Joe Biden posted photos of him meeting with “incredible” supporters in Atlanta ahead of tonight’s debate. “It’s good to be back,” he wrote.
Atlanta, it’s good to be back!
— Joe Biden (@JoeBiden) June 27, 2024
I met some incredible supporters who are fired up ahead of tonight’s debate. Let’s finish the job. pic.twitter.com/hGDGtuvnC8
Gavin Newsom, the governor of California and a lead Biden surrogate, stopped to talk to reporters at the McCamish Pavilion, a sports arena in Atlanta that has been turned into a media centre and post-debate spin room.
I asked Newsom what difference muted microphones and lack of studio audience might make.
“I have a little bias because I did a debate here in Georgia without an audience and it’s just better for the American people because now you’re not playing to the audience, you’re not just playing to a crowd in the room,” he said.
You’ve got to create a framework of engagement that speaks to a much larger audience so that’s a very healthy thing. It’s a very good thing for the Biden campaign. We’ll see how it plays out and same thing with the mic and talking over each other, which is part and parcel of Trump the bully, so that’s a helpful and healthy thing too.
From my perspective, in many ways Biden’s already won this debate. First of all, it’s on his calendar, it’s on his timeline, he asserted himself and Trump blinked in every single category as it relates to this effort. I’ve been really impressed and inspired by the Biden strategy so far.
I wondered if Biden might miss the energy of the audience that fired him up at the State of the Union address. But Newsom insisted:
Biden’s a good debater. He’s done a lot of these debates over many, many decades so one should not underestimate them. It was indicative of the Trump campaign completely flipping the last 72 hours, realising that they’ve set such a low bar of expectation that if he even shows up at the podium that he’s somehow confident he’s going to win this campaign.
So they start to panic a little bit in that respect, hedge bets, which is indicative of a little broader consciousness that Biden is very effective in these formats. I honestly have tremendous confidence in the outcome tonight - the message, obviously, the record and, more importantly, the vision. I hope we get to that.
