CNN
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The most pivotal moment in the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump comes this week, as Vice President Harris prepares for what may be her only chance to go head-to-head with the former president who has vowed to end his political dominance.
Tuesday night’s debate is particularly important for Harris, who is struggling to project herself in the eyes of voters and maintain the momentum she has enjoyed since becoming the Democratic nominee this summer.
The debate, which will take place at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, will be the first face-to-face meeting between Harris and Trump in the closely contested race.
It’s a key moment for Harris to show Americans she’s ready to take on the presidency, and a question looming large on voters’ minds as the election campaign heats up this fall.
“Look, it’s time to end the division,” she said during a weekend stop in Pittsburgh between debate preparations. “It’s time to bring our country together and chart a new course forward.”
Trump, meanwhile, is desperate to undermine voters’ view of his Democratic rival, Biden, and halt the surge in support that Harris has enjoyed since she rose to the top of the Democratic field in July, overturning a lead Trump held over Biden in presidential polls for most of the year.
Both Harris and Trump have pitched themselves as agents of change of some kind, with Harris pitching herself as a departure from the bitterly divisive political era dominated by Trump. But the former president points to Harris’ time in the Biden administration and says she is to blame for things like rising inflation and mortgage rates.
The Trump campaign and its allies have accused Harris of avoiding policy details, but Trump’s rambling response last week to a question about how he would make child care more affordable was a stark reminder that the former president has long ignored policy details and questions about the feasibility of his proposals.
Trump has also made racist and vulgar attacks against Harris, falsely claiming in July that she “just happened to be black” several years ago (she is the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants) and making references on social media to her past relationship with former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.
Whether Trump makes similar comments and how Harris responds could determine voters’ perception of the showdown between the two on Tuesday.
The debate, moderated by ABC hosts Lindsey Davis and David Muir, is scheduled to last 90 minutes, and like the CNN debate between Trump and Biden in June, the candidates’ microphones will be on when it is their turn to speak and muted at other times.
The rules, agreed to by the Biden and Trump campaigns, have frustrated Harris, who had hoped to use her skills as a former prosecutor in her onstage dealings with Trump.
“Vice President Harris, a former prosecutor, would be fundamentally disadvantaged by this format, which would shield Donald Trump from direct communication with the Vice President. We believe this is the primary reason why the Harris campaign is insisting on muting the microphones,” the Harris campaign said in a letter to ABC News on Wednesday announcing its consent to the debate.
The debate comes just before early voting begins in several key states, with polls showing a close race nationally and in key battlegrounds including the “Blue Wall” states of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.
Both camps are focusing on Pennsylvania and Georgia in particular, but a recent CNN poll showed no clear lead between the two candidates. If Trump can hold onto North Carolina, which he has won twice, victories in those states could put him over the 270 electoral vote threshold even if he fails to win other battleground states.
Harris received some shocking good news last weekend when she announced that she had raised nearly three times as much as her Republican rival Trump in August ($361 million to Trump’s $130 million) and entered September with $404 million in cash reserves heading into the final two months of November — an amount far more than the $295 million Trump’s political campaign claims to have in the bank.
But a New York Times/Siena College poll conducted Sunday underscored the importance of the controversy that will define Harris. The survey, which found the two candidates neck and neck nationally, also showed that a significant number of voters want to know more about the vice president: 28% of voters feel they need to know more about Harris, while only 9% said the same about Trump.
The poll also points to a potential caveat for Harris: While 61% of voters think the next president should represent a “big change” from Biden, only 25% think Harris would represent such a change, compared with 53% who said it would be Trump.
The same poll found that despite attempts at moderation in recent weeks, 47% of voters believe Harris is too liberal, while 32% say Trump is too conservative.
Both candidates have been preparing for Tuesday’s showdown with very different approaches.
No modern presidential candidate has competed in more televised general election debates than Trump, and as she prepared to take the stage, Harris and her team have carefully studied all six of them: three with Hillary Clinton in 2016, two with Biden in 2020 and one with Biden in June.
