Welcome back to The Best & The Brightest. I’m Tara Palmeri.

Happy debate night! Finally, the candidates are being put to the test on the stage together again, four years older, with plenty more scars and facing all the same hazards, except heightened. I can say affirmatively that everyone is holding their breath. Today, I reveal the whispers around town about a debate that could dramatically change the stakes of an election that has been a dead heat for over a year.

🎧 Programming note: I have a rollicking episode of Somebody’s Gotta Win with The Bulwark’s Marc Caputo that’s a solid debate primer, laying out our fresh reporting on what the candidates are being advised, their mental states, the pitfalls, the stakes, and of course, our predictions.

But first… Here’s Dylan Byers with an update on the other media story in town…

• Politico’s prince: For well over a year now, Politico founding editor John Harris and his heir apparent Alex Burns have been trying to turn the once-scrappy and then long-complacent news outfit into a truly professional, world-class news organization, befitting their owner Axel Springer’s ambition of becoming the “leading digital publisher in democracies around the world.” The effort has met with considerable friction in the newsroom, causing some journalists to butt heads with management—most notably Burns, whom some view as an overbearing editor. Now, as Semafor reports, several journalists are heading toward the exit: Alex Ward and Lara Seligman (to The Wall Street Journal), Sam Stein (to The Bulwark), Burgess Everett (to Semafor), and Jack Shafer (to be determined).

  The most notable losses here are Ward and Seligman, whose moves signal that Politico is not yet world-class enough to keep its promising young talent from defecting, which has always been a challenge for the organization. (On the flip side, the moves signal the Journal’s continued commitment to Washington coverage despite the recent shake-up of its D.C. bureau). As for the others, well, Harris only barely tried to hide his view that they weren’t the right fit for Politico’s new iteration: “I want people to find the right home for their work, even if sometimes it is elsewhere.” In any event, while some of these folks no doubt had very real gripes with leadership, they mostly seem to have been about creative control of the copy (and, apparently, a few instances last year in which Burns stealth-edited some of that copy). Ultimately, these intra-office squabbles don’t have much bearing on Politico’s ability to mature the business. As Harris notes, there are still 600 journalists there who haven’t left. —Dylan Byers

• Topline takeaways: The N.R.C.C. has reserved $44 million in advertising, compared with the D.C.C.C.’s $28 million. These partisan groups work hand-in-hand with super PACs, and so far, in aggregate, House Democrats have locked in around $214 million in reservations versus House Republicans’ $187 million. Looking at only the PACs, the Democratic-aligned House Majority PAC has reserved $186 million compared with the G.O.P.-aligned Congressional Leadership Fund’s $141 million.
• Filling the gaps: Even more money will be spent when candidates deploy their own war chests to secure the bargain candidate rate for TV ads. Super PACs, of course, are not allowed to directly coordinate with candidates or the House committees, and so these groups often communicate with each other by releasing their ad-booking information to the press. Meanwhile, outside groups focused on a particular issue or candidate demographics then look to fill the gaps in TV markets during various weeks on the calendar.
• The Oregon trail: Perhaps the N.R.C.C.’s most telling reservation is the $6 million it spent in the Portland, Oregon, media market. For comparison, the next-highest reservation is $2.5 million in the Los Angeles market. This shouldn’t be read as Republicans prioritizing Oregon over Southern California—the Congressional Leadership Fund has reserved $18 million in Los Angeles. But what it does say is that freshman Oregon Republican Lori Chavez-DeRemer’s reelection is being viewed as a top priority, as is targeting Democratic freshman Marie Gluesenkamp Perez in adjacent Washington state.
• Dem targets: Because district lines overlap in the same media market, it’s typically challenging to determine what money is targeting which seats. But the N.R.C.C. has explicitly stated it’s focused on the five Democrats whose districts Donald Trump won in 2020: Gluesenkamp Perez, plus Alaska’s Mary Peltola, Maine’s Jared Golden, Ohio’s Marcy Kaptur, and Pennsylvania’s Matt Cartwright.

  Finally, both the N.R.C.C. and the C.L.F. are avoiding the Las Vegas market for now. Three Democratic incumbents—Steven Horsford, Susie Lee, and Dina Titus—are in races which are rated Likely Democratic by The Cook Political Report. This has alleviated some of the pressure on Vegas ad rates, a welcome development for ad buyers in the tightly contested Senate and presidential races.

The debate, itself, is almost certain to break viewership ratings for the network, particularly given its various spellbinding cliffhangers: Will Trump interrupt Biden a zillion times, even with his mic turned off, or go apeshit over his recent conviction? Will Biden have a senior moment? Will Trump? Will CNN’s Jake Tapper and Dana Bash simply stand by while the former president uncorks one of his provably false bot mots? It’s the stuff of great TV. Unfortunately, the future of democracy may hang on some of these points, too.

