CNN
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Kamala Harris faces a challenge unprecedented in modern politics on Tuesday night: On the debate stage in Philadelphia, she will make both an opening statement to millions of voters who want to know more about her, and a closing statement in support of her candidacy and against Donald Trump. She will do both as the electrifying election campaign enters its final eight weeks.
As a former president, Harris will also be treading uncharted territory: After Trump skipped the Republican primary debates, she will now face off against a second Democratic rival on multiple occasions. But unlike President Joe Biden, whose campaign collapsed during a June speech in Atlanta, Harris will present an entirely different challenge.
Harris has had a successful campaign so far, catapulting herself to the nomination after Biden dropped out in July and surging in polls and fundraising in the weeks since. Her financial advantage is clear: She raised $361 million in August alone, nearly three times as much as Trump. But the race remains close, and voters are increasingly clamoring for more information about Harris and her policy agenda. This knowledge gap creates opportunities and obstacles for both sides.
There is less mystery surrounding Trump, who will take part in his record seventh presidential debate, during a campaign that featured a patchwork of often contradictory promises and positions, pushing and backing off his infamous “Project 2025” initiative, trying to link Harris to Biden’s record, particularly on the border, and frequently engaging in personal attacks based on gender and race.
Before the two men meet in Philadelphia in one of the highest-stakes national debates of a generation, a fundamental question is whether and how either can deliver a compelling message to swing voters while also bolstering the credibility of their respective bases.
Here are six things to watch on Tuesday night.
Harris served as vice president for nearly four years and served in Congress as a California representative for nearly the same amount of time before that. She ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020. Still, in a recent New York Times/Siena College poll, 28% of voters said they needed to know more about her.
For Trump, the figure was 9%.
More than her convention speech, the debate will be a chance for Harris to answer some of those questions. So far, she has focused her delve into two issues in particular: the cost of living and reproductive rights. Reproductive rights is clearly her forte; her positions are far more popular than Trump’s, she’s far better equipped to speak about them than Biden, and they fit well with her broader message of individual liberty.
The economy is a trickier issue. Her campaign has so far stuck close to what the Biden administration has been preaching, while at the same time seeking to inject a populist freshness that will energize the Democratic Party and win over skeptical, undecided voters.
While Harris is unlikely to deviate from her previous strategy of speaking in general terms while sparing specifics, she will likely face pressure from the debate moderators and, in his own way, Trump himself, to be more clear about how she prioritizes.
Harris is also likely to be questioned about recent policy shifts, such as plastic straws being allowed back in after she previously proposed a ban, while all forms of Medicare for All have been repealed.
Harris’ second presidential campaign has made significant changes to her first campaign, which was marred by an unfair primary election that ended before the polls. Many of the things she said she would be willing to accept, if not fully support, are no longer an option five years later. Her current position seems politically closer to Biden and to her own long political history.
Peers describe it as evolution and evidence of her open, inquisitive mind.
Trump’s rivals see it differently. For them, Harris’s fluctuating positions indicate a lack of political conscience and excessive ambition. In Trump’s case, the familiar argument is that the public knows where he stands, whether they agree with him or not.
So which narrative will win on Tuesday night? The question looms as large for Harris as it does for Trump. The vice president will no doubt plan to channel expected criticism into a more positive message about her plans for the future, risking being seen as disingenuous by not acknowledging the obvious.
But Trump has a habit of overplaying a good card, and his seeming inability or refusal to launch personal attacks without ratcheting them up with outrageous or bigoted language makes staying focused on specifics seem the smarter course.
Trump turned 78 about two weeks before he took the stage with Biden in Georgia. The president’s plight naturally dominated post-debate talk, but he too appears weaker than he was during the first and second campaigns.
Last week, the former president was asked at an economic forum if he would “commit to prioritizing legislation to make child care affordable,” and if so, “which legislation specifically” he would push for. His response was rambling and incomprehensible. (CNN’s Zach Wolf did his best to make sense of it.)
What’s worse, it wasn’t unusual.
Trump has long spoken in unwieldy, erratic language. But the digressions have become more frequent and the unwieldy language harder to keep together. Given the manner of Biden’s electoral exit, it seems likely that the former president’s own words will come under greater scrutiny this time around.
The other half of the equation is what Trump says when he is, at least formally, speaking clearly.
Trump has already accused Harris, a Howard University graduate and daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants, of deciding to “go black” for political reasons, though Trump’s allies prefer to dismiss her hiring as a “diversity” initiative.