Ms. Harris spent the days leading up to the debate with aides at a Pittsburgh hotel, making occasional, brief public appearances, but aides said she had been thinking about a debate with Mr. Trump from the moment Mr. Biden gave up his reelection bid in late July.
“I think voters have a right to see a split-screen version of this campaign on the debate stage,” Harris told reporters last month. “I’m ready to go. Let’s go.”
Aides said she has read reports about Trump’s comments, positions and even insults directed at her, and is familiar with how he behaved toward his two previous Democratic opponents, particularly Clinton.
Harris has spoken frequently about the debates with Clinton and Biden and Trump, and hopes to benefit from their experience.
And she began promoting her approach to Trump even before the nomination was officially announced, telling a crowd in Atlanta in late July, “If you have something to say, say it to my face.”
Ms. Harris’ strategy, aides said, is not just to stand up to the former president but to make the case that it’s time for the country to move on from the Trump era. As Ms. Harris said in an interview with CNN last month, any provocations she makes on race will be downplayed and dismissed as “the same old platitudes.”
While many candidates are outwardly frantic about debate preparations, aides say Ms. Harris is preparing in the same way she did as a prosecutor, practicing in mock debates with Philip Reines, a longtime Clinton aide who serves as a surrogate for Mr. Trump.
Ms. Harris’ practice sessions are being run by Karen Dunn, a Washington lawyer who has helped Democratic candidates prepare for debates for more than a decade. Dunn, who supported Ms. Clinton before she faced Mr. Trump in 2016, met Ms. Harris while she was preparing to face Vice President Mike Pence in 2020.
“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking. I’m speaking,” Harris said midway through the debate, and could repeat the remarks if there’s an interruption on Tuesday. “If you’ll just wait until I finish speaking, then we can have a discussion. OK? OK.”
President Trump has recently criticized Harris’ preparation and claimed his debate performance will not be fairly judged.
“If I beat her in a debate, they’re going to say, ‘Trump suffered a humiliating defeat tonight,'” the former president said at a campaign rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin, on Saturday.
Trump has insisted he doesn’t need any formal preparations, such as mock debates, and has been meeting with senior advisers, policy experts and outside allies in preparation for Tuesday’s election.
A source familiar with the meeting told CNN that the “policy talks,” which the Trump campaign described as its debate prep, were largely similar to those the former president had in the weeks leading up to his June 27 debate with Biden.
Jason Miller, a senior adviser to President Trump, is chairing the meeting, which also included sessions with former Trump administration official Stephen Miller, Trump campaign policy adviser Vincent Haley and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard.
The sessions were primarily focused on helping clarify President Trump’s messaging on issues ranging from the economy to immigration to American democracy in general.
The Trump campaign also deliberately scheduled a series of events in the days leading up to the debate to get Trump on message in public, his advisers said, including a policy speech to the Economic Club of New York last week and a town hall interview with Fox News.
Trump’s advisers and allies have urged him to adopt a more subdued demeanor on stage, as he did in his June 27 debate with Biden.
But many privately acknowledge that it will matter even more this time around: Not only is Harris more popular than Biden was then, she’s also a woman, so certain attacks will be viewed differently, they say.
Gabbard, who recently endorsed Trump and is one of the candidates challenging Harris in a debate for the 2020 Democratic presidential nomination, has been a central figure in the effort. Gabbard has worked with Trump to help him better understand Harris’ debating style.
Trump advisers believe Gabbard’s attacks on Harris, then a California senator, particularly her record as a prosecutor, helped scuttle her 2019 presidential bid.
The former president’s team instructed her to specifically criticize Harris on issues where she has changed her position.
“We’re going to lead Trump to break her record on fracking and her back-and-forth and show that she’s just as responsible for the Biden administration’s failed policies as Biden is,” one adviser said.
People helping Trump prepare told him to focus his answers on core policy issues where he has higher approval ratings than Harris, such as the economy, immigration and crime, according to people familiar with the meetings.
“The biggest thing is finding a tipping point, finding a way to criticize her, deflecting her attacks,” a senior Trump adviser told CNN. “It’s not about her cutting him off or how she acts. It’s about him responding on policy with precision. That’s the main focus.”