This debate could decide the election. Here’s what Trump needs to do to score a win over Kamala
Today’s presidential debate could decide who wins the US election. Here’s what Donald Trump and Kamala Harris both have to do to win.
Opinion
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With just hours to go before what promises to be the most fascinating and important presidential debate since Kennedy took on Nixon, things have started to shift Donald Trump’s way.
So, can Trump capitalise on recent gains and show Harris up as a radical leftist out of her depth?
Or will he overstep the mark and turn the tidal wave of media pressure against him into a tsunami?
It all depends on whether he does a few simple things, but first: Let’s review where we are.
In the past week, polls have started to swing back to the Republican.
A few days ago the New York Times put Trump a point ahead nationally, setting off a flurry of panic among big Democrat donors and no small amount of smug gloating within the Biden camp.
The gap separating Trump and his Democrat rival is far narrower now than it was at this point in 2016 (when he scored his upset win against Hillary Clinton) or 2020 (when he was knocked out by Joe Biden).
Meanwhile, Democrat Kamala Harris and her running mate Tim Walz look like they have peaked after their feel good, joy-based convention last month.
The pair have done precisely one kid gloves interview since Harris took over the ticket and only just this week released a suite of digestibly moderate policies on her website.
Yet whatever she says now as recently as 2019 Harris publicly supported ideas like taxpayer funded gender surgery for migrants, ending immigration detention, and decriminalizing every drug from pot to fentanyl.
Confronted with her relatively recent radicalism, a campaign spokesman – not, naturally, the candidate herself – told CNN this week that “the vice president’s positions have been shaped by three years of effective governance of the Biden-Harris administration.”
Which brings us to the debate.
Multiple reports have it that the Harris camp is in disarray after not being able to change the rule around candidates’ microphones being muted while their opponents are speaking.
The rule dates back to when Joe Biden was the candidate and Democrats were terrified that Trump would speak over him – though in the end it forced Trump to keep silent and mostly out of the way as the Democrat president melted down.
Team Kamala on the other hand was keen to have the mics unmuted throughout this week’s debate, the thinking being that even the mildest interruption by the irrepressible Trump would give Harris the chance to stage an “I’m speaking!” moment that would go viral and galvanise women voters.
Campaign leaks suggest that she has been undergoing intense debate prep with a Trump impersonator and is planning on using “prosecutorial” she developed as a California district attorney.
So, how is this going to go?
For Trump, the rules are simple.
Don’t rise to the bait, and as this column advises all politicians, just be normal.
Even with the rule change around mics, Harris will try to get off a zinger suggesting that Trump is rude, misogynist, a buffoon.
Trump needs to hold fire, and when the opportunity arises, get a zinger of his own in: An “excuse me, I’m speaking” would short circuit much of the Harris strategy.
Likewise, silence is powerful, and confronted with it Harris will likely try to blurt out every fact she’s crammed over the past fortnight – confusing viewers and her message.
So too should Trump avoid rising to the bait on the largely political legal cases against him – they’ve been litigated in court and the media and there’s not a vote it in for him.
And Trump needs to forensically wedge Harris: If she’s running on the record of her boss, Joe Biden, how can she call herself an agent of change?
And if she’s not, then is she saying what she needs to get elected before reverting to her old, 2019 vintage radicalism?
And this is where normality comes in: Donald Trump may be a fantastically wealthy property developer-celebrity-politician but people have his measure.
Voters either love him or hate him, and even his fans who aren’t keen on some of his behaviour have already priced that in to their support.
In other words, he’s been normalised.
On the other hand, Kamala Harris presents as a blank slate – which is where Trump needs to systematically tie her to every far left progressive idea she has ever endorsed.
With voters knowing little about her beyond her infamous word salads and coconut tree stories, Trump can make her a stand in for the high crime, high taxing, high homelessness, and highly dysfunctional California from which she emerged.
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