Jonathan Bernstein, Columnist

What the Debate Told Us About the Next President

Biden would govern as a conventional Democrat. Trump would just be Trump.

October 23, 2020 at 4:26 AM UTC

Jonathan Bernstein is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering politics. A former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, he wrote A Plain Blog About Politics.

That was not a waste of time.
Photographer: Morry Gash-Pool/Getty Images

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Presidential debates are useful because the candidates actually do tell you who they will be in office.

Joe Biden, in the final debate on Thursday night, made it clear he’ll be a conventional liberal Democratic president, who will take the job seriously and try to solve problems. His value-added is his capacity for empathy, or at least for performing empathy.