Everything you need to know about the Trump-Biden debate

Chris Cillizza, former editor at large of CNN, is here with me now. Chris, thanks for this. I'm just going to presume that the base is the base is the base, and nothing that happens at the debate is going to sway those people. So who are the people this debate's actually for? Laidran, you presume correctly. I think the base has already made its mind up and that's a lot of people. We have a smaller undecided in this election than we've had in any election in modern history. But I will tell you a group to look out for. So about one in five voters say they dislike both Joe Biden and Donald Trump. We're we're calling them short handed double haters, people who I'm not sure they hate Joe Biden and Donald Trump, but they don't like them. And I think these are the people who are going to make the difference in the election. And I think that if you are Joe Biden or Donald Trump, those are the people you need to target. So in a way, I think the message is you may not like me, but check out this other guy. You like him even less. OK, so, so given that that's the audience they're going to target tomorrow night, let's talk about some of the tactics you think Biden and Trump will use tomorrow. So look, I think Donald Trump effectively has one speed as a debater, which is a full speed forward at all times, right? If you remember the 2020 first debate between Trump and Biden, Trump interrupted over 140 times. It's going to be a lot like his campaign rallies. It's going to be a lot like his interviews. Again, there's there's one speed here. Biden is a little bit more nuanced. I think he could go one of two ways. He could try to go what we would call presidential and sort of try to stay above it all. Donald Trump will attack on the personal level. Joe Biden sort of ignores that. Or he could sort of roll up his sleeves and get down in the mud and go after Donald Trump on being a convicted felon. I don't know which path Biden chooses, but I do think if we're looking for a critical tactic, that's the one. So if you're sitting in in both of those camps at the moment and you you're trying to evaluate what success looks like. What, what? Because everyone's going to watch this debate differently, right? Lots of people will watch it live, but so many others are going to watch it in little snippets on social media. So if you're in the Trump camp, what success? If you're in the Biden camp, what success? Most people will not watch this debate beginning to end. They just will not. So I think both of them have a similar task, which is you kind of want to create a moment, the line of the night, the thing that gets repeated, the lead of the news story, the lead of the the write up online. What I would say for Biden specifically, he enters this debate with huge questions, even among Democrats about his age and his competence. He has to show through his words, through how he looks, through how he speaks that he is up to not just the debate, but the job more broadly. And I think that, to me, is the critical thing for Biden, for Trump. Again, I think Trump has set expectations pretty high. He's essentially said that Joe Biden is out of it. Joe Biden's the worst debater. That makes it hard because if you can't beat the worst debater clearly, then what does that say about you? So I actually think in terms of expectations, the Biden campaign has played it better than the Trump campaign. All right, Chris Eliza, thanks for joining us. Thank you.