One thing we can say for sure — they didn’t miss much. Four years ago, the first showdown between the reality-TV populist and the identity-politics establishmentarian produced record-setting viewership. Last night, the first showdown between the incumbent and a barely-campaigning challenger produced … no-shows:
The first presidential debate of 2020 was widely panned by most observers — and is on track to draw a far smaller audience than the record-setting first debate four years ago.
Fast national ratings for the broadcast networks show the debate gathering 28.82 million viewers across ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox — a decline of 36 percent from 2016. Four years ago, the big four networks tallied 45.3 million viewers in the preliminary ratings, rising to 49.33 million after time zone adjustments for the live broadcast. Early figures from Spanish-language networks Telemundo and Univision show about 2.5 million people watching on those two outlets.
So what did they miss? For one thing, they missed Joe Biden refusing to take a position on court-packing, lest his policies become fodder for a presidential election:
Actually, it’s too bad they missed this specific exchange. Ducking questions and offering non-sequitur answers is nothing new in a debate or interview, of course; it’s practically an art form for politicians at all levels. But specifically refusing to answer a direct question on an actual issue raised by the candidate’s own party on the basis that his opponent might criticize the answer is a pretty novel approach to campaigning, especially for president.
The Americans who found something else to last night figured they wouldn’t miss much were probably right, at least for their own purposes. The 2016 matchup had more novelty than this debate matchup did. This time around, everyone knew what to expect from Trump, and the only mystery of 48-year-DC-fixture Joe Biden was whether he was up to the task. People who weren’t engaged in this contest before now could have simply checked social media to see the eventual answer to that question. Otherwise, most people would have guessed that this would be a 90-minute forum for personal attacks in both directions.
That takes us to the bigger question raised in the Frank Luntz focus group. Again, the thread that polls may be missing is the enthusiasm and engagement people have in this election. Media outlets insist that engagement will be off the charts, but they’re basing that on the midterms from two years ago when (a) Trump wasn’t on the ballot and (b) Democrats had Russiagate as a major theme. Putting Biden at the top of the ballot negates the scandal card in a number of ways, plus it makes this election another contest between the populist outsider and the DC establishment.
The sharp falloff in interest between the two cycles in this debate could show a profound lack of interest in the outcome. Democrats struggled to get voters to the polls in 2016, even when Hillary Clinton had a legitimate identity-politics argument and some kind of ground game. This time around, all Democrats have is Joe Biden barely campaigning at all, and no ground game whatsoever. As I mentioned in my Luntz post, polls show Trump’s voters are more energized and more enthusiastic than Biden’s. Democrats can’t afford the electorate to be disengaged and disinterested in the outcome. And this looks like Americans are largely tuning out.
