When the history of the 2024 US presidential election is being written, the only debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump will be remembered as the event that really changed the course of the race, writes USA Today.
A few weeks after Biden's disastrous performance, he dropped out of the presidential race in favor of Vice President Kamala Harris, the publication said. The stakes ahead of today's second debate of the presidential race between Harris and Trump are high for both candidates, with polls showing a negligible gap in support for the two candidates and Election Day just two months away, the paper said.
For Harris, today's debate in Philadelphia will be an opportunity to show she can stand up to Trump, as well as introduce herself to voters who feel they know too little about her, USA Today said. For Trump, the debate is an opportunity to try to regain some of the momentum he lost to Harris after the Democratic National Convention in Chicago.
Both participants are adept at avoiding questions they don't want to answer, writes the LA Times. The former president does so by overwhelming his audience with an avalanche of unrelated claims, many of them false. The vice president does it the old-fashioned way -- by resorting to vague anchor points, the release sums up.
If they manage to get away with answering the important questions in today's debate, it will be a real loss for voters - especially voters who have not yet decided who they will vote for, commented the Los Angeles newspaper.
Since suddenly becoming the Democratic presidential nominee barely a month ago, Harris has announced, recanted or changed a number of campaign policies - on health care, on housing, on child benefits and more – which should inform voters about her vision for the economy, writes in the "Washington Post".
Not all observers, however, were impressed by the plethora of policies released by Harris' staff, the paper said. Critics on the left and right see in the vice president's mix of policy ideas less a grand unified vision than an effort for her to say what is needed to prevail over former President Donald Trump, the newspaper noted.
This is unlikely to matter much to Democrats if Harris wins on November 5, commented the Washington Post. A possible victory for her, however, is likely to spark fresh conflict between warring factions in the party as Harris decides how to govern, the newspaper noted. The important thing is that for now most factions in the party are satisfied and believe that it is on their side in the internal party debates, summarizes the American capital publication.
After Biden is already out of the race, the question about the age of the candidates has been turned upside down, writes the "New York Times". Trump is now the oldest American to ever run for president of the United States with the support of one of the two major parties, and if he wins, he will become the oldest president in the country's history, the publication said.
While Trump was able to avoid questions about his own mental capacity when Biden was his opponent, the opponent he will face at the debate in Philadelphia today will be Vice President Kamala Harris, who is nearly two decades older younger than him, the newspaper commented.
Trump has long been known for jumping from topic to topic, talking in roundabout ways and often deviating from the prescriptive script, writes the "New York Times". He moves from one question to another seemingly at random, often puzzling listeners – a speech pattern that experts call tangentiality, and which increases with age, the publication notes.
Apart from his fans who attend his rallies and seem to enjoy and understand his cryptic, often unexplained brief references, most voters have not witnessed Trump's long-winded speaking style recently, the New York paper said. However, the debate on ABC today will be watched by tens of millions of people and this will probably be the largest audience before the election, according to the "New York Times".