With Democrats having decided on a presidential nominee and the conventions now out of the way, the next big date on the election calendar—aside from Vice President Kamala Harris’ first interview—is the Sept. 10 debate on ABC News. It is, at this moment, the only proposed debate that both candidates have agreed to. It may be the last.

Or, it may not happen at all. As with everything else this election cycle, we’ll take it one day at a time.

This particular Sept. 10 ABC News debate has an unusually detailed history for a television special conceived only a few months ago.

As the general election took shape this spring as a rematch between Trump and President Joe Biden (wink wink), Trump’s campaign was eager to debate the aging, inarticulate incumbent, promising to debate “anytime, anyplace, anywhere.” For a while, the Biden campaign wouldn’t even commit to debating. The Biden camp’s stated reason was that it still had a foul taste in its mouth over how the 2020 debates were conducted. (More likely, they just didn’t want to put Biden out there.)

In mid-May, though, the Biden team—needing some way to shake up a race it had always been losing—made its move: It rejected the traditional, three-debates-per-fall schedule from the Commission on Presidential Debates, and independently accepted two invitations from CNN and ABC News for June 27 and Sept. 10, respectively. The Trump campaign........

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