I spent the past week polling my source base, both Democrats and Republicans, for their predictions, assessments, and expectations. Notably, a number of them suggested that each candidate could win by not losing—a strategy perhaps best described as showing enough restraint to let the opposition self-immolate and thereby define the choice in a voter’s mind.
“It’s a 90-minute debate. If Donald Trump talked for 20 minutes, he would win the debate,” one G.O.P. operative told me. “Trump just can’t be an asshole the way he was last time. If he can by some miracle do that, we’ll be looking good.”

A Democratic operative agreed with this cynical advice. “Both camps have this insane mentality that they will make the other side look terrible,” this person told me. “Most candidates in most campaigns walk in saying, I want to be viewed as the best candidate and I want to look presidential on TV. Now it’s just, I just need to make the other one look crazy or dumb.”

One Democrat who advises the White House suggested that Biden would win the debate if he simply impressed upon voters, one way or another, that he and Trump were the only candidates running—that neither Gavin Newsom nor Michelle Obama nor Oprah or The Rock were going to descend from the heavens at the last minute. Indeed, on some level, this comports with the White House’s overarching strategy of portraying this election as not simply a referendum on Biden, but on his opponent as well—a sticky wicket for a sitting president, but one that has been made more achievable given Trump’s repeated comments about running the government like a dictatorship (at least on Day One). “I’m sure Biden will be fine, like the State of the Union. As long as he’s cogent and speaks well, he’ll pass his test,” a G.O.P. operative said. “As for Trump, he has to be smart, a little charming, responsible, and if he can, act like a grown-up.”

But if Biden does nothing during CNN’s 90-minute showdown other than debunk the misapprehension among 17 percent of independents and even 12 percent of Democrats that he was responsible for ending Roe v. Wade, according to a recent NBC poll, it will be worth it. Indeed, this may be his only shot to address the broader nation in primetime. The Democratic National Convention overlaps with the Olympics, after all. Also, it’s not implausible that Trump or Biden back out of ABC’s planned debate on September 10.

Democrats are hoping Trump repeats his mistakes from the first 2020 debate, when he interrupted both Biden and moderator Chris Wallace ad nauseam. But they also recall Biden’s imprecision with data points, which could be weaponized this time around. “If they spent all of this time in Camp David trying to hammer in those numbers into him, every one of those people should be fucking fired,” said one Democratic operative. “If he messes up some stat, then Trump gets to go, ‘Look at this fucking idiot, he can’t even remember numbers.’ Biden shouldn’t mention a single statistic, because he fumbles it, and people don’t get it anyway. He should talk like he used to do, from the heart, talk about the average American, talk about his family struggles.”

In pursuing these arguments, of course, Trump’s famous lack of restraint could risk making him come off as a madman. But some within his camp saw signs of newfound discipline at his rally in Pennsylvania on Saturday night. One advisor told me that he seemed to be in “happy warrior” mode, going light on the grievances.

Trump also seems to recognize that the first 2020 debate was a nightmare. His 145 interruptions resulted in a poll and momentum swing for Biden, and one from which his campaign never recovered. “People tell me I did better in the second debate,” he’s been telling people recently, according to an advisor. “He’s clearly heard that he needs to be Donald Trump 2.0,” this person reiterated. “The question is, Does he say fuck it and not do it?”

Trump, who views debate prep as a sign of weakness and a way for others to take credit for his success, has been doing “policy refreshers” with advisors like Kellyanne Conway and veep hopefuls, such as J.D. Vance and Marco Rubio. “He’d rather it go well, and have other people say he didn’t do debate prep,” said another Trump confidant. “I think he needs to be patient and not take the bait and not let things get to him. Let Biden talk, and let him talk himself into a pretzel, and let him go on and on and on. Initially, Trump will, then he won’t be able to handle the attacks, and he’ll want to fight back.”

Several advisors said that CNN’s plan to cut the microphones when there’s too much crosstalk, or when a candidate’s time is up, might help Trump by reminding him when he’s rambling and prevent any gonzo talk about thorny subjects such as January 6 or America’s epidemic of weak water pressure or the threat posed by sharks. “The only way you make Joe Biden sympathetic is to talk over him,” a G.O.P. operative said. “Trump’s weakness in this debate is if he gets sucked into debating January 6 and who won the election. It’s toxic to suburban voters in Bucks County and Chester County in Pennsylvania and Oakland County in Michigan.”

And yet, neither Republicans nor Democrats I spoke with envisioned an outcome in which this thing didn’t go off the rails, at least for a moment or two. “It will be an absolute food fight disaster,” the G.O.P. operative said. “If they do some version of restraining, it probably lasts for the first 10 minutes, and then we see a food fight.” Another Democratic operative said: “Overwhelmingly [the debate] is likely to reinforce that people don’t want this, and they’re getting it, and they’re going to stay home instead of vote. Trump’s coalition is the easier managed of the two. He has the intensity of real fanaticism, but that’s not enough. He needs that plus empathy. For Biden to make it about Trump is a higher lift. Biden cannot look feeble or lost. It will set off a Chernobyl-like reaction in the Democratic Party.”