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Frank Bruni, a contributing Opinion writer, hosted a written online conversation with Katherine Mangu-Ward, the editor in chief of Reason magazine, and Nate Silver, the founder and former editor of FiveThirtyEight and the author of the newsletter Silver Bulletin, to discuss their expectations for the third Republican debate on Wednesday night. They also dug into and sorted through a blizzard of political news particularly the new New York Times/Siena battleground-state polling with dreadful news for President Biden that has Democrats freaked out (again).

Frank Bruni: Thank you both for joining me. While well pivot in short order to the debate, I cant shake that poll, whose scariness ranks somewhere between The Texas Chain Saw Massacre and The Exorcist. I know my own head is spinning. I mean: Donald Trump ahead of President Biden in five of six crucial battleground states?

How loud an alarm is this? Should Biden at this late stage consider not pursuing re-election? Would that help or hurt the Democrats in winning the White House? And if not Biden, who would give the party the best chance? Nate, lets start with you.

Nate Silver: Thanks for having me, Frank. Its nice to be back in the (digital) pages of The Times. I think whether Democrats would be better off if Biden dropped out is very much an open question which is kind of a remarkable thing to be saying at this late stage. Theres a whole cottage industry devoted to trying to figure out why Biden doesnt get more credit on the economy, for instance. And the answer might just be that hes 80 years old and that colors every impression voters have of him.

Katherine Mangu-Ward: The voters in these polls just seem to be screaming, Hes too old, and I feel poor! The most shocking finding was that only 2 percent of voters said the economy was excellent. Two percent! Fewer than 1 percent of voters under 30 said the economy was excellent. In Arizona, Nevada and Wisconsin, exactly zero polled respondents under 30 said the economy was excellent.

Bruni: Nate, I take your point about open question I have no crystal ball, and my God, Ive never so badly wanted one, because the Democrats getting this right and blocking Trump is, well, incalculably vital to this democracys future. But if you were the partys chief adviser and you had to make the call: Yes to Biden or no to Biden and an invitation to someone else?

Silver: Well, Im the probabilities guy, so Ill usually avoid answering a question definitively unless you force me to. Really, the best option would have been if Biden decided in March he wouldnt run, and then you could have a vigorous primary. If you actually invested me with all this power, Id want access to private information. Id like to do some polling. Id want to canvass people like Gretchen Whitmer and Raphael Warnock about how prepared they are. Id like to know how energetic Biden is from day to day.

Bruni: And you, Katherine? Biden thumbs up or thumbs down? And if thumbs down, tell me your favorite alternative.

Mangu-Ward: If were picking up magical artifacts, a time machine would be more useful than a crystal ball. And youd need to go back before the selection of Kamala Harris as vice president. A viable vice president would have been a moderate threat to Biden, but a weak one is a major threat to the party. If were scrounging around for an alternative, I dont completely hate Gov. Jared Polis of Colorado.

Bruni: Id settle at this point for a Magic 8 Ball. And Katherine, dont completely hate in 2023 politics equals want to marry and live with forever in the politics of decades past. Were a cynical lot.

In any case, Nate mentioned age. How do you two explain that the same poll weve been talking about revealed that while 62 percent of Americans feel that Biden, 80, doesnt have the mental sharpness to be effective, only 44 percent feel that way about Trump, 77. Only 39 percent said that Trump is too old to be president, while 71 percent said that Biden is. Do those numbers make any sense at all to you?

Silver: There are at least three things going on here. First, the three-and-a-half-year difference between Trump and Biden is not nothing. Its certainly something you start to notice if you have older friends, parents, relatives entering their late 70s or early 80s. Second, Bidens manner of speaking and presentation just reads as being more old-fashioned than Trumps, and that perception is reinforced by media coverage. Third, I wonder if younger voters feel like Bidens a bit of a forced choice there wasnt really a competitive primary so old serves as a euphemism for stale.

Mangu-Ward: Because this election cycle has been largely bereft of serious policy debate, I also think age is one thing people can grab on to to justify their unease about a Biden second term.

Bruni: I wrote a few months back about this: Trump is so deliberately and flamboyantly outrageous such a purposeful cyclone of noise and distraction that the normal metrics dont apply to him. He transcends mundane realities like age. Hes Trump! Hes a horror-movie villain, a Saturday-morning cartoon, a parade float. Those things dont have ages (or four indictments encompassing 91 counts).

Silver: I like that theory. Theres a sense in which some voters feel theyre in on the joke with Trump. Although I also dont think that voters have quite shifted into general-election mode, and maybe the media hasnt, either. Trump as candidate is a very different ball of wax from Trump as president, and thats what Democrats will spend the next year reminding voters about.

