'Presidential debates are more performance art than actual ways to inform'

‘Move on from Trump-Biden election debates’

Stuart N. Brotman in the Boston Herald

Major media organizations have banded together to urge Democrats and Republicans to commit to having their presumptive presidential nominees, Joe Biden and Donald Trump, participate in multiple televised debates, says Stuart N. Brotman. But most Americans will be “locked into” one or the other by late summer. Debate performances are “unlikely to flip” many voters. Media organizations should devote their “enormous resources” to “more worthy activities,” like encouraging voter registration and early voting.

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There has “never been a better or more urgent moment” for President Joe Biden and his fellow Democrats to “seize the problem-solver high ground on immigration and border security,” says Jill Lawrence. Immigration remains “people’s top concern” in polls. Democrats should “force Trump to own his nakedly political” sabotaging of a bipartisan border deal he apparently feared would work and spoil his plans to campaign as the “savior” who would deliver us from “border chaos.”

The United States has “every right” to tell ByteDance to sell TikTok to a new owner “not subject to the control of the Chinese state,” says Tim Wu. Threatening to ban the app sends Beijing the message that democratic nations “take seriously” its “blatant and obvious” violations of internet freedom, like recently ordering Apple to “block downloads of WhatsApp, Threads and Signal within its borders.” Free countries “have played the sucker for far too long.”

The Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Donald Trump’s immunity case last week, and it was “not a good day for American democracy,” says Austin Sarat. The “conservative majority seemed ready to jettison its own originalist interpretive method and to ignore the grave threat that former President Trump’s election denialism — and efforts to block the peaceful transfer of power — posed to our constitutional republic.” Let’s hope the justices “come to their senses” and reject Trump’s plea for “unprecedented” immunity.

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