Joe Biden is banking on the fact that Donald Trump’s daily one-liners will be overshadowed by the substance required to sustain a full debate. 

By Sheila Copps
First published in The Hill Times on May 20, 2024.

OTTAWA—The next American election doesn’t happen until November.

But the first debate will happen on June 27 on CNN.

This historically early showdown was shaped through a social media exchange.

U.S. President Joe Biden launched the debate challenge in a video on X—formerly Twitter—where he accused Donald Trump of avoiding debates against his Republican challengers.

“Donald Trump lost two debates in 2020. Since then he hasn’t shown up for a debate. Now he is acting like he wants to debate me again,” Biden said.

“Well, make my day, pal. I’ll even do it twice. So let’s pick the dates, Donald—I hear you are free on Wednesdays,” Biden said, in a not so-subtle reference to Trump’s daily criminal court appearances, which don’t happen on Wednesdays.

Trump accepted the challenge on his social media platform, Truth Social, with this response. “I am READY and WILLING to Debate Crooked Joe at the two proposed times in June and September.” Trump also said he is strongly recommending more than two debates.

The president’s decision to launch the challenge is more than unusual.

For the past 37 years, all presidential debates have been managed by a non-partisan Commission on Presidential Debates.

That organization has already announced three debates in September and October, in Texas, Pennsylvania, and Utah.

But voters can actually cast their ballots as of Sept. 6 in some states, and both candidates think the debates should be held earlier.

Two years ago, the Republican National Committee agreed unanimously to boycott the commission’s presidential debates, but Democrats did not follow suit until this week.

There has been disagreement with the commission by the Democrats, who felt the organization broke the rules in allowing Trump and supporters to forego the wearing of masks during a COVID debate in 2020.

Democrats also want a debate without an audience, while Trump is seeking more people in more venues. He even suggested a debate in front of the courthouse where he is currently on trial for allegedly falsifying business records for hush money paid to former porn star Stormy Daniels.

Biden’s decision to call for an early debate is not a total surprise, as Democrats have not been happy with the college-based format.

But the fact that he would launch the challenge on social media is surprising.

It signals the importance of social media in the upcoming election race, and also suggests that Trump’s positive polling numbers are causing concern in presidential circles.

If the president were firmly in the lead, he would be minimizing the attention paid to debates. Democrats are also anxious to keep third-party candidate Robert Kennedy Jr. out of the ring.

They obviously don’t think he can win, but in a tight race, the scion of the Kennedy clan could actually deliver the race to Trump.

The early debate on CNN won’t likely include Kennedy, although that decision has not been finalized. That is one big reason why Biden wants to go early.

A second reason is that, notwithstanding Trump’s judicial challenges, his poll numbers are actually increasing.

Biden is banking on the fact that Trump’s daily one-liners will be overshadowed by the substance required to sustain a full debate.

Whatever happens in the United States, a presidential debate involving Trump will have a spillover effect in Canada.

Trump has been travelling the country bragging about his appointments to the U.S. Supreme Court who have thrown out women’s right to control their own reproduction.

Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre says he won’t touch the abortion issue, but his caucus is rife with those who plan to do just that. He has also promised to use the notwithstanding clause to overturn laws that he doesn’t like.

Trump is also saying that he does not support a national ban on abortion, but says the states should make the decision and, once they do, it should be respected.

Democrats would love to run the election on that issue, because they know that the vast majority of women—especially young women—do not want the clock to be turned back on abortion rights.

Liberals would love to have Canadian voters focused on the same issue.

Poilievre hopes to park the abortion question having promised not to reopen the issue. But more than half his caucus members are actively anti-choice.

Poilievre recently joined them in voting against the provision of free birth control medication as part of the rollout of a modified pharma care program.

The more Trump’s team campaigns against abortion rights, the more Canadians will wonder if that could happen here.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.

By SHEILA COPPS

First published in The Hill Times on Monday, March 20, 2017.

OTTAWA—Politics is at its worst in political parties.