Bruni: Katherine, lets say Biden stays in the race. Certainly looks that way. Can you envision a scenario in which Democrats grow so doubtful, so uncomfortable that hes seriously challenged for the nomination and maybe doesnt get it? If so, sketch that for me.

Mangu-Ward: As a libertarian (but not a Libertarian), Im always cautiously interested in third-party challenges, and that seems more likely to me than a direct challenge for the Democratic nomination. After each election cycle, theres a moment when pundits decide whether to blame a Green or a Libertarian or an independent for the fact that their pick lost, but an appealing outsider peeling off support from Biden or Trump seems more likely to be a real consideration this time around. We have a lot of noisy characters who dont fit neatly into partisan boxes on the loose at the moment.

Bruni: Veterans of Barack Obamas 2012 campaign are arguing that he was in a similar position to Biden a year out from that election. Nate, do they have a point? Or do their assurances ring hollow because Biden is not Obama, isnt as beloved by the base, is indeed old and has been stuck in a low-approval rut going back to 2021 or some combination of those?

Silver: Certainly, its generally true that polling a year in advance of the election is not very predictive. But Bidens situation is worse than Obamas. His approval ratings are notably worse. The Electoral College has shifted against Democrats since 2012 (although its now not a given). And theres the age thing. Remember, a majority of Democrats did not even want Biden to run again. I think the Democratic communications and strategy people have been shrugging off that data more than they maybe should.

Mangu-Ward: Biden is definitely not Obama, and its definitely not 2012. The concerns about Bidens age are valid. Though they would apply to Trump just as much in a sane world.

Bruni: Youre both so admirably or is that eerily? calm. I need to get your diet, exercise or pharmaceutical regimen. Am I nuts to worry/believe that Trumps return to the presidency isnt just an unideal election outcome but a historically cataclysmic one? How much does that prospect scare you two?

Mangu-Ward: Thats my secret, Frank. Im always angry. Like the Hulk. I think the current offerings for president are deeply unappealing, to say the least. But thats nothing new for someone who prefers to maximize freedom and minimize the role of the state in Americans personal and economic lives. I am concerned about the peaceful transfer of power, and Trump has shown that he and his supporters are more of a threat to that.

Silver: On that, one thing I feel better about is that the reforms that Congress made to the Electoral Count Act made a repeat of Jan. 6 less likely. Theres also perhaps less chance of another Electoral College-popular vote split. If Trump wins the popular vote by three points and theres no other funny business, Im not sure what to say exactly other than that in a democracy, you often have to live with outcomes that you would not have chosen.

Bruni: Biden, theoretically, isnt the only bar to Trumps long red tie dangling over the Resolute Desk anew. I mean again, theoretically one of the candidates in this third Republican debate could be the nominee. Yes? Or is it time to admit that, barring a truly extraordinary development, the Republican primary contest is over?

Silver: Prediction markets say theres a roughly 75 percent chance that Trump is the nominee. That frankly seems too low no candidate has been this dominant at this stage of the race before. I suppose theres a path where Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley does relatively well in Iowa, the other drops out and then actually, Im still not sure theres a path. Maybe Trumps legal trouble begins to catch up to him? As much as the early states tend to produce surprises, I think if you put all the numbers into a model, it would put the chances at closer to 90 percent than 75.

Mangu-Ward: The Times/Siena poll is bad news for Biden, but its even worse news for the folks on the G.O.P. debate stage, because it suggests that they simply neednt bother. Trump is doing just fine holding his own against Biden, so theres no need to change horses midrace. Unless your horse goes to jail, I guess.

The debate will be a primo demonstration of Sayres Law: In any dispute the intensity of feeling is inversely proportional to the value of the issues at stake.

Bruni: If one of the five people on the debate stage were somehow to overtake Trump, who would that be? Has Nikki Haley supplanted Ron DeSantis as the fallback?

Silver: The one thing DeSantis originally had going for him was a perception of being more electable. But hes pretty much squandered that by being an unappealing candidate along many dimensions. And Haley largely performed better than Trump in that new Times/Siena poll. Still, Im not sure how many Republicans are going to be willing to oust Trump on the basis of a New York Times poll. And its not an easy argument to make to Republican voters when Biden looks vulnerable against anyone right now.

Mangu-Ward: I appreciated Haleys early debate appearances, where she put a lot of emphasis on the shared responsibility for budgetary malfeasance between the Democrats and Trump. But now shes giving me 2012 Mitt Romney flashbacks. Shes a sane and competent Republican who has realized the best way to keep her primary campaign viable is to go hard on immigration restrictionism. She was never an open borders gal, but she did usually offer some warm fuzzies about our nation of immigrants followed by a get in line.

