ATLANTA – President Joe Biden and his Republican rival, donald trumpwill gather for a debate on Thursday that offers an unparalleled opportunity for both candidates to try to reshape the political narrative.
Biden, the incumbent Democrat, has the chance to assure voters that, at 81 years old, he is able to guide the US through a series of challenges. Meanwhile, 78-year-old Trump could use the moment to try to pass his felony conviction in New York and convince an audience of tens of millions that he is temperamentally suited to return to the Oval Office.
Biden and Trump enter the night facing strong headwinds, including a public tired of the tumult of partisan politics. Both candidates are hated by the majority of Americans, according to votingand offer clearly different views on virtually all core issues. Trump promised Comprehensive plans to remake the US government if he returns to the White House and Biden argues that his opponent would pose an existential threat to the nation’s democracy.
With just over four months until Election Day, their performances have the rare potential to alter the trajectory of the race. Every word and gesture will be analyzed not only for what the two men say, but also for how they interact with each other and how they resist pressure.
“Debates tend not to alter voters’ perceptions in a way that changes their vote: they typically reinforce, not convince,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania and an expert on presidential communications. “What makes this debate different is that we essentially have two incumbents about whom voters have very strong opinions. But that doesn’t mean those perceptions are correct or match what voters will see on stage.”
Trump and Biden were not on the same stage or even spoke since the last debate weeks before the 2020 presidential elections. Trump missed Biden’s inauguration after leading a unprecedented and unsuccessful effort to reverse his defeat to Biden who culminated in the Capitol insurrection on January 6 by his supporters.
Thursday’s broadcast on CNN will be the first general election debate in history. It is the first televised general election presidential debate organized by a single media outlet after both campaigns. abandoned the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debateswhich has organized all clashes since 1988.
According to the network rules, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not qualify.
Aiming to avoid a repeat of the chaotic clashes of 2020, Biden insisted – and Trump agreed – to hold the debate without an audience and to allow the network to mute the candidates’ microphones when it was not their turn to speak. There will be two commercial breaks, another departure from modern practice. Candidates have agreed not to consult staff or others while the cameras are off.
The timing follows moves by both candidates to respond to national early voting trends by advancing the political calendar. It remains to be seen whether the anticipated schedule will cushion the effects of any errors or crystallize them in the public’s mind.
“There are two men who haven’t debated in four years,” said Phillippe Reines, a Democratic political consultant who helped former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton prepare for debates with Trump in 2016.
Biden and Trump, he said, “don’t like each other, they don’t see each other, (they’re) pretty rusty heading into the biggest night of their lives. That sums up what’s at stake on Thursday.”
The debate falls days later the second anniversary the annulment of Roe v. Wade by the Supreme Court, ending the federally guaranteed right to abortion and placing reproductive rights at the center of politics ever since.
The confrontation also comes shortly after the takeover of Biden’s White House executive action to restrict asylum applications on the US-Mexico border in an effort to reduce the number of migrants entering the country. Trump has made illegal immigration a centerpiece of his campaign.
The wars in Ukraine and Gaza loom large over the race, as do the candidates’ sharply divergent views on America’s role in the world and its alliances. Differences in inflation, fiscal policy and government investment to build infrastructure and combat climate change will provide even more contrasts.
Also in the political context: the Supreme Court is in about to announce its decision about whether Trump is legally immune from his alleged role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. It came weeks after Trump was convicted in New York of participating in a hush-money scheme that prosecutors alleged was intended to illegally influence the 2016 election.
Biden spent the week leading up to the debate isolated at Camp David with top White House and campaign aides, as well as a circle of longtime advisers and allies. A mock stage was built at the complex to simulate the studio where the debate will be held, and Biden’s personal lawyer, Bob Bauer, was reprising his role as Trump in the practice sessions.
Aides say the work reflects Biden’s understanding that he cannot afford a steady showing. They insist that the sometimes dull speaker would rise to the occasion.
Trump, meanwhile, continued his preparation for a more unstructured debate with two days of meetings at his Florida estate, calling allies and supporters, and test attacks in social media posts and interviews with conservative-leaning media outlets.
Trump and his advisers have spent months reporting what they consider to be signs of Biden’s waning resistance. In recent days, they have begun to predict that Biden will be stronger on Thursday, with the aim of raising expectations for the incumbent.
Atlanta, the debate’s host city, offers symbolic and practical significance to the campaign, but each side believes that what happens there will have broad repercussions.
In 2020, Biden secured Georgia’s 16 electoral votes with a margin of less than 12,000 votes out of 5 million cast. Trump memorably pressured the state’s Republican leadership to overturn his victory based on false theories of voter fraud being caught on tape saying he wanted to “find 11,780 votes.” He now faces state racketeering charges.
Both campaigns held a series of events in Atlanta leading up to the debate, including competing events at local black-owned businesses. Trump called a meeting Friday at Rocky’s Barbershop in the Buckhead community to talk about his confrontation with Biden and question whether CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash would treat him fairly.
Coming out of the debate, both Biden and Trump will travel to states they hope to win this fall. Trump is headed to Virginia, a longtime battleground that has shifted toward Democrats in recent years.
Biden is set to depart for North Carolina, where he is expected to hold the biggest rally of his campaign in a state that Trump narrowly won in 2020.
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Miller, Superville, and Weissert reported from Washington and Price from New York. AP video journalist Nathan Ellgren in Washington contributed to this report.
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