading straight for the main event, presumably after a good nap and some thorough fact-checking.
The debates are scheduled for June and September, the latter taking place after the Republican National Convention, which means that by then everything will be official, tensions will be high, and both candidates will have rehearsed their lines more than a community theater version of “Death of a Salesman.”
The first face-off is set for June 27 on CNN, which will be held not in front of a live audience but in the somewhat less glamorous presence of silence, as if the nation collectively agreed it would be better to focus on actual speeches rather than audience reactions that resemble the crowd at a wrestling match. A second debate is scheduled for September 10 on ABC, presumably with the same rules unless someone decides stage theatrics should make a bipartisan comeback.
Biden’s refusal to participate in Democratic primary debates had been a topic of mounting frustration for candidates like Marianne Williamson and Representative Dean Phillips of Minnesota, both of whom were told in no uncertain terms that the Democratic National Committee did not feel compelled to organize debates between a sitting president and people polling somewhere between “statistical margin of error” and “Wikipedia footnote.” Even as Phillips suspended his campaign back in March, he presumably did so with the same enthusiasm as someone who left a party to which he had not actually been invited.
Biden’s campaign said his participation in the two planned debates came with conditions: microphones should be muted unless it is a candidate’s turn — a feature likely to prevent circular shouting matches, or at least ensure that everyone is yelling in the correct order.
Not to be outmaneuvered in the battle of public expectations, Trump responded on his platform Truth Social, saying he was “ready and willing” to debate Biden “anytime, anywhere, any place.” He did not clarify whether “place” and “anywhere” were intentionally redundant, though his campaign team might suggest that rhetorical precision is not a leading concern of the former president’s social media strategy.
In essence, Biden has decided to skip squabbling with fellow Democrats in favor of going directly to televised combat with Donald Trump, whose verbal strategy tends to involve a blend of metaphors, grievances, and all caps. As for the rest of the Democratic field, they will have to console themselves with interviews on podcast networks and brief mentions in trivia night questions by 2025.
Why fight the undercard when the title bout is already penciled in on the calendar?