Bruni: Trump has said he doesnt want a running mate from any of the people on the debate stage. Do you see anyone like Haley in particular who could force his or her way into at least serious consideration? And possibly help him get elected?

Mangu-Ward: The Harris debacle certainly offers lessons for Trump, but Im not sure whether hes in the mood to learn them.

Silver: The conventional political science view is that V.P. choices do not matter very much unless they seem manifestly unqualified. But they probably ought to matter more for candidates as old as Biden and Trump. I do think Haley would represent some softening of Trumps image and might appeal to Republicans who worry about a second term being a total clown show. Who would actually staff the cabinet in a second Trump administration with Trumps tendency to be disloyal and the legal jeopardy he puts everybody in his orbit in is one of those things that keeps me up at night.

Bruni: Nate, your cabinet question haunts me, too. The quality of Trumps aides deteriorated steadily across his four years in the White House. And anyone who came near him paid for it in legal fees and the contagion of madness to which they were exposed. So who does serve him if hes back? Do Ivanka and Jared make peace with him? Power again!

Silver: I dont think I have anything reassuring to say on this front. I do think, I guess, that Trump has some incentive to assure voters that he wouldnt go too crazy in a second term in 2016, voters actually saw Trump as being more moderate than Clinton.

Mangu-Ward: A second-term president will always have a different kind of cabinet from a first-termer, and a Trump-Biden matchup would mean a second-termer, no matter who wins. But either way, the cabinet will probably be lower quality and more focused on risk mitigation, which isnt ideal.

Bruni: So is there any reason to watch this debate other than, when the subjects of the Middle East in particular and foreign policy in general come up, to see Haley come at the yapping human jitterbug known as Vivek Ramaswamy like a can of Raid?

Silver: TV ratings for the second debate were quite low. But I suspect the main audience here isnt rank-and-file voters so much as what remains of the anti-Trump Republican establishment. If Haley can convince that crowd that shes more viable than DeSantis and more electable than Trump, that could make some difference.

Mangu-Ward: Historically, debates have been my favorite part of the campaign season, because Im in it for the policy. But G.O.P. primary voters have been pretty clear that policy is not a priority. I suppose Ill also tune in to see Chris Christie scold the audience. This weeks spectacle of him telling a booing crowd, Your anger against the truth is reprehensible, was pretty wild.

Bruni: OK, lightning round fast and dirty. Or clean. But definitely fast. Will Trump ever serve a day in prison?

Silver: Id say no, although prediction markets put the odds at above 50 percent.

Bruni: You and your prediction markets, Nate. You could have given me your own hunch. Or wish. My wish is a 10-year sentence. At least. My hunch is zip. Hulk?

Mangu-Ward: He will probably serve time. He will certainly exhaust every avenue available to him before doing so. In general, the fact that there are many opportunities for appeal is a good thing about our justice system.

Bruni: Which 2024 Senate race do you find most interesting?

Silver: Undoubtedly Texas, just because its one of the only chances Democrats have to pick up a G.O.P. seat. Ted Cruz won fairly narrowly last time, and Colin Allred is probably a better candidate than Beto ORourke.

Mangu-Ward: Peter Meijer just joined the Senate Republican primary race in Michigan. I appreciated his performance in the House; hes quite libertarian and was one of the few Republicans who voted to impeach Trump.

Bruni: Americas medium-term future are you bullish, bearish or, I dont know, horse-ish?

Silver: Everyone is so bearish now, you can almost seem like a bull by default just by pointing out that liberal democracy usually gets its act together in the long run. But the younger generation of voters takes a different attitude on a lot of issues, such as free speech, which has begun to worry me a bit.

Mangu-Ward: Bullish, always. Politics ruins everything it touches, but not everything is politics.

Bruni: Finally, should Democrats be brutally victory-minded and just swap out Joe and Kamala for Taylor and Travis?

Mangu-Ward: I just said politics ruins everything it touches. Must you take Taylor from us, too?

Bruni: Fair point, Hulk. You have me there.

Silver: It would be a very popular ticket. Taylor Swift will turn 35 only a month before Inauguration Day in 2024, Id note.

Bruni: You both have my thanks. Great chatting with you.

Frank Bruni is a professor of journalism and public policy at Duke University, the author of the book The Beauty of Dusk and a contributing Opinion writer. He writes a weekly email newsletter.

Katherine Mangu-Ward (@kmanguward) is the editor in chief of Reason magazine.

Nate Silver, the founder and former editor of FiveThirtyEight and author of the forthcoming book On the Edge: The Art of Risking Everything, writes the newsletter Silver Bulletin.

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