Why Donald Trump might not debate Hillary Clinton:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/08/09/why-donald-trump-might-not-debate-hillary-clinton/
Hillary Clinton’s campaign just threw down the gauntlet, challenging Donald Trump to accept the three presidential debates that have been scheduled.
Trump insists he wants to debate but says he needs to secure some assurances first. “I will absolutely do three debates,” Trump told Time magazine on Tuesday. “I want to debate very badly. But I have to see the conditions.” He added: “I’m sure they’ll be open to any suggestions I have, because I think they’ll be very fair suggestions. But I haven’t [seen the conditions] yet. They’re actually presented to me tonight.”
Still, it’s apparent that Trump might very well skip one or more debates anyway — becoming the first candidate to do so since 1972. For a few reasons:
1) He’s not very good at them
Yes, Trump won the Republican primary, which featured plenty of debates. But it was largely in spite of his lackluster debate performances. We even looked at his performances from the first few debates and found he generally lost ground after them, while his opponents gained.
Being on a stage one-on-one with Clinton is another beast entirely. Trump’s poor grasp of policy and subpar debating record don’t portend good things for him in general election debates that will be much more policy-heavy and require him to talk much more.
2) He can be baited, and Clinton is good at it
Clinton is a very studied and capable debater who will spend plenty of time figuring out ways to bait Trump in these contests. And it’s not hard to see him getting drawn into all kinds of exchanges that reinforce his many established liabilities.
3) He’s already hinted strongly that he won’t
Trump has already laid the groundwork for declining the debates. He recently tweeted that the dates are all wrong and suggested that Clinton's campaign somehow rigged the dates — just like Sanders’s campaign argued in the Democratic primary — to make sure nobody watches.
As our own Philip Bump wrote, this doesn’t make much sense — especially given that the debates were scheduled long before the NFL schedule was released. But either way, it’s clear what Trump is doing here. And actually the bogusness of his complaint makes it even clearer.