It is the earliest debate ever, but far, before the conventions. I wondered if "they" knew the outcome and wanted it in time to replace Joe.
This is exactly my thinking.
Joe doesn't seem to want to drop out, thus far. Maybe they are waiting on polls. My GUESS is post debate polls will shift some to where Trump is around 45% and Biden is around 40%.
This I am not so sure about. As we saw with Fetterman, the country is so divided that the vast majority of Democrats are simply going to vote for the person with the "D" next to their name even if that person is not cognitively functional.
FWIW:
I don't mean the above as an attack on Democrats and I'll readily concede that the same applies to Republicans. I'll even admit to being a part of it. I realized the extent of the damage that mass legal and virtually unfettered illegal immigration was doing to our country around a decade ago and ever since that has been by far the #1 issue for me. I personally don't like Trump but at the beginning of the 2016 cycle there were (IIRC) four Democrats and 16 Republican candidates and 19 of the 20 (all but one, however many the total was) were basically in the pro immigration / amnesty camp. From that moment forward I was going to vote for the lone exception because he was literally the only candidate on the side of the American People rather than the uber-wealthy corporate types.
It isn't a coincidence that the lone exception on THAT issue won the race. The ruling class has been trying to force amnesty for a generation (basically ever since the last one) and the American People rebelled.
Then Trump's term happened and he was totally ineffective. His supporters will tell you that was because he was opposed by the Congress (including the Republicans) and the bureaucracy and there is some truth to that but he was also just a terrible politician. Actually, our resident Libertarian
@betarhoalphadelta should love him because a Trump Presidency is a good way to guarantee that not much gets done.
So now where am I?
Well, as discussed upthread here, Biden (his handlers anyway) has started talking tough on the border but that is pretty transparently election-year talk. Trump says the right things but he had four years and built about 4' of wall so I don't trust either of them to actually do anything. What I am left with is a choice between handlers. I don't like Biden's handlers and they hate me (I'm a deplorable) so there is no choice at all.