Climate change, national security among topics for final Trump-Biden debate

Brett Samuels
The Hill
Fri, 16 Oct 2020 07:57 UTC

The second and final presidential debate between President Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden will focus on topics including the coronavirus pandemic, race in America and climate change, the Commission on Presidential Debates announced Friday.

NBC News correspondent Kristen Welker will moderate the debate in Nashville, Tenn. The selected six topics for the event are: fighting COVID-19, American families, race in America, climate change, national security and leadership.

The two candidates will meet on stage next Thursday for just the second time, but it will mark the last debate before Election Day. The two were slated to have a town hall-style debate this week, but the event was canceled after Trump balked at having it take place virtually following his COVID-19 diagnosis.

Instead, Biden and Trump held competing town halls at the same time on Thursday night broadcast by ABC and NBC, respectively.

The upcoming debate will include some overlap with the first one between Trump and Biden. That debate, moderated by Chris Wallace of Fox News, also covered the pandemic and the issues of race and recent violence in American cities.

Climate change was briefly discussed at the vice presidential debate last week, and it came up for a short exchange during the first Trump-Biden debate.

Comment: What happened to debating issues Americans really care about?

It's no surprise then, that a recent poll revealed "just 15% of Americans confident in US democracy":

The poll also revealed a perceived sorry state of US democracy, with only 15 percent of the respondents saying it still worked "extremely or very well." Another 36 percent said it still is keeping afloat while a total of 49 percent admitted it either does not look particularly good to them or is no good at all. Supporters of President Donald Trump appeared to be much more confident in US democracy than those of his Democratic opponent in the November 3 election, Joe Biden.

The partisan divide was also clearly showing in predictions of the future, with 76 percent of Trump supporters believing a Biden election victory would only worsen the existing divisions and 91 percent of Biden backers saying the same of a Trump win. Neither candidate is seen by the majority of respondents as capable of uniting the nation or strengthening its democratic principles.

A significant number of respondents were also concerned about potential violations at the upcoming elections. More than a half of Biden's supporters are more or less confident that the vote count would be accurate. This figure, however, falls down to just 28 percent when it comes to Trump's backers.

The pro-Biden respondents also appear to be more concerned over potential voter suppression, while those supporting Trump cite voter fraud and an ability of supposedly non-eligible people to vote as the major problem. A Pew Research poll held back in early 2020 showed that almost 60 percent of Americans were dissatisfied with the way US democracy was working at that time.