Harris is ready for the most important debate of her political career—her matchup with Trump.
On Tuesday, Kamala Harris's happy campaign will be confronted with the cold hard reality of a debate with the most dangerous political opponent of our time, Donald Trump. Following President Joe Biden's humiliating CNN debate performance against Trump in June, which forced him to withdraw from the race for reelection, the vice president changed the 2024 election.
She put numerous swing states back on the electoral map and gave Democrats hope for an unexpected upset in a contest that most predicted they would lose.
She has succeeded in uniting her party, positioning herself as a new voice for generational change, and drawing even with Trump in polls, but these developments haven't solidified a solid route to the 270 electoral votes required to win the presidency. In fact, the former president, who has already eluded numerous criminal accusations and an attempted assassination, might still prevail if the election were held on Tuesday.
Elections are typically decided outside of presidential debates, notwithstanding the disastrous consequences of Biden's defeat. However, Tuesday night is Harris's best remaining opportunity to make a strong case that could obstruct Trump's historic resurgence.
In an unbalanced vice president, her role in Philadelphia will call for the use of rhetorical skills that have been called into doubt frequently. Although Harris has had her moments at Senate hearings and debates, she has occasionally found it difficult to respond clearly and concisely when things go impromptu. As the Democratic nominee, she has only agreed to participate in one significant media interview, which took place on CNN last month. This has only increased the expectations for her performance in the one scheduled debate with Trump thus far. Furthermore, although the former president has now participated in three different presidential debates, this will be Harris' first appearance on the platform since her encounter with former Vice President Mike Pence in 2020.
There will be an incredible contrast on stage.
Harris, who aspires to be the first South Asian and Black woman president, will face off against a formidable opponent who will stop at nothing to win and who has a track record of exploiting gendered and racial stereotypes for political advantage. Trump has made sexual innuendos about her on social media and challenged her intellect as well as her race as a Black woman. However, the vice president appears committed to avoiding falling into his tricks. In her CNN interview, she declined to address Trump's racial comments, calling it out as the "identical old, tired playbook" and asking for another inquiry.
When Harris faced Trump in the presidential debates, she lacked the high-level political expertise that Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden, the Democratic nominees for 2016, possessed. Furthermore, she wasn't seen by some in her own party as the most capable Democratic leadership for the post-Biden period.
A campaign that has focused on preventing mistakes and minimizing the vice president's unplanned public appearances is about to face an impossible situation on prime-time television. The cost of failure is also high since it may set up a strongman former president who attempted to undermine US democracy following the 2020 election on the path to a new administration focused on "retribution." The stakes for Democrats were raised on Saturday when Trump made yet more false claims that voter fraud was the cause of his 2020 loss and threatened to prosecute and imprison election officials, political opponents, donors, as well as others who he believes will have "betrayed" in the vote.
How Harris was able to triumph
However, the debate offers Harris a lot of opportunity if she can handle the pressure and resist Trump's attacks. In fact, she may have more than Trump, who is already a well-known and divisive figure. With a strong showing on Tuesday night, the vice president might be able to persuade people in crucial swing states that she has sincere intentions to make their lives better. This weekend's New York Times/Siena College poll suggested that she might develop further; it found that 28% of potential voters preferred to learn more about the vice president, while only 9% felt the same way about the Republican contender.
It's obvious that Harris has been considering how to win over such voters. For instance, she has expressed greater sympathy than Biden for their economic difficulties; his defensive remarks regarding the uneven nature of the post-pandemic recovery turned into a liability. Harris has pledged to take action against what she terms as "price gouging" in grocery stores, as well as to lower rent and provide up to $25,000 in down payment assistance for first-time homebuyers.
Furthermore, she is giving people an opportunity to escape the mayhem, resentment, and political upheaval that characterized Trump's first term and that, based on his increasingly irrational remarks, would only become worse in a few of months.
We'll have Haris fully prepared.
However, the vice president must complete three challenging tasks in order to win the discussion. She needs to strike a mix between highlighting her message and refuting what her campaign anticipates will be a barrage of accusations and lies from Trump. In a Monday radio broadcast with "The Rickey Smiley Morning Show," Harris stated, "I think he's going to lie and he has a script that he has utilized in the past, be it, you know, his remarks on President Obama or Hillary Clinton." "What I plan to highlight is that, as I travel the nation for this campaign, I can attest to the fact that, as so many of us know, he fights for himself and not for the American people."
In addition, Harris needs to resolve the fundamental paradox of her campaign: she is campaigning as a force for regeneration and change, but she is a member of an unpopular administration that Trump holds accountable for many of the issues that Harris is pledging to address, such as exorbitant grocery and housing costs.
In a parallel problem, Harris has to strive to catch up to Biden on two issues—economic management and immigration—that people think are most important to them and where she typically lags behind Trump in surveys. Since Harris entered the race, Trump has found it difficult to mount a convincing defense against her, but in their scathing ad attacks, his team has charged that both Harris and Biden are to blame for the economic problems that the middle class is facing. "As the chief cheerleader for Bidenomics, she must to demonstrate to voters how Bidenomics is succeeding despite all that being substantially more costly than under President Trump," said a letter written by Trump's team on Monday.
In addition, Harris will have to deflect some of Trump's claims that she has changed her mind about positions she took on fracking and immigration during her brief 2019 Democratic primary campaign. In an attempt to clarify these changes, Harris told CNN's Dana Bash that although her methods have evolved, her "principles have not changed." Seeking to soften her attitude on a matter that could damage her in battleground Pennsylvania, she stated, for example, that she now thought it was acceptable to combat the climate crisis without outlawing the ecologically harmful technique of fracking. But the premise gave the Trump team the opportunity to claim that if elected, she would go back to her previous position.
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