Kamala Harris has been feverishly preparing for her crucial debate against a confident Donald Trump
The Trump and Harris campaign teams are on tenterhooks as the two presidential hopefuls spend their last 24 hours in preparation for the one and probably only presidential debate, which could seal the election outcome.
The most important political debate in American political history is set to kick off on Tuesday night in Philadelphia, when Donald Trump and Kamala Harris meet in person for the first time to trade rhetorical blows for 90 minutes, in what is likely to be the only time the two presidential hopefuls come face-to-face before the November election.
Never before has US politics thrown up two more different opponents: a former president against an incumbent vice president, the so-called Felon v The Prosecutor, a white male billionaire against a bourgeois “woman of colour”, a Republican loathed by the establishment versus a Democrat effusively supported by the bulk of American mainstream media.
Even their preparation has been starkly at odds: Harris has been holed up in the Omni William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh since Thursday practising intensely with a mock stage and TV lighting, and even a Trump impersonator, according to reports.
They have a Trump Impersonator helping Harris with her debate prep in PA.
— Shawn Farash (@Shawn_Farash) September 8, 2024
Can confirm I am NOT in Pennsylvania, so whoever is playing that role is doing a less than adequate job 👇
pic.twitter.com/fTelCSuUmZ
Trump characteristically has done little, sticking to a schedule heavy with campaign events and interviews, albeit with some advice from firebrand Republican congressman Matt Gaetz and former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.
“Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face,” Trump colourfully told Fox host Sean Hannity last week, referencing Mike Tyson’s famous boxing dictum.
The stakes will be stratospheric for both candidates as they walk on the stage at 9pm (11am Wednesday AEST) at Philadelphia’s National Constitution Centre, 57 days from polling day. Kamala Harris, after succeeding Joe Biden as the party’s presidential candidate in July, has edged ahead of Trump in most national polls although appears to have slipped behind in the latest New York Times, trailing by one percentage point, while Trump remains the bookies’ favourite by the slightest of margins.
Only in the unlikely event of a ‘tie’ would both campaigns be keen for a rematch, so don’t expect a round two.
It’s no exaggeration to say a convincing win – a or Biden-style, excruciating loss – for either one could seal the election.
Indeed, the stakes are so high even this debate almost never happened.
After insisting that microphones be muted for the candidate who wasn’t meant to be speaking when Trump faced off against Biden in July – an ultimately disastrous tactic for an incoherent Biden – Democrats this time wanted the microphones unmuted throughout, all the better to catch a frustrated Trump cursing or insulting Harris.
Indeed, an interjecting Trump would also leave Harris less vulnerable to her own habit of producing word salads, be it on the significance of the passage of time, or the importance of being unburdened by what has been.
KAMALA HARRIS: "The significance of the passage of time, right? The significance of the passage of time. So when you think about it, there is great significance to the passage of time...there is such great significance to the passage of time."pic.twitter.com/kNcgQ6K6xb
— KanekoaTheGreat (@KanekoaTheGreat) September 6, 2024
“I’d rather have [the microphone] probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time. In that case, it was muted. I didn’t like it the last time but it worked out fine,” Trump said in late August, in a rare example of understatement about a debate that ended president Biden’s political career.
Four straight minutes of “what can be, unburdened by what has been.†It’s incredible. I had no idea she used it this much. pic.twitter.com/TClfC1EyH6
— John Cooper (@thejcoop) June 29, 2024
A compromise was reached. Unlike for the previous debate, media will be allowed in the room, within earshot of anything said sotto voce that’s worth reporting. Speakers will have two minutes to answer questions.
Trump won the coin toss and chose to deliver his closing remarks last, while Harris, perhaps symbolically, elected to stand on the left.
Perhaps Vice President Harris, 59, would be more anxious. She hasn’t debated in this format for four years, and only once in total, against Mike Pence in 2020 when she was angling to be Joe Biden’s vice president. It was a forgettable performance, although less bad than when the then Senator was wrecked on stage by Tulsi Gabbard in the Democratic Party presidential primaries in late 2019.
Since becoming the presumptive Democratic presidential candidate on July 21 she’s only given one interview, for 18 minutes, with CNN, alongside her running mate Mike Walz, suggesting a lack of confidence in her ability to discuss on the fly what she believes and plans.
She also has to introduce herself to the American public, up to a third of whom still say they don’t know enough about her, and walk the fine line of separating herself from the track record of the Biden administration, of which she’s been a critical part, without seeming to trash it, or the president.
‘A New Way Forward’, Harris’s campaign slogan, might be something Trump might mock.
Trump leads Harris by double digits on the question of who would be better to manage the economy and immigration, two of voters’ biggest concerns, so expect her to try to shift the conversation to abortion rights, where the former president has had to play down his pride in having paved the way for the overturning of Roe v Wade to assuage moderate voters.
Republican vice presidential candidate JD Vance savaged Harris’s policy platform on Tuesday in a series of long social media posts, after her campaign uploaded policies to www.kamalaharris.com for the first time, potentially seeking to neutralise Trump’s claims her campaign was shying away from policy honesty.
It has been 50 days since Kamala Harris became the presumptive nominee of the Democratic Party.
— JD Vance (@JDVance) September 9, 2024
In the dead of night yesterday, she finally released her campaign policy page. Here's what I think of it 🧵
The 78 year old Trump by contrast is a more seasoned – and certainly confident – debater, having faced off against Joe Biden under the spotlight twice in 2020, and Hillary Clinton three times in 2016, months after handily dispatching his GOP rivals in the party primaries.
But Harris also has critical advantages: ABC News anchors and debate hosts David Muir and Linsey Davis are unlikely Trump supporters, working for a network that the Media Research Center in analysis published on Monday (Tuesday AEST) gave a “a gravity-defying 100 per cent positive spin score” for Harris, based its coverage since July 21.
“As for Trump, his coverage was 77 per cent negative on CBS, and 86 per cent negative on NBC — extremely hostile, but not as dreadful as the whopping 93 per cent negative coverage he received on ABC,” the outfit said.
Dana Walden, a chairman of Disney Entertainment, which owns ABC, is also a personal friend of Harris and a known Democratic Party donor.
Harris also has Trump’s temperament in her favour. He’s routinely insulted her intelligence, her laugh, and questioned her racial identity in ways that don’t appeal to most Americans.
“I’m going to let her talk,” Trump recently told an interviewer about his debate preparations, a reassurance unlikely to soothe his advisers.
My two bob’s worth? Trump wins the debate but is almost universally declared the loser by a US mainstream media that increasingly acts as the public relations department for the Democratic Party.
The Trump-Biden showdown in June was a ratings disappointment, drawing a little over 51 million viewers in what was the least watched debate since John Kerry and George W Bush in 2004, according to Nielsen.
Trump might be hoping this one is too.
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