Didn’t see coming

We rewatched the 2020 Trump-Biden debates. There’s so much we didn’t see coming.

The five most telling moments and what they foreshadow ahead of this week’s rematch.

by Christian Paz

The last time Joe Biden and Donald Trump debated, the country and the world were in a mess.

The coronavirus pandemic was raging, the first vaccines were still months away from being rolled out, and Trump had just recovered from a Covid infection (which he might have had when he debated Biden the first time).

The national economy was slowly recovering from the Covid-19 recession. The public’s mood was delicate, as the nation had emerged from a summer of rage and protests in reaction to the police killing of George Floyd. Ongoing anti-shutdown demonstrations were brewing around the country. Mask-wearing was a culture war. Attempted Chinese and Russian foreign election interference was a major news story, and the country was preparing for its first national election conducted primarily by mail-in ballot, testing public trust and elections infrastructure.

To remind us of how much has changed and to contextualize the first Biden-Trump debate of the 2024 election, it may be helpful to look back at the 2020 debates, like I did, to see how they aged, to see the biggest differences from today, to see what we might have missed back then, and to see if there are any lessons we can glean from the match-ups, one in late September and one in October 2020.

In short, it was a very different world. There was so much we didn’t see coming: We weren’t prepared for the pandemic to drag on for years. We didn’t anticipate an inflationary spike the likes of which we hadn’t seen in a generation. Little mention was made of abortion rights, even though Roe v. Wade was on the cusp of being struck down. And, above all, we didn’t anticipate Trump’s attempt to steal the election that culminated in the January 6 insurrection.

What emerges from watching the debates is a picture of uncertainty — both how little we knew back then and how little we might know now.

Moment 1: Trump calls the 2020 election rigged and doesn’t commit to accepting the results

This exchange at the end of the first debate is probably the most overlooked and telling moment of any of the debates that year. Moderator Chris Wallace asks about election integrity and what each candidate would do to “reassure the American people that the next president will be the legitimate winner” of the election.

He begins by questioning Biden, who defends the integrity of in-person and mail-in voting, commits to accepting the results of the election — win or lose — and then knocks Trump:

“But by the way, if in fact [Trump] says, he’s not sure what he’s going to accept. Well, let me tell you something, it doesn’t matter, because if we get the votes, it’s going to be all over. He’s gonna go. He can’t stay in power. It won’t happen.”

We know now what happens next: Trump spends the rest of campaign season sowing doubts, declares victory on Election Night, claims the election was stolen, and then spends the next few months attempting to overturn the election results — culminating in the January 6 insurrection.

At the debate that September, Trump gave some clear warning signs. He claims that he wasn’t given a fair presidential transition in 2016 and 2017. He questions the credibility of mail-in ballots, repeating conspiracy theories about missing, lost, and fraudulent ballots. He declares there’s “going to be a fraud like you’ve never seen” and that “it’s a rigged election.”

And then he refuses to say if he will accept the results of the election. “If it’s a fair election I am 100 percent on board. But if I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can’t go along with that.”

And nobody seems to bat an eye. Wallace, the moderator, did try to follow up earlier in the exchange to fact-check Trump’s claims about mail-in ballots and voter fraud, but he failed to press Trump on what he plans to do. Wallace instead seems to have been thinking about a 2000 presidential election scenario, where the Supreme Court essentially decides the victor. He asks Trump and Biden if the Court should settle electoral disputes.

Biden, meanwhile, dismisses Trump’s talk about accepting the election results.

He has no idea what he’s talking about. Here’s the deal. The fact is, I will accept it, and he will too. You know why? Because once the winner is declared after all the ballots are counted, all the votes are counted, that’ll be the end of it. That’ll be the end of it.”

It wasn’t the end of it, but no one seems to have taken the possibility of a coup, overturned election, or insurrection seriously. None of this is mentioned at the second and final presidential debate a few weeks later.

Moment 2: Roe v. Wade is nearly forgotten

Though it might be hard to believe nearly two years after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade through the Dobbs decision, abortion is never mentioned in any of the 2020 presidential debates.

Roe itself is only mentioned in one brief exchange in the first debate, when Biden and Trump are arguing over Trump’s nomination of Amy Coney Barrett after the death of Ruth Bader Ginsburg.

Biden tries to argue that Roe is “on the ballot as well ... in the court, and so that’s also at stake right now,” but Trump denies this, saying “there’s nothing happening there” and “you don’t know her view on Roe v. Wade.”

