Thursday’s debate gives President Joe Biden the opportunity to cash in on his challenge to Donald Trump last month to hold the earliest presidential debate in modern history. It’s a clear shot at accelerating the momentum of a three-point swing his way in the polls over the last three months, a trend registered even in the latest Fox News poll.

The Biden campaign wants Thursday’s debate to galvanize and focus voters’ attention on an election that will determine whether our constitutional republic survives. Here’s how the president can repeat what he did in his State of the Union – go on offense, stay on message and keep “Big Mo” on his side.

President Biden’s campaign last week launched a $50 million TV ad buy whose key line shows how to capture two central truths about Trump. The first — that the former president is a “convicted criminal” — speaks for itself and is hard for Trump to escape. As former Justice Department official Harry Litman has written, “Trump is an altered figure in the eyes of that law. No longer presumed innocent, he is proven guilty, a convict, a serial offender.”

This truth is already registering in a race that will be decided by independent voters. A Politico/IPSOS poll taken last week reported that more than 1 in 5 independent voters are less likely to vote for Trump after his conviction in New York on 34 felony counts. Whatever disillusionment Trump and his enablers have tried to foster in the justice system, those voters can see clearly that Trump got the verdict he deserved.

Independents are thinking independently and that’s good for democracy. And Biden’s success in the debate depends on his ability to appeal to them as he did in 2020.

The second part of the ad – “he’s in it only for........

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