An unprecedented debate could shake up a White House race like no other

CNN —

The confrontation in Atlanta between Joe Biden and Donald Trump Thursday night has a good chance of becoming the most fateful presidential debate in US history.

For the first time, a sitting president and an ex-president will lock horns before millions of viewers, in an encounter taking place far earlier than normal — even before the party conventions. The CNN-hosted showdown is the most pivotal moment yet in a neck-and-neck election, and it’s Biden’s best chance to shake up a reelection bid that he is in deep danger of losing as he struggles to convince voters that he’s delivered the political and economic normality he promised in 2020.

The debate comes at a moment when many Americans are seeking relief from high prices that have made it harder to feed their families and afford rents, mortgages, and new cars. It is unfolding amid an intense national debate over access to abortion that was unleashed by the conservative Supreme Court majority built by Trump. Deep divides over immigration and foreign policy in a world filled with new challenges to US power will form a contentious backdrop to a clash between two candidates who openly disdain one another. The debate in that sense personifies an election race that has left millions of Americans unsatisfied with the choice offered by two elderly candidates who alienate more voters than they attract.

But the momentous circumstances of the occasion can only be fully understood alongside the context of the unprecedented politics of the times. Since Sen. John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard Nixon staged the first televised debate in the 1960 campaign, there have been agonizingly close elections that have set the country on a sharply different course. But the