Biden does make one passing mention of “women’s rights” earlier on, but that’s in the context of whether Barrett’s appointment would guarantee the end of the Affordable Care Act and its protections for preexisting conditions and against insurance plans charging women higher premiums than men.

Barrett shored up the conservative majority that did end up overturning Roe and the constitutional right to an abortion.

Moment 3: Trump gets defensive on immigration

Of all the anti-immigrant moves Trump took as a candidate and as president, perhaps his zero-tolerance policy that separated migrant children from their parents at the border is the one with the most staying power in public memory. It was a galvanizing moment in 2018 for Democrats, and helped to shore up pro-immigrant sentiment during the Trump years. Its aftermath was also a high point in a national consensus around immigration that has eroded since.

That contrast, between how immigration is viewed by the American public today as compared to 2020, is also visible when looking at how the topic is presented during the second presidential debate. It is a moment of vulnerability for Trump, who gets asked over and over again by the moderator, Kristen Welker, and by Biden, whether he has a plan to reunite the missing parents of at least 500 children who were still in government custody at the time.

Trump deflects to pin the blame on Biden and the Obama administration, or responds with non sequiturs about human trafficking and drug cartels.

And Biden takes the moment to present a more open and liberal stance on immigration: promising to send a bill to Congress to provide a “pathway to citizenship for over 11 million undocumented people,” pledging to protect Dreamers and DACA recipients, and defending the right to asylum.

The entire exchange is a contrast to what will likely be said at the first 2024 debate. After years of surges in border crossings, a spike in asylum requests, and shifting public opinion, Trump now has the upper hand, and Biden will be on the defensive. His recent moves to restrict asylum, paired with new protections for undocumented spouses of American citizens, reveal this changed reality.

Moment 4: No one is worried about inflation

When Trump and Biden first debated, the economic problems the country faced were still dire. The unemployment rate was dropping but it was still at about 7 percent, nearly twice what it is today. GDP had shrunk during the Covid-19 recession, and the fiscal questions the country faced weren’t over whether to pass more economic stimulus or provide relief to households; they were about whether that spending should be big or bigger. Trump gets criticized in both debates for not doing more to provide financial relief to businesses and families, to schools and first responders, and no one seems to be worried about whether all that government spending will have unintended consequences.

In other words, “inflation” wasn’t even a word in the minds of the public, the candidates, or the moderators in these debates. This time, inflation might make or break Biden’s reelection odds.

Government stimulus is not the sole (or likely even the primary) reason for the inflationary period that we’re just exiting now. Inflation has surged around the globe, owing in part to the supply chain disruptions and other economic shocks of the pandemic. But that will be cold comfort for Team Biden if increased prices doom his bid for a second term.

Moment 5: Everyone is worried about Russia, Ukraine, or China, but for the wrong reasons

When it comes to foreign affairs, we’re living in a world very different from the one discussed in the 2020 debates. Russia is mentioned 29 times in both debates, almost exclusively when it comes to whether they are interfering in the 2020 election to help Trump like they did in 2016, or if they are trying to corrupt either of the two candidates.

Ukraine is similarly mentioned when Trump accuses Biden and his family of receiving bribes or participating in unethical business dealings with Ukrainian businesses. No mention is made of the threat Russia could pose to Ukraine or the international order.

Instead, China was the country that both debates focused on — which makes sense, given the pandemic was still the predominant story of the age. But neither the candidates nor the moderators consider the larger geopolitical challenge China was already posing: exerting influence on regional allies, threatening Taiwan, and challenging the US in trade, industrial production, and technology.

It’s useful to recognize and embrace uncertainty

To look back at these moments in the last two Biden-Trump face-offs is to see three lessons. First, the world has a curious way of being chaotic and uncertain in ways that are difficult — often impossible — to anticipate. The biggest stories of the day may fade from memory a few years down the line, and we wouldn’t know which remain important until time had passed.

The second lesson is forward-looking — about embracing uncertainty with humility. New threats and challenges can arise in a matter of weeks. At this point in 2020, Trump had not yet gotten Covid. The pandemic would only get worse. All of our polling was way off, and we didn’t know it. We couldn’t anticipate how long it would take to count every vote, and we couldn’t imagine a president would try to stop the peaceful transfer of power, refuse to concede, or attempt a coup.

Third, both of these conclusions offer a lesson on how to view the candidates. Presidents and their administrations end up dealing with a plethora of problems we can’t foresee. They are forced to adapt and deal with crises as they arise, and the problems they discuss at debates aren’t necessarily the ones they will face in office.

So as we head into the first debate of 2024, watch with a careful eye. There’s only so much we know right now. But things can always change.