Internal decisions are usually made in secret with little recourse to the rules of due process that apply to normal business decisions.

That may change, as a disgruntled New Democrat took his case to the courts last week after his party would not allow him to run for the leadership.

Court documents filed last Wednesday say it is the first time in history that the NDP has prevented someone from running for the leadership.

Brian Graff, a former Liberal who joined the party last August, was informed in late December that he could not be a candidate. He was given 48 hours to appeal the decision.

His appeal was dismissed without any “reasons, explanation or basis for their decision” according to court documents. Graff’s lawyer, Nader Hasan, applied for a judicial review, complaining that the internal appeal process was flawed.

He told The Globe and Mail that while political parties have the right to choose their nominees “We’re saying that, if they want to vet out people, they at least have to respect basic principles of procedural fairness in a transparent and open way.”

If the courts rule in Graff’s favour, it could have wide-ranging implications for all political parties in Canada.

We saw from afar, via leaked Democratic National Committee emails, to what lengths party officials were willing to go to tilt the process in favour of the preferred choice of the establishment.

The dubiousness of the DNC decision to marginalize Bernie Sanders played out in the election. The insider rebuff of Sanders played into the hands of Donald Trump, who won the election, in part, because of Democratic hubris.

Similar warning signs surfaced in recent Liberal Party decisions involving byelection nominations.

Decisions were made which served to tilt the nomination process in the races to replace outgoing ministers, John McCallum and Stéphane Dion. Notwithstanding public protestations to the contrary, non-transparent internal steps were taken that served to benefit party-preferred candidates, facing tough nomination battles.

In one case, the meddling backfired. The popular mayor of St. Laurent, Alan DeSousa, was deemed ineligible to run by the party’s vetting committee. That move ostensibly paving the way for party favourite and former provincial minister Yolande James. Instead, DeSousa’s 26-year-old assistant, Emmanuella Lambropoulos, whose candidacy was green lighted, surprised everyone by winning the nomination.

By any standards, former PMO staffer Mary Ng, and former Quebec provincial minister Yolande James would both have been excellent candidates. They are young, articulate and reflect the diversity of Canada’s population.

But party meddling handed them a poisoned chalice.

In Ng’s case, the party approved a retroactive voting process resulting in the disallowance of 1,500 memberships sold by her chief opponent.

Ng’s obvious talents may help her overcome the rocky beginning of a controversial nomination victory two weeks ago. But party actions in both nominations have soured volunteers.

The moves provoked a hot debate among Liberals. Jack Siegel, former co-chair of the Liberal constitutional and legal affairs committee, defended the party on his Facebook page. He claimed “the Liberal Party has had retroactive blind cut-offs for close to 25 years,” using it as a means to prevent “dumping thousands of forms at the deadline, keeping their signups secret and overloading the party’s membership systems with the flood of forms, all in urgent need of inputting.”

Siegel was deeply involved in the nomination which prompted my departure from politics. He oversaw a decision to count 500 unsigned ballots that had not been initialed by the returning officer. The membership system in the party offices was so ‘overloaded’ that, just before midnight, an official deleted 378 eligible Liberals from the voting list. Party officials wanted to ensure the nomination of my opponent, who was the leader’s choice.

I was not the only one who exited Parliament under a cloud. Rigged nominations across the country ultimately poisoned the volunteer base. Many diehard Liberals dropped out of the party and two million of them stayed home when Prime Minister Paul Martin lost the election to Conservative Stephen Harper.

Thanks to the NDP complaint, the courts may ultimately decide that political parties need to establish rigorous, transparent processes so their decisions are not just seen to be arbitrary or biased.

Retroactive cutoffs, and green light committees with no public transparency or accountability, turn voters off.

More important, they turn party members off. As a volunteer, if you are not allowed to participate in a nomination, you may just take a pass on an election.

Sheila Copps is a former Jean Chrétien-era cabinet minister and a former deputy prime minister. Follow her on Twitter at @Sheila_Copps.