In a few days, on Thursday June 27, Joe Biden and Donald Trump will meet on the CNN set to participate in the first televised presidential debate of this electoral season, four months before the high mass on November 5. Having not met the conditions of participation, namely obtaining at least four national polls at 15% and being qualified in a sufficient number of states to win the ballot, the independent Robert F. Kennedy Jr. will not be in the part.
This first face-to-face meeting between the outgoing president and the former tenant of the White House will therefore launch the final stretch of this electoral campaign which observers of American political life and Americans will carefully scrutinize, both seems, again and in several respects, totally out of the ordinary.
An almost unprecedented organization
This debate will be very special since the independent Commission on Presidential Debates will not supervise it, a first since its creation in 1988. In fact, the two candidates have decided to bypass it to negotiate the organizational arrangements directly with the channel of CNN television. It will therefore be a ninety-minute exchange, without an audience, punctuated by two commercial breaks during which the campaign teams will not be able to interact with the protagonists. But that’s not all: the two will not be allowed to have notes with them, there will be no audience and the microphone will be closed for whoever is waiting for their turn to speak, in order to avoid cacophony.
Another element that is out of the ordinary: this moment will take place ahead of the Republican (July 15 to 18) and Democratic (August 19 to 22) conventions which are supposed to formalize the candidacy of the winners of the primaries, through a formal vote of the delegates of each party. Further proof, if any were needed, that…
Read more on Slate.fr
