Washington: Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump are meeting for the first time face-to-face Tuesday night for perhaps their only debate. It is an opportunity to showcase their starkly different visions for the country after a tumultuous campaign summer.
The event, at 9 p.m. Eastern in Philadelphia, will offer Americans their most detailed look at a campaign that’s dramatically changed since the last debate in June. It is imperative to mention President Joe Biden’s withdrawal from the race and the assassination attempt on Trump.
Harris would want to show that she can press the Democratic case against Trump better than Biden did. Trump, in turn, is trying to paint the vice president as an out-of-touch liberal while trying to win over voters sceptical he should return to the White House.
Trump, 78, has struggled to adapt to Harris, 59, who is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. The Republican former president has at times resorted to invoking racial and gender stereotypes, frustrating allies who want Trump to focus instead on policy differences with Harris.
The Vice President will attempt to take credit for the successes of the Biden administration while also confronting its failures and justifying her departure from the more liberal stances she adopted previously.
The debate presents a unique opportunity for sustained scrutiny of Harris, who has only participated in one formal interview over the last six weeks.
“If she performs great, it’s going to be a nice surprise for the Democrats and they’ll rejoice,” said Ari Fleischer, a Republican communications strategist and former press secretary to President George W. Bush. “If she flops, like Joe Biden did, it could break this race wide open. So there’s more riding on it.”
Tim Hogan, who led Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s debate preparations in the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, said Harris, a former California attorney general, would bring a “prosecutor’s instincts to the debate stage.”
“That is a very strong quality in that setting: having someone who knows how to land a punch and how to translate it,” Hogan said.
The initial early ballots for the presidential race are scheduled to be distributed shortly after the debate, which is hosted by ABC News. In Alabama, the dispatch of absentee ballots will commence on Wednesday.
Trump plans to hit Harris as too liberal
Trump and his campaign have highlighted the far-left stances she adopted during her unsuccessful 2020 presidential campaign. He has received assistance in his informal debate preparation sessions from Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate who sharply criticized Harris during their primary debates.
Harris has sought to defend her shifts away from liberal causes to more moderate stances on fracking, expanding Medicare for all and mandatory gun buyback programs — and even backing away from her position that plastic straws should be banned — as pragmatism, insisting that her “values remain the same.” Her campaign on Monday published a page on its website listing her positions on key issues.
The ex-president has contended that a Harris presidency would endanger the nation’s safety, emphasizing that Biden selected her to manage the surge of migrants. This assertion aligns with the Republican’s renewed focus on immigration and unauthorized residents in his campaign rhetoric. He aims to depict a Harris presidency as an extension of Biden’s administration, which remains unpopular, especially regarding its economic policies, as the electorate continues to experience the effects of inflation despite its recent decline.
Trump’s team insist his tone won’t be any different facing a female opponent.
“President Trump is going to be himself,” senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters during a phone call Monday.
Gabbard, who was also on the call, added that Trump “respects women and doesn’t feel the need to be patronizing or to speak to women in any other way than he would speak to a man.”
His advisers suggest Harris has a tendency to express herself in a “word salad” of meaningless phrases, prompting Trump to say last week that his debate strategy was to “let her talk.”
The former president frequently plows into rambling remarks that detour from his policy points. He regularly makes false claims about the last election, attacks a lengthy list of enemies and opponents working against him, offers praise for foreign strongmen and comments about race, like his false claim in July that Harris recently “happened to turn Black.”
Harris wants to argue Trump is unstable and unfit
The Vice President, known as the most vocal advocate for abortion access within the Biden administration after the Supreme Court’s reversal of Roe v. Wade in 2022, is anticipated to highlight Trump’s contradictory positions on women’s reproductive health, including his declaration to support Florida’s six-week abortion ban in the upcoming statewide referendum this autumn.
Additionally, Harris aims to present herself as a more reliable leader for the country and its alliances while conflicts persist in Ukraine following over two years of Russian aggression, and as the prolonged war between Israel and Hamas in Gaza continues without a foreseeable conclusion.
She is expected to caution that Trump poses a danger to democracy, citing his efforts in 2020 to reverse his electoral defeat, which incited his supporters to assault the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, and his recent remarks. Last weekend, Trump disseminated another vengeful message on social media, vowing to incarcerate “those engaged in dishonest conduct,” encompassing lawyers, political strategists, contributors, voters, and electoral officials if he is victorious.
Harris has spent the better part of the last five days ensconced in debate preparations in Pennsylvania, where she participated in hours-long mock sessions with a Trump stand-in. Ahead of the debate, she told radio host Rickey Smiley that she was workshopping how to respond if Trump lies.
“There’s no floor for him in terms of how low he will go,” she said.
(With AP inputs)
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