Since the writers are lazily rehashing a story arc from four years ago, allow me to lazily rehash a post from four years ago. Deletions are struck through, additions are bolded.

Tomorrow Tonight, President Trump and Vice President Biden are scheduled to meet in rhetorical battle, if “rhetorical” is even remotely appropriate to describe what drops from their maws. I expect the rationality of a goldfish on social media, the intellectual heft of a pile of gypsum, and the eloquence of a braying hyena, with dignity to match.

But that’s if it even happens. Turns out that a] Biden recently visited Governor Northam of Virginia, who tested positive for coronavirus, and b] the campaign has been putting early “lids” on Joe’s appearances this month, and we can’t tell if it’s to prepare for the debates or if he’s just not lucid on those days. they’re both insanely old.

My guess is that Biden will do better than expected in the debate. He usually does; he’s spent nearly over 50 years getting people to expect very little of him. If he’s lucid for the first 15-20 minutes of his own speaking time, I think he’ll be the “winner” by conventional wisdom. If his handlers know he’s not going to have a good night, I think he should use his opening statement to say something along the lines of, “I’m walking off in protest of Trump,” walk off, then let the press and his fans (BIRM) applaud the move. I think Biden needs to remain invisible for as much of the next six weeks four months as possible; the more people see of him, especially in unmanaged environments, the more likely he loses.

I still say that Trump would win relatively easily if he locked himself into a Captain Pike-style apparatus that would only permit him to answer “yes” or “no.” It would be less entertaining, but he’d save himself a good 90% of the trouble he gets into.

Either way, popcorn tomorrow tonight. Well, not actually popcorn, probably some air-fried chopped cauliflower with gobs of salt and butter poorly made hamburgers, but you get the idea.

The arrangements are atypical. I can live with the lack of a studio audience. I can live with cutting off the mics, especially given a certain somebody’s proclivity to talk over his opponents. Maybe those arrangements will become SOP if we see a more civil debate than we’ve been accustomed to.

It seems odd that CNN is restricting studio and stream access, at least at the time of this writing. If they’re doing it for purely proprietary reasons, fine. If not, I think they need to explain themselves.

But the weirdest thing is that we’re having this debate so early. It’s almost three months earlier than ever (previous record: September 21st in 1980), and it’s before either party’s conventions. You might say, “Yeah, it’s before the conventions, but we know exactly who the nominees are, so what’s the difference?”

My response would be that each man’s grip on his nomination is more precarious than usual because they’re both insanely old.

If the debates reveal that your guy is just plain too old to do the job, you need to replace him ASAP, and preferably before you officially nominate him. Thus the early debate.

(I’m trying to both-sides this thing. It’s clearly a bigger issue for one of the candidates, but the Big Macs coursing through the arteries of the other one are also concerning.)

Maybe there are established mechanisms for replacing a candidate after the convention, but I’d bet dollars-to-doughnuts that it’d be easier, cleaner, and less divisive to replace him before the convention. Before the convention means you have at least some time for vetting, debating, polling– you know, checking with your voters. After the convention probably means you’re resorting directly to the smoke-filled rooms.

You might say, “Can’t they just go with the VP nominee?” They could, but I don’t see much evidence that the Democrats have confidence that Harris can win, and as of this writing we don’t know Trump’s pick for VP. So, maybe it should be that simple, but it’s not that simple.

All that said, I don’t actually expect any big problems, and even if there are any, right now I’m too angry about the US losing to Panama to care. We’ll see how it goes.