Tonight in Philadelphia, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will meet in person for the first time ahead of what’s expected to be a fiery debate — the first of its kind in this toss-up race just eight weeks out from Election Day.
The stakes couldn’t be higher. Still riding the high of last month’s Democratic convention in Chicago, Harris will spend her time onstage this evening trying to present herself to the country as the adult in the room and as more presidential than her opponent, all while avoiding the word salad that has become her trademark and somehow distancing herself from the current administration to which she is inextricably tied.
Those around her hope she can find a way to bait Trump into ad hominem attacks on her and capture a 2024 redux of the “I’m speaking” quip she deployed onstage against her then-vice-presidential rival Mike Pence in 2020. But the Democratic nominee and former prosecutor could struggle to get that sort of interruptive clapback this time around, now that tonight’s ABC News moderators are keeping the same rules as the CNN debate in June — no live audience and muted mics when a candidate does not have the floor.
This format ended up benefitting Trump onstage by minimizing his own interruptions and keeping the focus on his opponent, whose confused expression and inability to string together basic sentences at times ultimately prompted him to pull out of the race amid pressure from his own party.
Trump likes to say on the stump that his advisers tell him not to go scorched-earth on Harris with personal attacks and instead stick to policy. If channeled effectively, the shock factor of Trump’s sometimes clever and often petty onstage insults can play to his advantage. Other times, his unpredictable antics can get him into trouble by giving Democrats exactly the kind of ammo they’re looking for.
A prime example of the latter scenario occurred earlier this summer when, during a sit-down interview at a National Association of Black Journalists event, Trump said that Harris, the daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, “happened to turn black” a few years back.
Asked by National Review how the former president should approach tonight’s debate with Harris in terms of demeanor, longtime Trump pollster John McLaughlin compared tonight’s event to the former president’s favorite sport. If you play with poise, he said, you’ll have a great round of golf. But if you lose your poise, you’re going to miss putts.
“The Democrats’ strategy is to absolutely piss him off and make him explode,” McLaughlin said. “The Obama people that are coaching her know that, and they’re going to go out of their way to have an uncivil moment in the debate.”
To perform well tonight, the GOP nominee must effectively litigate his campaign’s argument that life was better in the Trump years without denigrating Harris in offensive terms that turn off swing voters, says Republican lobbyist Liam Donovan. He can call her a “radical socialist” all he wants, Donovan says, but what’s “probably more effective” is drilling into viewers’ minds the reality that a Harris administration will result in “more of the same failed policies” the country has already experienced under the Biden-Harris administration.
Meanwhile, Harris, who has done just one sit-down interview as a candidate and waited until this week to roll out an issues section on her campaign website, is expected to try to present herself as the change candidate in the race who can move the country beyond what she often characterizes as the chaos and divisiveness of the Trump years. She will likely blame her opponent for the overturning of Roe v. Wade and argue, as she did during her Democratic convention speech last month, that Trump is unhinged and cares only about himself and his rich donors.
Complicating Harris’s “change” pitch, of course, is the unfortunate reality that she is the sitting vice president. A New York Times/Siena College poll released this week found that 61 percent of likely voters want “major change” from the Biden administration. Only 40 percent of likely voters surveyed felt that Harris represents “change,” whereas 61 percent said Trump is the “change” candidate in the race (55 percent of likely voters surveyed said Harris represents “more of the same,” and only 34 percent said the same of Trump).
Ahead of the June debate with Biden, Trump enlisted the help of close advisers and GOP senators during informal policy sessions that contrasted sharply with the six days of intense preparation that Biden took at Camp David. According to the New York Times, Harris has spent recent days undergoing “highly choreographed debate practice” inside a Pittsburgh hotel — complete with a makeshift stage and some Trump play-acting from aides.
This time around, Trump’s pre-debate informal sparring partners include GOP Representative Matt Gaetz and former Representative Tulsi Gabbard, who recently left the Democratic Party and has experience doing battle with Harris on the 2019 Democratic presidential-debate stage.
During a press call with reporters Monday afternoon, Gabbard, Gaetz, and Trump campaign adviser Jason Miller argued that Harris owns all of the Biden administration’s failures — from the botched Afghanistan withdrawal in 2021 to inflation and sky-high illegal border crossings.
“We saw from the debate with Joe Biden,” Miller said, “that Biden’s not in charge of anything. I don’t think he’s in charge of tying his shoes, let alone being in charge of the administration.” It’s very clear, he added, “that Kamala Harris is the one who’s been running the country the entire time.”