How the Biden-Trump showdown could change the trajectory of the 2024 campaign – WABE

President Joe Biden and his Republican rival, Donald Trump, will meet Thursday for a debate in Midtown Atlanta that offers an unprecedented opportunity for both candidates to try to reshape the political narrative.

Biden, the Democratic incumbent, has an opportunity to reassure voters that at 81, he is capable of leading the United States through a range of challenges. Meanwhile, Trump, 78, could use this moment to try to move past his felony conviction in New York and convince an audience of tens of millions that he has a temperament fit to return to the Oval Office.

Biden and Trump enter the night facing fierce headwinds, including a public weary of the tumult of partisan politics. Both candidates are hated by the majority of Americans, according to polls, and offer very different views on virtually every fundamental issue. Trump has promised ambitious plans to overhaul the U.S. government if he returns to the White House and Biden says 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 don’t tend to change voters’ perceptions in a way that changes their vote: They generally reinforce, not persuade,” said Kathleen Hall Jamieson, director of the Annenberg Center for Public Policy at the University of Pennsylvania. and presidential communications expert. “What makes this debate different is that it features two candidates in power about whom voters have very well-formed opinions. But that doesn’t mean those perceptions are accurate or match what voters will see on stage. »

The debate marks a series of firsts

Trump and Biden have not been on the same stage or even spoken since their last debate weeks before the 2020 presidential election. Trump skipped Biden’s inauguration after leading an unprecedented and unsuccessful effort to overturn his defeat against Biden, which culminated in the January 6 insurrection of the Capitol by his supporters.

Thursday’s broadcast on CNN will be the first general election debate in history. It is the first-ever televised general election presidential debate hosted by a single media outlet after both campaigns abandoned the bipartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which had held every matchup since 1988.

Under network rules, independent candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did not qualify.

In an effort to avoid a repeat of their chaotic 2020 clashes, 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. talk. There will be two commercial breaks, another departure from modern practice. The candidates agreed not to consult staff or others when the cameras are off.

The schedule follows moves by both candidates to respond to the national trend toward early voting by moving up the political calendar. Whether the advanced schedule will mitigate the effects of potential missteps or crystallize them in the public mind remains to be seen.

“You have 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, haven’t seen each other, (are) pretty rusty heading into the biggest night of their lives.” That pretty much sums up the issues for Thursday.”

Both sides recognize the stakes

The debate comes days after the second anniversary of the Supreme Court’s overturning of Roe v. Wade, ending federally guaranteed abortion rights and putting reproductive rights at the center of politics ever since.

The confrontation also comes just after the Biden White House took executive action to restrict asylum applications at the U.S.-Mexico border in an effort to reduce the number of migrants entering the country. Trump has made illegal immigration a central plank of his campaign.

The wars in Ukraine and Gaza threaten the race, as do the candidates’ widely divergent views on America’s role in the world and its alliances. Differences in inflation, tax policy and public investments to build infrastructure and combat climate change will provide further contrasts.

Also in the political context: The Supreme Court is set to announce its decision on whether Trump is legally immune for his alleged role in the Jan. 6 insurrection. This comes just weeks after Trump was convicted in New York of participating in a hush-money scheme that prosecutors say was aimed at illegally influencing the 2016 election.

Biden spent the week leading up to the debate in isolation at Camp David with senior White House officials and campaign aides as well as a coterie of longtime advisers and allies. A mock stage was built at the compound to mimic the studio where the debate will be held, and Biden’s personal attorney, Bob Bauer, reprised his role as Trump during the practice sessions.

Aides say the work reflects Biden’s understanding that he cannot afford a flat show. They insist that the speaker, sometimes heavy, would be up to the task.

Trump, meanwhile, continued his less structured debate preparation with two days of meetings at his Florida estate, calling allies and supporters, and testing his attacks in social media posts and media interviews of conservative tendency.

Trump and his advisers have spent months cataloging what they see as signs of Biden’s waning energy. In recent days, they began predicting that Biden would be stronger on Thursday, aiming to raise higher expectations for the outgoing president.

Candidates have Georgia in mind

Atlanta, the host city of the debate, offers symbolic and practical significance to the campaign, but each side believes that what happens there will resonate everywhere.

In 2020, Biden received Georgia’s 16 electoral votes by a margin of less than 12,000 votes out of 5 million cast. Trump pushed the state’s Republican leaders to overturn his victory based on false theories of voter fraud, and he was caught on video saying he wanted to “find 11,780 votes.” He now faces state racketeering charges.

Both campaigns held a series of events in Atlanta that led up to the debate, including competing events at local black-owned businesses. Trump called a rally at Rocky’s Barbershop in the Buckhead community Friday to talk about his clash with Biden and question whether CNN moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash would treat him fairly.

Coming out of the debate, Biden and Trump will travel to states they hope to pass this fall. Trump is heading to Virginia, a former battleground that has shifted toward Democrats in recent years.

Biden is expected to fly to North Carolina, where he is expected to hold the largest rally of his campaign in a state that Trump narrowly won in 2020.

Miller, Superville and Weissert reported from Washington and Price from New York. AP video journalist Nathan Ellgren in Washington contributed to this report.