- Harris and Trump prepare for a high-stakes presidential debate
- Harris aims to portray Trump as a threat to democracy
- Trump will focus on portraying Harris as an ultra-liberal politician
On one side of the stage, the prosecutor will attempt to dismiss her opponent as a threat to democracy and a relic of the past.
On the other side, the real estate magnate will accuse his opponent of being an ultra-liberal politician who will cause the economy to stagnate.
Tuesday’s presidential debate will be the first opportunity for Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump to meet face-to-face as they debate the future of the United States.
And the two contenders have been honing their assaults and devising a strategy to edge ahead in their neck-and-neck fight.
The televised debate, organized by ABC News, maybe Harris and Trump’s only opportunity to face off in person before the November 5 election.
This suggests the stakes are high. Aaron Kall, a professor at the University of Michigan, examines presidential debates and advises against dismissing their value.
“They can’t win you an election, but certainly they can lose it,” says Kall.
Shadow of June’s debate
The second presidential debate of this election cycle will take place in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
However, experts argued the casualties from the first discussion should serve as a caution to the participants this time around.
The first debate, held on June 27, served as the lightning rod that brought President Joe Biden’s re-election bid to an end.
Biden, the expected Democratic nominee at the time, struggled to enunciate fundamental talking points and trailed off in mid-sentence during the debate against Trump.
His poor performance sparked growing questions about the 81-year-old’s age and ability.
Less than a month later, Biden stepped out of the campaign, and Harris took his place as the Democratic nominee.
However, observers say the events of the pivotal June debate will remain big as Harris and her Republican opponent Trump plan their plans for Tuesday. Some believe Biden’s bellyflop will draw even more attention to Tuesday’s debate.
Barbara Perry, a presidential historian at the University of Virginia, told Al Jazeera that the Biden-Trump debate was “the most consequential presidential debate in American history.” “So it shows the stakes are real and high.”
Kall, however, cited the June debate as proof that a high-profile gaffe may lose a candidate the election.
In a 90-minute debate, you can make a mistake, blunder, or do something that will reflect on you in the future, such as Biden’s lack of stamina to serve another four years, he added.
Harris’ strategy
Both the Harris and Trump campaigns have been quiet about their strategies for Tuesday’s debate. After all, disclosing their strategies in public could reduce their effectiveness.
However, Harris’ team appears to be aiming to give Trump a runway to crash his plane.
Her campaign unsuccessfully advocated for Trump’s microphone to be unmuted between questions, allowing him to talk out of order.
That was a reversal of what Biden’s campaign had advocated in June. Biden’s staff had anticipated that a muted microphone would stop Trump’s outbursts, especially because there was no audience present.
According to Kall, “it backfired” instead. He believes the stillness offered Trump a more reserved demeanor, emphasizing Biden’s blunders.
Harris’s side looked to be aiming for a rerun of a previous Trump-Biden debate in Cleveland in 2020 when Trump made multiple disruptive interjections. As a result, Biden appeared to emerge victorious.
However, the Harris campaign’s plea to keep Trump’s microphone unmuted was eventually denied.
Matthew Levendusky, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, believes Harris will use the debate platform to identify herself with the American public.
Harris barely started her presidential campaign seven weeks ago. She has spent significantly less time in the public spotlight than Trump.
However, detractors refer to her previous debate performances as a favorable omen heading into Tuesday’s event.
During the 2020 election cycle, for example, Harris participated in Democratic presidential primary debates and gained attention for landing successful punches on her future employer Biden.
She also performed admirably in a policy-focused vice presidential debate against Mike Pence during the general election that same year.
Harris, the former San Francisco district attorney, and California attorney general, has a prosecutorial technique that she used while in the Senate. Her tough questioning during Senate committee hearings earned her a national notoriety.
Levendusky stated that Harris intends to replicate that role on Tuesday’s debate stage. She will “try to come off as tough and grill Trump and show that she can rebut him,” he said.
However, the concern for her is that, as a woman of color, she is in a difficult situation due to racial and gender norms regarding appropriate behavior, Levendusky explained. So far, she appears to be very good at walking that tightrope, and this is her opportunity to demonstrate these abilities on a much greater scale.
Trump’s’sixth sense’
Meanwhile, Trump will be participating in his seventh general election debate, the most of any contender in US history.
According to Perry, he is still propelled by one ingrained factor: he appears immune to the norms set for other candidates and their behavior. Whatever happens, his base will always support him.
“Whatever rules there were have become immaterial to him,” Perry informed the audience. “He can’t be pinned down, and he can’t be countered, because it doesn’t matter to the people who are locked into voting for him.”
However, analysts such as Perry caution that Trump must broaden his appeal beyond his base to win the election in November.
Perry pointed out that Trump only won the presidency in 2016 thanks to the Electoral College, a weighted voting system in which “electors” are assigned based on state election results. The candidate who receives the most votes in a given state frequently wins all of that state’s electors.
In both 2016 and 2020, Trump lost the national popular vote, receiving fewer votes than his Democratic opponents.
According to Perry, Trump must still appeal to voters outside of his core supporters to win.
According to Kall, Trump, a former reality TV personality, shines on the debate stage as a “moving target”. The Republican tends to go off on tangents and unleash non-sequitur assaults that can perplex opponents.
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Kall said that Trump’s surprising debate performances in 2016 fueled his stratospheric rise in politics.
And Trump continues to demonstrate amazing instincts for capitalizing on camera-ready, politically significant events, as seen by his furious fist pump after an assassination attempt in July, according to Kall.
“He made sure the image that was captured was most politically advantageous to him,” Kall told me. “It is the same in debates. He possesses a spidery sixth sense that tells him when an important exchange or moment in a debate will be spoken about and might potentially become viral.”
Differences in preparation.
The buildup to the debate has also provided insight into how each candidate may behave onstage.
Their preparation procedures indicate a stylistic antithesis. According to media accounts, Trump has continued to avoid traditional debate preparation in favor of more informal policy exchanges with workers.
However, Harris has stationed herself in Pennsylvania to rehearse mock debates, using a Trump stand-in, just as Biden has done in the past.
Nonetheless, Trump has allegedly hired Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic lawmaker, to assist with debate preparation. According to critics, Gabbard had a unique capacity to shake Harris during the 2020 Democratic primary discussion.
Trump’s elderly age of 78 could be a liability when he confronts Harris, who is 59 years old. It will be his first public discussion against a much younger opponent in years.
Levendusky noted that Trump’s boisterous, unrehearsed manner has been a double-edged blade, potentially alienating as well as attracting viewers.
According to Levendusky, Trump wants to disrupt the narrative and regain control of the news cycle. However, he runs the risk of falling back into his old habits, which will remind people of what they dislike about him.
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