Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Tonight's Debate but Were Afraid I'd Tell You

Thursday at 9 p.m. Eastern, two presidential candidates enter Debate Thunderdome, but only one will leave. The survivor will be pronounced the winner right there on the spot, sparing a grateful nation the rigors and horrors of the 2024 presidential election.

I wish.

Instead, we have a mostly traditional presidential debate, but I won't bore you with the particulars of this DNC lion's den that the White House and CNN have put together to present Donald Trump as the loser, no matter what happens tonight on the debate stage.

Let's just say that, going in, I have mixed feelings about this set-up. On the one hand, it's rigged. On the other, Trump gets bragging points — at the very least — just for showing up for a fight with everything stacked against him.

Feelings don't matter on debate night, however. I will, of course, drunkblog tonight's hostilities, surrounded by various computer screens and a martini the size of your typical Egyptian pyramid, inverted.

Presidentish Joe Biden's weakness is that he is A) Possibly the vainest man in Washington (which is saying something); and B) completely unaware of how decrepit he looks to everyone else.

But don't underestimate Biden. His brain isn't what it used to be, sure, and even that is like saying that the "Before" guy in the body-building ads is looking a little soft. But there are a couple of things working in his favor.

First, Biden is going to be amped up on whatever the unofficial White House Dr. Feelgood amps him up on, and that's good enough to keep him lucid — on the Biden Scale — for an hour or more. For viewers sticking around for the whole debate, just like during his State of the Union address earlier this year, TOTALLY AMPED UP JOE is exhausting to watch. But most people will just watch the highlights, and what they'll take away from short clips is that Biden sounds energetic and strong. It worked for SOTU in large part because the media played along, and it could work again tonight.

Even if Biden fades in the last thirty minutes, as he did in both 2020 debates, it won't really matter because of my second point.

Second, Biden won't be playing to win — he'll be playing to get Trump to lose. Biden will stick to his well-worn schtick of being snide and dismissive of Trump while lying his bottom off about literally everything. The moderators — CNN Newsy Personalities/DNC Palace Guards Jake Tapper and Dana Bash — will help him every step of the way, too.

Trump's job is both simple and difficult. He needs to appear presidential to remind people that he's had this job before, he was pretty good at it, and all the Literally Hitler scare stories are just that — scare stories. He also needs to prod Biden, in as grown-up a manner as possible, into losing it. That won't be easy with CNN having a killswitch for his microphone. And playing the grown-up doesn't always come easy to Trump, either.

Hopefully, Trump has done his debate prep against a Biden stand-in who is just as flippantly mendacious as the real deal.

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The fun begins at 8:45 p.m. Eastern, sharp(ish).