Such arguments may inspire MAGA supporters, but they are less effective in the suburbs, where the majority of undecided voters live, and they serve to stiffen the backs of Democrats (and further loosen their purse strings).
Harris, meanwhile, has sought to avoid talking about the “historic nature” of her campaign, which she believes is self-evident, and in a recent interview with CNN’s Dana Bash, missed the opportunity to counter some of Trump’s bizarre accusations.
“The same old boring thing,” said Mr. Harris. “Next question please.”
There is a strong case to be made that Trump lost the 2020 election on the night of the first debate with Biden.
Combative and boisterous, and as the nation soon learned, battling the coronavirus, Trump made a vicious parody of himself. Of course, their battle was ultimately close, but no one, almost no one, would deny that Trump ruined his chances that night.
With history in mind, the Trump and Biden campaigns agreed before the June debate to mute each candidate’s microphone while the other was speaking. Trump literally couldn’t interrupt Biden. In the end, there was no reason to do so. The president interrupted himself multiple times and often stopped speaking when his allotted time was up. With a few exceptions, Trump made the politically wise move and let Biden’s words hang in the air.
Harris occasionally stumbled on crowded stages during the 2019 Democratic presidential primary but is generally viewed as a sharper debater than a fully-fledged Biden. Her campaign pushed for the microphone to return, a move that was ultimately abandoned just before the debate dates were set, underscoring its desire to give Trump free rein to implode.
Harris’ interactions with Trump will likely be even more heavily censored on Tuesday night, and it will be interesting to see how obvious that becomes to viewers.
By the end of Tuesday night’s debate, the better question may be: Are we sure Biden isn’t out yet?
More than eight weeks after he dropped out of the race, and exactly eight weeks until the election, Trump’s most consistent argument is that Harris is sticking with the same old story, even as she talks of a shift in her campaign.
When Harris sticks to Biden’s policies, Trump criticizes them and Harris as failures. It will be instructive to see how Harris deflects Biden’s expected attacks on immigration and the US-Mexico border. When Harris tries to distance herself from Biden through her attitude and actions, Trump asks why she didn’t try harder over the past four years.
For Trump, it’s a simple recipe. Harris’s job is more complicated and, if done well, more nuanced.
What’s indisputable is that Biden will be a visible presence on the debate stage, even if he’s not there in person. Harris and Trump will likely try to use Biden’s record to make their case, or try to hide it. It’s a balancing act, and getting too far from the political center risks tipping over.
President Trump Cross-Examined About Abortion Record and Plans
Trump often boasts that he has appointed three of the six Supreme Court justices who voted to eviscerate Roe v. Wade and end federal protections for abortion in 2022. “I’m proud to have done that,” he once declared.
Since then, most Republican-controlled states have either banned abortion or enacted restrictive new laws. Some of these efforts have been blocked or overturned by ballot measures organized by abortion rights activists. The results, combined with biased opinion polls, highlight the unpopularity of the decisions and their effects.
President Trump had already left the White House when the Supreme Court’s decision was handed down, and while he himself did not feel the backlash, his party did, especially in the 2022 midterm elections, when Democrats reacted strongly to the ruling and some Republicans became less than expected in their determination to implement a broader federal ban.
Former President Trump himself has expressed various positions and views on this issue, but his most consistent position has been that abortion policies should be decided by individual states. When asked which state policies he would support, Trump was unclear.
Trump recently announced he would vote against protecting abortion rights in his adopted home state of Florida, where a voter vote would repeal the state’s six-week ban on abortion, a measure Trump himself opposes.
Harris, a former prosecutor, will likely try to force her rivals to take a clear stance.
Russian troops have been in Ukraine for more than two and a half years. The fighting has been brutal, reminiscent of the Eastern Front during World War II. A deadly Hamas attack on Israeli soil on October 7, 2023 sparked an 11-month Israeli bombing campaign against Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
With the death toll rising and the humanitarian situation in Gaza deteriorating, neither conflict appears to be nearing an end.
Trump’s version of this is that Russian President Vladimir Putin, with whom he claims a special friendship, would never have invaded Ukraine if Trump were still in power, and Israel would be allowed more freedom in Gaza than it has with Biden in the White House.
Harris fully supports continued Western aid to Ukraine, but she needs to maintain the support of a diverse and fragile Democratic coalition and has been unclear on Middle East policy.
In her convention speech and on a new “Issue Points” page on her campaign website, Harris has made the case for defending Israel and establishing a neighboring Palestinian state, and for the security of both countries. Critics have said she is “cutting the baby in half,” as she puts it.
But now, for the first time, she will be delivering her rhetoric with Trump in attendance.