Debate Offers Harris, Trump Perhaps Best Chance To Define Harris

PITTSBURGH ― Ninety minutes Tuesday night may well offer newly anointed but still relatively little-known Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris her last and best chance to define herself for voters, even as Donald Trump tries to do it for her.

The vice president has managed to consolidate most of her party’s voting coalition in the seven weeks since President Joe Biden abruptly ended his reelection campaign and threw his support behind her. But her failure to lock down some groups, such as young Black men and Latinos, has left her campaign in a precarious position against the coup-attempting former president with less than two months left until Election Day.

“The challenge for both, in a sense, is to define Harris, as Trump is well-known,” said David Axelrod, the Democratic consultant who helped Barack Obama win the White House in 2008.

Trump, who has been convicted of 34 felony counts, has spent the duration of her presidential candidacy attacking Harris as a “Marxist” and “communist” who holds extreme views on cultural issues. Harris has emphasized her résumé as a prosecutor and California’s elected attorney general in her attempt to portray herself as a pragmatic centrist.

Recent polling shows that, despite both of their efforts, a significant percentage of Americans say they don’t really know much about her. A recent New York Times survey found that 28% of likely voters say they need to know more about Harris, while only 9% say the same about Trump.

One Republican consultant who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he cannot think of a higher-stakes confrontation in the history of modern presidential races.

“I’m not sure I have enough wine handy tomorrow to get me through this debate,” he said. “I think it could be a complete game changer. It’s going to be the single most important debate after the previous single most important debate that got Biden bounced.”

Tuesday’s contest was initially supposed to be the second one between Biden and Trump. That matchup ended, though, in the weeks following Biden’s disastrous performance in their first debate of the 2024 election cycle, on June 27. Biden sounded hoarse and looked weak, which his campaign blamed on a cold, and flubbed questions, reinforcing many voters’ concerns about his age. At one point, he said he finally “beat Medicare” when he meant to take credit for beating the pharmaceutical industry.

Biden’s polling numbers cratered in the days and weeks to come, as did his fundraising, and prominent supporters urged him to drop out. On July 21, he announced on social media that he was ending his reelection campaign and followed up shortly with another post endorsing Harris for the nomination.

Tuesday’s debate will be hosted by ABC News at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia but will be simulcast by most other broadcast and cable networks. It is scheduled to begin at 9 p.m. EDT.

Harris has spent days holed up at the Omni William Penn Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh, on the other side of the state, to focus on debate preparations. During a brief visit to a nearby spice store Saturday afternoon, she said was ready to face Trump.

Asked what message she hoped to get across, she had ready lines she uses frequently as she presents herself as a “change” candidate: “It’s time to turn the page on the divisiveness. It’s time to bring our country together. Chart a new way forward.”

Harris’ only experience in a national general election debate was in 2020 against then-Vice President Mike Pence. Trump, meanwhile, has now done six general election debates: three against Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton in 2016, two against Biden in 2020 and the one this June against Biden.

By most accounts, though, Trump has lost five of those, with his tendency to bully his opponents and repeat outrageous, over-the-top lies turning off many viewers. Only in his last encounter with Biden, when the 81-year-old president largely defeated himself with his answers, did Trump tone down his act as Biden faltered.

Both Democratic and Republican consultants and officials agreed that a success for Harris is one where she offers a vision for the country while not getting herself bogged down responding to Trump’s likely attacks.

“Kamala needs to show that she is tough enough to handle Trump smartly. Have a commanding presence while being liked enough,” said former Florida GOP chair Al Cardenas, a vocal Trump critic.

Added current Florida Democratic chair Nikki Fried: “The bar is set so low for Donald Trump as nothing he says is coherent. She just needs to let Donald be Donald.”

Steve Schale, a Democratic consultant who has worked with a pro-Biden super PAC for years, agreed. “Just keep doing what she was doing at the convention: Lean into the median voter, and don’t let him pull you into his sandbox. As long as he wants to remind people of the chaos that defined his presidency, just let him do it.”

Trump’s tendency to remind Americans of his chaos had his supporters hoping that he would find a way to restrain himself.

“I encourage President Trump to stay on the issues, and he’s going to beat her on every issue that is important to people, in terms of the border, in terms of the cost of things, in terms of crime, chaos, what we’re seeing around the country right now,” said Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.).

Whether Trump is capable of that, though, is an open question.

“He needs to be more disciplined than he has about trying to tie her to the things people most object to about Biden’s record and paint her as more of the same,” Axelrod said. “Personal attacks don’t help him, but the question is, can he help himself?”

HuffPost’s Igor Bobic contributed to this report.