The second and final debate between President Trump and former Vice President Biden is on Thursday night, and with the aftereffects of the first debate having left a bad taste with audiences, the rules have changed.
Dr. Anna Sampaio, political scientist and Chair of the Ethnic Studies Department at Santa Clara University, joined “The State of California” to talk about what audiences can expect at Thursday night’s debate.
Sampaio said that she doesn’t expect Trump’s behavior to be any different than it was in the first round.
“This is a campaign that’s in a state of free fall,” she said. "I fully expect to see the same kind of aggressive, combative speech that we saw in earlier debates and that we’ve seen from Trump in the last couple of weeks at his rallies, as well.”
One highly anticipated and new element added to the second debate is a mute button, the product of the constant interrupting between Trump and Biden three weeks ago in Cleveland. Sampaio said that while this addition is a “huge deal,” she doesn’t expect it to make a big difference.
“For the campaigns to concede to a mute button is huge,” she told KCBS Radio. “It’s only going to be in effect in the first two minutes of each 15-minute segment. The rest of it’s going to be the same give and take.”
But Sampaio added that Trump’s rhetoric could cost him and that she doesn’t expect Biden to go on the offense.
“Combative speech does not play well with voters who Trump really needs to turn out in his favor, but I don’t expect Biden to go on the offense in that particular way,” she said.
Trump is expected to lash out on Biden’s son, Hunter Biden, but Sampaio said that Joe Biden is “notorious” for staying on message and expects him to do the same on Thursday, with an added emphasis on appealing to Black and Latino voters who, “have the potential to push the electorate in key states like Georgia and North Carolina, or Kansas,” she said, adding that it could push a shift in the senate, as well.
Trump’s pushback toward the news media and debate moderators has been discussed as rhetorical strategy, but Sampaio said that his behavior hasn’t changed much since the election four years ago against Hilary Clinton.
“This is the same strategy he pulled out in 2016, engaging in displays of masculine bravado and targeting racial and ethnic minorities,” she said. “It’s also about undermining the legitimacy of the process as well as the possibility of the results.”
While Biden has performed well in recent polls, his campaign has been emphasizing to voters that things can change late in the campaign, just as it did when former FBI Director James Comey sent his infamous letter to Congress on October 28, 2016 that potentially cost Clinton the election.
One big difference, however, is that 50 million people have already voted. Sampaio said that those numbers, along with Biden’s consistent lead in national polls and in battleground states could play in his favor.
“Biden has held a double-digit lead very consistently not only over the last several weeks but over the last several months,” she said. “Trump has lost support among key segments of his electorate, mainly white men and white women.”
Tune into KCBS Radio on Thursday night at 6 p.m. PDT for a live stream of the second, and last, presidential debate.