CHRIS CRUCIAL: How to piss off Donald Trump

PLUS: New swing state poll averages!

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1. Make Trump Angry Again

Debates are between two human beings.

This is an obvious statement, yes. But it’s also something we tend to forget.

In analyzing what Joe Biden and Donald Trump should do to win the debate tomorrow night, people — myself included — talk about them like they are pieces on a chessboard. Or robots trained to spout policy positions.

They are not. And while both men will have a plan of attack tomorrow night, it’s worth remembering that emotion can and will factor into how they behave, how they interact with each other and how viewers perceive them.

Or, in the words of philosopher Mike Tyson, “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

I think the emotion quotient is particularly critical for Trump, who has shown flashes of a temper in debates past.

There was this moment from his third debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016 in which he angrily ripped a piece of paper from his notebook:

And this one, when he called Clinton “such a nasty woman”:

Or that time when Trump called Biden dumb in the first 2020 debate:

Former Trump White House aide Stephanie Grisham called the former president’s temper “terrifying” in a tell-all memoir about her time by his side, adding: “When I began to see how his temper wasn’t just for shock value or the cameras, I began to regret my decision to go to the West Wing.”

All of which raises the question: What, exactly, pisses Donald Trump off? And how can Joe Biden, well, make that happen?

The short answer to the first question is personal stuff. Trump called Hillary a “nasty woman” because she took a shot at his attempts to get around paying taxes. He blurted out to an audience that his genitalia was (were?) regular sized (yes, this really happened) after Marco Rubio went after the size of his hands. Many of Trump’s most vehement outbursts in and around his recent legal issues had to do with what he believed to be an undervaluing of his Mar-a-Lago property.

Anything that pricks the bubble that Trump lives in — where he is the richest, most successful, most handsome and just plain best — has the potential to make him angry. Because, well, he lives in a bubble! Everyone around him caters to him and affirms his views. He is almost never face to face with anyone who calls him out on anything — especially his looks, his wealth or his relative, er, prowess.

Which brings us to the second question, which amounts to: Will Biden actually say some of that stuff about Trump? Because there is at least some risk in him doing so.

Imagine this: Fifteen or so minutes into the debate, Biden is asked a question like: “What would you tell voters who say they don’t like you OR Donald Trump?” And he responds this way:

I understand some people may not think the economy is as strong as it could be. Or that I am a little older than they would like. But you are not choosing between me and the Almighty. You are choosing between me and Donald Trump. And here’s what I know about Donald Trump: He’s been convicted on 34 felonies. He’s been married three times. He’s been bankrupt a few more times than that. He’s three years younger than me — you might not be able to tell because he dyes his hair! — but he’s in far worse physical shape and his diet would make a teenager blush. He’s not as rich, as smart or as popular as he likes to think. Not to mention he was a failed president once — and would be again.

If Biden said that, here’s how the liberal left would respond:

And, almost certainly, Trump would blow his stack. He would be pissed. He would probably go into some riff about the Biden’s family corruption or how the president took drugs to be up for this debate or something like that.

The question is whether Biden’s provoking of Trump would be effective with the small number of undecided voters who are tuning into the debate. Because we know they don’t like Trump’s persona — and think what he says and how he behaves don’t fit the office of the presidency. But how would they react if Biden got down to his level — even if it was a purposeful effort to piss Trump off?

I will be honest: I don’t really know. One of the central tenets of Biden’s pitch to voters in 2020 was that he would restore dignity and gravitas to the presidency. Do voters hold him to that in the context of a campaign? Or are they ok with him going after Trump on personal stuff because all’s fair in love and war (and political campaigns)?

The point here is that there is both risk and reward tied into a purposeful strategy by Biden to get under Trump’s skin in the debate. I tend to believe — if I was forced to choose a strategy — that trying to get Trump angry and off-kilter is worth the potential blowback that Biden might face for not acting “presidential.”

But what path will he choose? In a little over 24 hours we’ll know.

2. Trump’s swing-state edge

Nationally, the race between Biden and Trump is tied — or damn close to it. But, in the 6 (or 7) swing states that are expected to decide the election, Trump has an advantage, according to new polling averages unveiled by the Washington Post on Wednesday.

Here’s what the Post found:

In 5 of the 7 swing states, Trump has a lead. In 4 of those 7, his average lead is outside the polling margin of error.

Simply put: If the map fell this way on November 5, Donald Trump would be the next president. (And, yes, I am aware that today is not November 5!)

The new WaPo polling averages also affirm my belief that when we talk about the 2024 swing states, we are really talking about two different subgroups of states.

The first — North Carolina, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia — all clearly lean Trump, and have done so for a few months now.

The second — Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania — are basically tied. And are where, I believe, the election will be won or lost. (As I have noted in this space before, if Biden loses Arizona, Nevada and Georgia, he needs to sweep Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to get to 270 electoral votes.)

One other thought: If you are looking for a single state that will decide the presidency, Pennsylvania looks like it. The race is effectively tied there. Trump won it in 2016. Biden won it in 2020. Jump ball.

3. Two stunning paragraphs

This, from the Washington Post, is truly astounding:

In six swing states that Biden narrowly won in 2020, a little more than half of voters classified as likely to decide the presidential election say threats to democracy are extremely important to their vote for president, according to a poll by The Washington Post and the Schar School of Policy and Government at George Mason University.

Yet, more of them trust Trump to handle those threats than Biden. And most believe that the guardrails in place to protect democracy would hold even if a dictator tried to take over the country.

So, just to be clear here: Voters trust the guy who tried to use the levers of the government to overturn a free and fair election more than the guy who, well, didn’t do that stuff, to protect democracy?

Now, I can hear myself warning, uh, myself that this is only one poll. But it’s broadly consistent with the notion that voters simply do not really rate (or care deeply) about the aftermath of the 2020 election and January 6.

Which, I think, is yet more evidence that Biden basing his reelection argument on the idea of defending capital “d” Democracy may be a major swing and a miss.

NOTABLE QUOTABLE

“2024 is when we take Colorado back. It’s when we take our nation back and we set a path on a new trajectory for conservative values, for Christian morals, that we would be a righteous nation recognized throughout the world once again.” — Colorado Rep. Lauren Boebert following her primary win. (Also, this.)

ONE GOOD CHART

So much of who will be seen as having “won” the debate has to do with what people already think of the two men. This chart, via Kristen Soltis Anderson and Echelon Insights, gets at the traits voters like (and don’t like) about Trump and Biden.

SONG OF THE DAY

This week, a tribute album to the late, great Tom Petty came out: “Petty Country.” It features covers of some of Petty’s greatest tunes by legends of country music including Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and George Strait. It’s pretty amazing stuff. Check out the trailer for the album below.

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