Debates 2020: Trump to woo suburban voters while Biden shows he's more than 'not Donald Trump'

President Donald Trump told thousands of cheering supporters outside Pittsburgh International Airport that he’s looking forward to facing off with “Hidin’ Biden” on Tuesday.

Speaking to a mostly unmasked, tightly packed crowd outside a hangar in Moon Township, Trump mocked Democratic challenger Joe Biden for rarely being seen on the campaign trail without a face covering. Trump suggested Biden was using the public health precaution as an opportunity to conceal botched plastic surgery, and he vowed to “crush the virus” while a Biden presidency would “crush America.”

Trump, 74, questioned whether Biden, 77, would keep his mask on even while speaking during the looming presidential debates. He questioned his opponent’s fitness for office and mental health — with the president going so far as to suggest Biden must take “a shot” or some form of drug when he performs well at public speaking.

“This guy doesn’t know he’s alive. … He doesn’t know where the hell he is. I watched him perform so badly in the debates and then with (Democratic primary candidate Sen.) Bernie (Sanders) he was average, not bad, but not good. So I said, what the hell is he taking,” Trump said to laughter and applause at the Atlantic Aviation hangar during his Tuesday night speech a week before the first debate. “He wasn’t Winston Churchill, it wasn’t the greatest debate, but he got through. Him and Bernie, screaming at each other.”

Donald Trump: unusual opponent

Biden, too, recently said he’s eager for the first 2020 post-primary presidential debate Tuesday night in Cleveland. It marks one of three debates planned that will give voters a chance to see the candidates engage as mail-in voting begins in battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — where recent polling shows Biden holding narrow leads.

“Trump is going to be trying to energize and mobilize his base and get them pumped up,” said Jack Barlow, professor of politics at Juniata College in Huntingdon. “Biden has to show himself as experienced, as competent. And he has to show himself as the kind of leader who’s going to lead and that he’s not just going to follow.”

The former vice president spent time preparing quietly at his Delaware home this past week while President Trump was busy with campaign stops in Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Florida, Georgia and Virginia.

At a campaign fundraiser earlier this month covered by NBC News, Biden said, “I’m looking forward to getting on the debate stage with Trump and holding him accountable. I think I know how to handle bullies.

“I hope I don’t get baited into getting into a brawl with this guy,” Biden added. “It’s going to be hard because I predict he’s going to be shouting.”

For a strong showing, Biden “needs to get out there with a positive message and really give people something to vote for and not just that he’s not Donald Trump,” said Jeff Gulati, political science professor at Bentley University in Massachusetts.

Because of the pandemic, the events will include social distancing and not have a live audience — which could be a weak point for Trump.

“For Trump, it’s a little bit different. He’s not going to have the crowd that he can play off of; he’s not going to be able to walk around, and he sort of needs that,” Gulati said. “I don’t think Biden will have any trouble — but Donald Trump is an unusual opponent. You have to be ready for anything, and we don’t really know what that anything is.”

Trump, Biden and the pandemic

Biden has traveled far less than Trump during the campaign, which Biden has chosen to do in response to the risks posed by covid-19 and federal and local guidance discouraging large gatherings and unnecessary travel.

Some of Trump’s base applaud him mocking Biden’s frequent mask-wearing and lack of campaign rallies as they lament what they view as overly onerous pandemic-related restrictions and lockdowns.

But Biden supporters tend to appreciate the Democratic candidate setting an example and avoiding contributing to the spread of disease during a pandemic that has killed more than 200,000 Americans in just over six months.

“By and large, the polling results show that isn’t hurting Biden, and it may have actually even helping it a little bit, in terms of just respect for somebody who is honoring the covid protocols, who is staying safe and is going to keep us safe,” Barlow said. “I don’t think Biden is paying the price for it.”

Experts: The economy is key

Both candidates should be appealing to voters by demonstrating how they can improve the economy, several political observers told the Trib.

Trump should focus on what he did before covid-19 struck America and — more importantly — what he’s going to do to turn things around if he wins re-election, Gulati said.

“He’s an incumbent with a poor economy right now after a pandemic, there’s civil strife, and he’s behind in the polls,” Gulati said. “One thing he really needs to focus on is that the economy was good before this sort of invasion that we had.

“He didn’t cause the virus — we can argue about his performance in dealing with it, but it wasn’t his doing. And he has a track record of having a good economy before this.”

The ability to handle the nation’s economy is the only metric that voters in recent polls have favored Trump over Biden, with Biden winning the advantage on the likes of dealing with the pandemic, character and trustworthiness.

“The problem with the president is that he doesn’t stay on that message,” Gulati said. “It’s law-and-order and suburban housewives, and then the border and so many other things.”

Few voters left to sway

It’s unclear how significant the debates may be on the sliver of undecided voters remaining less than six weeks before Election Day.

Exceptions include the Nixon-Kennedy matchup in 1960 and Ford-Carter debates in 1976, but, “in the most recent elections, debates haven’t really mattered very much,” Gulati said. “They matter more to the partisans. It helps them to reinforce the choices that they’ve already made. (But) probably this election, it should matter very little because there are very few undecided voters left.”

With Trump proving polarizing, most people have made their mind up about whether or not they plan to support his re-election, and more Biden supporters say they are voting anti-Trump as opposed to voting for Biden.

“Everything really matters in a state like Pennsylvania, which is pretty close.

“I don’t think that the remaining undecided voters are the ones that are really paying close attention to the debates,” Gulati said. “They’re undecided for a reason — because they don’t pay attention to politics so much.

“Having said that, I hope everybody will watch the debates,” Gulati said, “because you never know what could happen or what someone could say to change the narrative of the election.”

The Trump campaign has been making ardent appeals to suburban voters, and in particular, college-educated white women, who are trending toward Biden.

“The voters that don’t like either candidate, they tend to be breaking toward Biden,” Barlow said. “Which is different from four years ago, when those who didn’t like either candidate voted for Trump.”

In terms of calling out Trump should he play loose with the facts, such moves probably should be left to the moderator and not take up too much time from Biden’s own messaging, Barlow said: “The people who are persuaded by Trump aren’t going to be persuaded by the fact-checking, and the people who aren’t persuaded are pretty sure he’s lying anyway.”

From his vice presidency to decades of policymaking and service on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Biden “has a strong case for his experience that Trump simply can’t answer,” Barlow said.

Trump continues to make the case that he differs from Biden because he’s not a career politician.

“But after four years,” said Barlow, “you cannot claim to be a political amateur.”

Two in five registered voters say they believe Trump has been doing an “excellent” or “good” job as president in the latest Franklin & Marshall College poll released Thursday, with 80% of Republicans saying so compared to just 5% of Democrats and 35% of independents.

Trump likely will tout the significance of his third Supreme Court justice pick, Judge Amy Coney Barrett, which he announced Saturday, about a week after Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death, in addition to playing up his claims that Biden is against “oil, guns and God” and deceiving the public by pledging not to ban fracking because of his previous calls to limit new natural gas drilling on federal land.

“Trump is a very clever rhetorician,” Barlow said. “He knows just how to sow doubts about anybody, but in this case about Biden, and he knows how to pick at these things and make them seem more important than they might have seemed to me or or to us at first glance. He’s very good at that.”