President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump will meet for their first general election debate Thursday in Georgia, the battleground that yielded the closest 2020 margin of any state and became the epicenter of Trump’s efforts to overturn Biden’s election.
Now, in their rematch, Georgia will test which man can best assemble a winning coalition despite their respective weaknesses. Each must persuade grumpy voters in places like Fayette County, a suburb south of Atlanta, that they’re less frightening than the alternative.
Trump, the presumptive Republican nominee for the third consecutive time, has been convicted of felony crimes and awaits sentencing and three more criminal trials, including in Atlanta. That legal peril could exacerbate his struggles with moderate Republicans and independents, some of whom abandoned him as he helped dismantle the constitutional right to an abortion and refused to accept defeat in 2020.
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