7 things to watch out for in high-stakes Kamala Harris vs Donald Trump debate

A latest poll by The New York Times/Siena College, whose results were published on Sunday, found Trump leading Harris 48% to 47% nationally, well within the survey’s 2.8% point margin of error. The results are “largely unchanged” from the Times/Siena poll from late July, just after incumbent Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential race.

Since that time, however, other polls had shown Trump falter a bit as Harris’ entry into the fray sent a surge of excitement among Democrats. The latest polling shows that the initial Harris surge may be ebbing, even as Trump’s base remains firmly behind him.

As things stand, however, the race is on a knife’s edge with less than two months till Election Day, with one Politico analyst likening the race to “a knife fight in a phone booth”.

Many experts believe that Harris has more to gain — and lose — from Tuesday’s debate. In the aforementioned Times/Siena survey, as many as 28% likely voters said they needed to “learn more” about Harris, compared to 9% who said they needed to know more about Trump.

The Harris campaign has, so far, avoided being very specific about her policy platform, running instead as “generic” Democrat, to borrow from The NYT analyst Nate Cohn’s framing. While this approach has its pros — for one, it is less likely to result in calamitous faux pas — it also gives the Trump campaign the space to define the vice president in their own terms, much to her detriment.

On Tuesday Harris will get an opportunity right that, define herself in juxtaposition with Trump, and seize the narrative from her opponent. That said, she will have to do so in a way which does not end up giving Trump more ammunition to attack her. How successful she is in her balancing act may decide if she wins or loses the debate.

Trump took on Biden in the first televised debate of this season on June 27. That night when the political career of the incumbent President effectively ended. The 81-year old Biden fumbled and floundered over the course of the debate, raising questions regarding his mental and physical capacity to hold the country’s highest office. Despite putting on a brave face, Biden dropped out of the race less than a month later, as support for him within the Democratic Party dried up.

For Harris, Biden’s disastrous performance offers two crucial lessons. First, regardless of what Harris talks about (and of course that matters), how she speaks and reacts to Trump will be as important. Biden’s incoherence aside, what cost him dearly were the visuals in which he sometimes appeared lost, and at others, moody. Harris is likely to be more intelligible than Biden, but she also has to appear to be more composed — for voters still to make up their minds on her, appearances might be as important as substance.

Second, Harris will also have to exploit Trump’s vulnerabilities — which he has many — better than Biden did in June.

This is why Trump may have to up his game on Tuesday. While Biden’s debacle stole the show in June, experts say that Trump did not fare well either, and a better opponent may have well taken advantage of that. Trump rambled and went on tangents, was mocking and rude, and spoke more like he was addressing a rally of his hardcore supporters than speaking in a one-on-one presidential debate.

Harris should be able to better exploit these “weaknesses”, and given that she is now the younger candidate at 59 years old, redirect some of the criticisms and ridicule that Trump, 78, previously aimed at Biden, 81. Moreover, Trump’s tendency to try and bully his opponents might backfire if responded to appropriately (something Biden failed to do). As an opinion article in The Boston Globe put it: “Harris should call out Trump’s ‘alpha male’ behavior. Harris might consider saying… Donald, you’ve always been tough on those you perceive as vulnerable and weak against dictators and tyrants”.

That said, given how loyal the former president’s base has been, even an average performance might allow Trump to ride out the debate without any significant swing in favour of Harris.

The debate, hosted by ABC News, will cover a wide range of issues that concern American voters, from the economy and immigration to reproductive rights and foreign policy. While moderators will ensure that no single issue gets disproportionate airtime, both Harris and Trump will nonetheless try to shine the spotlight on topics they poll better in.

For Harris and the Democrats, this will be abortion and reproductive rights. Not only has Trump vacillated on the issue, often expressing contradictory positions, polls indicate that women across racial lines care deeply about their right to get an abortion. For Harris, they will be crucial to swing the election in her favour — especially those who have traditionally voted for the Republican Party.

Trump, on the other hand, will dial in on immigration and the state of the US economy under Joe Biden. The latter remains the top issue for American voters, and Harris’ association with the Biden administration is seen to be a liability in both these matters.

At the end of the day, whoever is able to make their pet issue the most memorable part of the debate is likely to end up on top.

Harris and her aides feel handcuffed by the debate rules negotiated between Biden and Trump earlier this summer, Politico reported on Saturday. “Trump’s worst moments in the debates are when he gets upset and snaps… And they have neutered that” a Harris aide told Politico.

Under these rules, candidates’ mics will be muted when the opponent is speaking. This would mean that there would be no interruptions and interjections, something that experts say Harris would have liked, given her background as a prosecutor, and Trump’s affinity to talk over others.

Some believe that these rules were specifically meant to “protect” Biden. “It was a bad set of rules for someone who needed to be protected, who never should’ve been on the debate stage. And now they’re stuck with it,” a national Democratic strategist told Politico.

Currently, as both candidates take part in lengthy mock debates against their aides, it is yet to be seen exactly how the rules shape Tuesday’s contest.

The era of televised debates began with the famous Nixon vs Kennedy debates of 1960, which helped propel the latter to national stardom, while setting back the political career of the former by nearly a decade. Since then, most experts agree that debates in and of themselves have rarely moved the needle. Even gaffes and bloopers have often been peripheral to the eventual outcome of the election.

This time around, things might be different. And that is not just because of how close the fight currently is.

Harris officially entered the race just about a month ago. This means that her presidential campaign will be one of the shortest in US history, raising the stakes for each debate, public appearance, and interview. For Trump, Biden’s late withdrawal has also meant rewriting some (if not much) of the campaign playbook keeping in mind the strengths and weaknesses of his new opponent.

With no other debate scheduled ahead of November’s election, both candidates might go all out on Tuesday, potentially making — or breaking — their campaign.