CHRIS CRUCIAL: Debate night in America 🇺🇸

PLUS: Chat live with me tonight!

Are you ready? Because:

At 9 pm eastern tonight, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will share a debate stage in Atlanta, Georgia. It is the first of two planned debates in the 2024 general election. (The other is scheduled for September 10.)

Here’s my plan:

1. From 8 pm to 8:40 pm I am going to host a livestream over at my YouTube channel. I will answer any and all questions about the debate (and anything else!) during that time. WATCH IT HERE

2. During the debate itself, I am hosting a watch party with my PAID SUBSCRIBERS. I will use the Substack chat feature to offer real-time thoughts on what we are watching and who’s winning (and losing). And I’ll get to hear from you all about how you think it’s going. If you’re not a paid subscriber yet, I hope you become one so you can join us tonight!

If you aren’t near a TV tonight, you can stream the debate on C-SPAN here. (That’s how I am going to watch.)

Going into tonight, I put together give things to what to watch for in the proceedings. Here we go:

1. How does Biden look?  Yes, this may seem superficial. But remember that a majority of the American public believe Biden is too old to be president.  And a LOT of that has to do with how he looks and sounds. The truth is that Biden is at, 81, the oldest person ever to be president. And he moves and talks slower than he did even a few years ago. He needs to give off energy and charisma as much as he possibly can on that debate stage.

2. What Trump do we get?  In the first debate four years ago, Donald Trump interrupted Biden constantly –- leading the Democrat to remark: “Will you shut up, man?” 

   Trump was widely seen as having lost the debate because of that bullying performance.  Will he adjust this time around? And how much will the change in rules — especially the one where the candidates’ mics will be muted when they aren’t supposed to be speaking — affect Trump?

3. Abortion vs immigration: Modern American presidential debates are not exactly laden with policy discussions. But there will be some policy talk, for sure. Biden wants the majority of that conversation to be about abortion — and the fact that Trump nominated three Supreme Court justices who were part of overturning Roe v Wade. Trump, on the other hand, will try to make the policy debate primarily about immigration — and the situation at the southern border in particular.

4. The moderators: There will be FOUR people, not two, on that stage. Which means that CNN's Jake Tapper and Dana Bash, who will co-moderate the event, will have a major role to play. This is especially true when you consider the likelihood that Trump will do everything he can to push (and even break) the debate rules to work in his favor. How much real-time fact checking of the candidates do Bash and Tapper do? How liberal or conservative are they with the “mute” button? 

5. The audience: No, there won't be a studio audience to watch the debate — a change from past presidential debates. But, the audience watching on TV will matter.  Most importantly: How big is it? In 2016, 84 million people tuned in to watch the first debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton. In 2020, 73 million watched the first Biden-Trump debate. My (educated) guess is that the TV audience will be more similar to 2020.

Before I go, here’s a little debate humor!