Donald Trump and Joe Biden come into Thursday’s presidential debate as extremely well-known portions outlined by shared unpopularity and competing weaknesses. However their most vital liabilities — for the incumbent, his decrepitude and his document on inflation; for the challenger, an unfitness distilled and confirmed by the occasions of Jan. 6 — really feel too well-known to be value discussing additional till we see what occurs on the stage.
Possibly Biden’s whole marketing campaign will implode when he solutions a query about inflation with a Grandpa Simpson ramble in regards to the worth of a frozen custard on Rehoboth Seaside in 1968.
Possibly Trump will flip into Colonel Jessep underneath Jake Tapper’s questioning and declare full duty for the 2021 riot on the Capitol.
However earlier than the 2 males meet with these or different destinies, it’s value giving some house to their essential secondary weaknesses, the locations the place every candidate’s assist could be undermined amongst these “double-hater” voters who regard every candidate’s main liabilities as canceling the opposite’s out.
For Biden, that weak spot is overseas coverage, the deteriorating situation of world order since he took the oath of workplace. There’s been an infinite debate about whether or not voter nostalgia for the Trump-era financial system is justified, or whether or not it lets Trump off the hook for the Covid-driven financial disaster of 2020.
However nostalgia for the Trump-era geopolitical panorama appears solely cheap: Earlier than his defeat there was no Russian invasion of Ukraine, no brutal battle within the Holy Land, and a weaker alignment of anti-American powers slightly than the growing consolidation by our rivals in Moscow and Beijing and Tehran and even Pyongyang.
The Biden administration would clearly deny duty for these deteriorations, and argue that Biden has managed a set of extraordinarily troublesome conditions higher than a dictator-sympathizing Trump would have achieved. And as a defender of the Afghanistan withdrawal regardless of its disastrous implementation, and a partial defender of our tried balancing of dangers and evils in Ukraine, I’ve some sympathy for the White Home’s self-justifications.
However I additionally suppose that liberal funding within the concept of Biden as the nice defender of the liberal worldwide order towards isolationism and response has made it arduous for Democrats to reckon with how far more stability the American-led order appeared to get pleasure from underneath the crudely transactional machtpolitik of Trump.
That distinction signifies that if there’s a optimistic case for Biden’s overseas coverage, it will possibly’t simply be made with rote warnings about how Trump will unravel NATO and let our enemies run roughshod — not when these enemies appear a lot extra aggressive underneath Biden than earlier than.
Trump’s essential secondary weak spot, in the meantime, isn’t a matter of his document however his guarantees: particularly, his dedication to a sweeping 10 p.c tariff on imported items because the big-ticket financial coverage of his potential second time period.
When he first ran for president in 2016, Trump’s protectionism was a part of a basic pivot away from Tea Celebration libertarianism and the Mitt Romney-Paul Ryan austerity agenda, in a panorama the place America had plenty of fiscal house to work with and it was potential to vow all types of sweeteners to stability out the price of commerce wars.
However within the present surroundings, a Trumpian promise to not minimize Medicare and Social Safety looks like outdated information, an expectation from his supporters. And there’s not a lot room for credibly promising different giveaways, whether or not new tax cuts or new spending, when inflation continues to be comparatively excessive.
That throws the instant prices of a ten p.c tariff, which could fall closely on an inflation-weary center class, into significantly stark aid. A few of these prices might be probably offset, particularly if the extra severe supporters of a tariff coverage had been designing it. However that’s an advanced argument to make, and sophisticated coverage arguments aren’t a Trumpian forte. So the tariff pledge presents a political goal very like John McCain’s promise to abolish the tax exemption for employer-provided medical health insurance in 2008, which Barack Obama efficiently portrayed as a tax improve on the center class.
Particularly while you mix the ten p.c tariff with Trump’s promise to maintain his first time period’s huge company tax minimize in place and even deepen it: Larger center class costs and decrease company tax charges are splendid grist for what has lengthy been the best Democratic marketing campaign towards Republicans — the sort that portrays the G.O.P. as robbing the center class for the advantage of plutocrats.
Can Biden prosecute that case cogently and in a method that doesn’t simply remind voters of his personal inflationary insurance policies? I’m uncertain. However then you may additionally doubt that Trump could make a case towards Biden’s battle to comprise America’s authoritarian enemies that doesn’t remind voters of his personal authoritarian impulses.
And with each questions, each doubts, we’re again to every candidate’s main weaknesses, in whose shadow — on Thursday evening and thereafter — all secondary debates will inevitably happen.
