There are a few things we can expect in the presidential debate Tuesday.
First, former President Donald Trump will lie nearly as often as he breathes. As I explained on my fact-checking podcast They Stand Corrected, and here in the AJC, these debates are “arson for truth.” Even if the moderators attempt to fact-check some individual claims, their efforts will surely be inadequate to extinguish the flames engulfing Trump’s pants.
Vice President Kamala Harris will likely say some inaccurate things as well, though generally without the onslaught that makes Trump the most mendacious politician in modern U.S. history. It would be “bothsidesism” to pretend otherwise.
Credit: Handout
Credit: Handout
Shamelessness is one of Trump’s advantages for a televised spectacle. Another is being a natural showman. Even many Americans who can’t stand Trump and want him nowhere near the White House again watch him.
Just as he was a failed businessman who entertained people by playing a successful one on TV, he knows how to be a failed president who plays a successful one. (As Elaine Kamarck of the Brookings Institution put it, presidents including Trump “fail when they cannot master or comprehend the government that they inherit.”)
Harris, meanwhile, cut her teeth not by selling products to mass markets but by arguing before juries — who, unlike voters, are required to be impartial, consider concrete facts, discuss with each other and come to a reasonable decision. And she “is not someone known for delivering big speeches,” NPR noted recently.
But these differences may pale in comparison to something else in the race: a gender gap that’s different from what many people assume.
Dan Cassino, who oversees polling at Fairleigh Dickinson University, wrote recently: “We talk about the gender gap in voting as being between men and women. But it’s not. The real gender gap is between men who are holding to traditionally masculine identities and everybody else. … Trump’s appeal to a traditional form of masculine identity is the only thing keeping this race close.”
For Trump, it’s another role-playing game. In measurable ways, he’s nothing like the vast majority of American men.
Around the time his presidential candidacy took off in 2015, my book, “All In,” was published, packed with research and statistics busting myths about modern dads. For example, virtually all dads care for their children at home (clothing, bathing, feeding, helping with homework and more) several days a week or every day. Trump, meanwhile, once said of changing diapers, “I don’t do that. And there’s a lot of women out there that demand that the husband act like the wife.”
Surveys also show the vast majority of American men believe being present, teaching kids good values and providing emotional support are all more important than making money. Trump once said, “I won’t do anything to take care of them. I’ll supply funds.” Also, “It’s not like I’m going to be walking the kids down Central Park.”
Then there are his recorded comments boasting about assaulting women, which he nonsensically tried to write off as “locker room talk.” (Others have since tried that same excuse, including an Atlanta business leader who was caught spewing anti-Semitism and racism.) As Super Bowl-winning father-son duo Ronnie Lott and Ryan Nece explained in an event with me, real locker room talk is about pragmatic things as well as “intimate conversations” in which guys share issues they’re dealing with.
In his 2016 debates with Hillary Clinton, Trump displayed his impulsive need to perform masculinity. She later wrote that she considered saying, “Back up you creep, get away from me. I know you love to intimidate women, but you can’t intimidate me.” In his postdebate remarks, meanwhile, he discussed her in crude, misogynistic terms.
Now, he’s facing another woman for the top job. He wants to appeal to men who falsely see him as representing “masculinity,” but he also knows his candidacy would be stronger if he could win over more women.
Harris, meanwhile, needs to keep emphasizing the fight for women’s reproductive freedom, a top issue for voters across the political spectrum. She also needs to show men that she and her running mate, former football coach and openly loving dad Tim Walz, stand for and represent them. (As I explain in my podcast, Walz — the Minnesota governor — is statistically far more representative of today’s American men.)
All this is sure to be a powerful undercurrent at the debate. Amid the lies, claims, counterclaims, attacks and spin, both candidates will work to navigate it. If one of them does so particularly well, it could help them ride the wave to victory.
Josh Levs is host of They Stand Corrected, the podcast and newsletter fact-checking the media. Find him at joshlevs.com.
About the Author
