Ask this one question: Who is the debate about?
When Donald Trump debated Joe Biden, it was easy enough to tell who won. Everyone in America — outside of a handful of hopeless party apparatchiks — could admit that Biden had malfunctioned so badly he had dealt a grievous (ultimately, fatal) blow to his reelection. Absent such an extreme outcome, how will we know who won the debate between Trump and Kamala Harris? Ask this one question: Who is the debate about?
The most important way to tell who won is to see who was the main topic of conversation. Consider Harris. She’s running a campaign aimed at creating an image of herself with no relation to her actual personality, record, past positions, or association with an unpopular administration. She has disavowed through spokespeople various positions she took in the past, personally, with great emphasis, often in nationally televised interviews and debates — yet she refuses to offer any reasoning for changing her views or any reassurance that they won’t change back when in power. She’s also prone to crippling anxiety when asked to make decisions, commit to positions, or defend things she’s said or done. That’s why (in contrast to Trump) she has done nearly no interviews and no press conferences, and put her running mate in a position where he’s afraid to answer any questions himself for fear of being asked what she stands for. (If you’ve watched him in Minnesota, Tim Walz is perfectly capable of doing press. He’s hiding because the Harris campaign fears questions aimed at her.)
Harris doesn’t want the debate to be about her own record and proposals and positions. If it is, she may make errors of policy and is apt to serve up the meandering word salads for which she is infamous. If she gets through one night without talking about herself or her plans for what to do with executive power, however, she can probably hide out for the rest of the fall.
She also doesn’t want the debate to be about her personality. If she ladles on the smarm and the nervous cackle, she is apt to drive away undecided voters and attract only those who are already her true believers. American audiences often assess debates less by the things said than by how the candidates come across — and if Harris talks and acts how she usually does when off script, they may conclude that she’s an idiot.
By contrast, while “Harris the prosecutor” is more reputation than reality, Harris has always been much more comfortable on the attack. That is how she wants to come across, never mind all the “joy” agitprop. She originally made her reputation in Washington browbeating witnesses in Senate hearings, exploiting her ability to barrage them with accusations and innuendo, prevent them from answering by talking over them, and then play the interrupted victim when they tried to speak — such as a hearing in which she interrupted Jeff Sessions 15 times. When she debated Mike Pence in 2020, she was in her comfort zone because she could go after the record of the incumbent administration (especially on the pandemic) without having to defend a record or platform of her own. Even then, she fled and talked in circles whenever asked to defend what her side was actually proposing. John Kerry is the relevant precedent. Kerry never could explain what he stood for in consistent and coherent fashion, and his personality was extraordinarily unappealing. But he was startlingly aggressive in his debates with George W. Bush, and was generally effective whenever he could stick solely to talking about his opponent.
Now, consider Trump. He’s an enduringly unpopular figure who was voted out of office four years ago. He has a boatload of baggage, and while most of it is well-worn with voters, he was squirmy and uncomfortable in the last debate when discussing his various legal travails and scandals. Trump’s two best moments in the first debate were both on the attack: dismissing a Biden answer with “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either,” and going on a “Did you fire anybody?” rant aimed at Biden.
There’s an army of Democratic spinners already laying the groundwork to claim that Trump showed his age in this debate in the same way Biden did. That, too, will be less about the substance of what’s said than about the impression it conveys. But it’s also why Trump will be doing better if he’s on the attack, and worse if he’s floundering about trying to defend himself.
It’s not just style and Trump’s own vulnerabilities. In a race that currently looks like something close to a dead heat after Trump held a decisive lead over Biden, Trump’s essential challenge is to define Harris: Convince voters that she’s too far to the left and/or too tied to Biden’s failures. He can only do that if he’s able to turn the discussion to Harris and Biden, and away from Trump.
There are obvious lines of attack, but most of them require Trump to effectively put questions to Harris and continue the theme. How can she be trusted after lying to the country about Biden’s capacity? (You or I might think Trump is a poor messenger on the honesty issue, but he’s nothing if not shameless). Does she disagree with anything Biden has done? Was she wrong to take all those far-out left-wing positions in the past (banning fracking, banning private health insurance, confiscating guns by executive order, expanding the Supreme Court, taxpayer-funded health insurance for illegal aliens, legalizing possession of all drugs, removing all criminal sanctions for illegal immigration), and if those positions were wrong, why were they wrong? That will take time and sustained attention against the tide of hostile moderators, but Trump would be well-advised to at least attempt some sort of nutshell formulation of them. If he can’t get those messages across, he’s losing the battle to define Harris.