How will the media attempt to spin the debate?

According to many on the left, Trump has already lost because everything he says will be a lie and all of his policies are designed to destroy democracy.

I would offer that 75% of what most of the press will write about the debate has already been written. They just need to fill in some of the blanks with some actual things that took place during the debate (suit colors, possibly an actual quote or two). The main points, however, have been predetermined, just as they have been in any debate involving Trump.

Keep in mind that the Trump Biden debate was so bad for Joe Biden that he ended up having to drop out of the race. Yet somewhere near 40% of those watching, and many of those who first reported on it, suggested that Biden came out ahead due to what they saw as all of the Trump lies and his obvious existential threat to America.

Moreover, a poor showing by Harris no matter how poor, will not be judged by the liberal media as such. Unlike the situation with Joe Biden and the first debate, there is no time or manner to remove Harris from the ballot. The knives could come out for Biden, because they could get rid of him. But for Harris, they will be in full spin mode, defending any misstep by Harris, amplifying any misstep by Trump, and suggesting Harris won on policy alone. Yep, even if she doesn't offer anything policy related that isn't already on the Trump website.

By all accounts right now the Harris camp is concerned. Concerned that they do not have the best rules in place, concerned that they spent too much time prepping for rules that do not exist, concerned that they may be over-prepping to the point where Harris will come across as wooden. We know that Harris has never been one to win a debate on the policy merits or in the tangible conventional ways. In fact, she was so poor in her 2020 debates that she ended up dropping out. The only reason it was suggested she debated Mike Pence well, was due to her "viral moments" of telling Pence over and over that "I'm speaking" which was a line she expected to use again against Trump. Here whole political persona is based on creating "moments" rather than winning on policy.

Obviously, many debates were won or lost on a moment. Ronald Reagan's dual moments of "there you go again" against Jimmy Carter, and then not holding his opponent's youth and inexperience against him against Walter Mondale. Lloyd Bentson's retort to Dan Quale: Senator, you are no Jack Kennedy. Even Donald Trump's retort to Hillary Clinton about how she would be in jail. There are also times when debates turn on behavior that makes the candidate look bad. Nixon sweating on television. George Bush Sr looking at his watch over and over. Al Gore constantly sighing. So it is not necessarily a bad thing to focus on creating some sort of moment, but it would be a bad thing to focus on that at the expense of other preparation.

At the end of the day, the left is convinced that Harris will wipe up the stage with Trump. Not sure exactly what makes them believe this? After all, Trump has debated multiple times on the big stage. He debated several times during 2016 nomination and came out on top in many of them. He debated Hillary Clinton three times with polling being extremely even overall (neither candidate being below 40% or above 50%). He debated Joe Biden twice in 2020 and again earlier this year. Kamala Harris debated in the Democratic primary in 2020 and dropped out due to a poor performance. She has the one debate against Mike Pence in 2020, where she did better, but mainly due to the idea of creating the viral moment. Her debate against Pence was largely a non-factor however in the race.

Even the Harris camp admits that Trump overperformed expectations in his debate against Biden, even as most of the attention was on Biden's disastrous performance. They have to be worried that he will not do anything stupid, and that Harris will have to rely on her actual policy positions to sell the public. That is not where they really want to be, quite obviously.