The debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in June changed the face of the US presidential election.

Will tonight’s showdown between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump, in one of the most anticipated dates of this unconventional election campaign, be of similar interest?

The Democratic vice president of the USA and the Republican candidate have never spoken to each other to date. Tonight from 21:00 local time (04:00 Greek time on Wednesday) they will be face to face, in front of millions of TV viewers, but without an audience, without notes, for 90 minutes.

Both agreed to strict ruleswhich were designed to avoid sudden interruptions or direct interventions.

The telefight of the two candidates, the first and perhaps the last before the November 5 presidential election, will be moderated by two journalists from the ABC network and will take place in Philadelphia, in the critical state of Pennsylvania, in the northeastern USA.

“It’s impossible to prepare (for a telefight) with President Trump. (…) Imagine a boxer trying to prepare for a fight with Floyd Mayweather or Muhammad Ali,” Jason Miller, one of Trump’s closest advisers, said yesterday, giving an indication of how to approach tonight’s debate from his campaign staff.

For her part, the Democratic candidate warned in a radio interview that aired yesterday that her opponent has “no limit to evil and we should be prepared for that.” Kamala Harris even said she expects “a lot of lies.”

Since the first televised showdown in 1960 between John Fitzgerald Kennedy and Richard Nixon, these duels had allowed one candidate or the other to stand out with a successful statement or a forceful response, but they had never really overturned the election campaign.

That is until June 27, 2024. That day on CNN, Joe Biden, the Democratic nominee, already weakened by endless questions about his age, lost his stride live against Donald Trump.

His poor performance resulted in his historic withdrawal from the presidential race on July 21. Since then Kamala Harris has revived the hopes of the Democrats.

Where the 81-year-old president had a gap in the polls, Harris is now neck-and-neck with Trump, including in the “wing states,” the six or seven swing states with particular weight in the American electoral system.

Many Americans — 28% of the electorate who plan to go to the polls, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll — say they have trouble understanding the 59-year-old vice president, her personality, her ideas, her agenda.

So the Harris’ first goal tonight will be to make a good impression on those undecideds.

On the other hand, Donald Trump has no need to become famous, neither among his extremely loyal supporters, nor among his equally bitter critics. The 78-year-old billionaire, surrounded by lawsuits, will take part in his seventh presidential debate tonight.

The Republican, the target of an assassination attempt in June, will try to blame his opponent tonight for all the failures, in his view, of Joe Biden’s tenure, mainly on immigration and inflation.

But this time, in stark contrast to June’s phone battle against the US president, it will be Donald Trump’s clarity that will be under the microscope against an opponent nearly 20 years his junior.