We’ve already seen this presidential campaign dramatically altered by the first debate, which led to a swift reshuffling at the top of the Democratic ticket. The outcome of the election might well hinge on this next one.
By Matt Bai
Democrats are still feeling buoyant after last week’s convention in Chicago, and I don’t blame them. It was a well-produced and conflict-free affair, culminating in an acceptance speech from Harris that hit a nearly perfect pitch: upbeat, confident, moderate. Most polling now shows a tightened race, with Harris inching ahead of Donald Trump nationally.
But Democrats shouldn’t misread the message in that polling. (This is something they’re especially good at.) What Harris got herself with that convention speech was a hearing and nothing more. A lot of unconvinced voters got a long look at a vice president whom they had dismissed as unserious just a few months earlier and seem to have decided she might be a viable option after all.
This isn’t a small thing. For Harris to win, she doesn’t need to be the best candidate who ever lived; she just needs to be an acceptable alternative to a man whose core support isn’t nearly enough to win a national election.
But a convention speech, by itself, doesn’t assure you of much. It’s calibrated and stage-managed, read from a teleprompter― its every line raucously cheered by supporters. In other words, it’s just about the easiest bar you can clear in presidential politics. In retrospect, the days after Hillary Clinton’s well-received acceptance speech, in 2016, marked the high point of her campaign.
The debate on Sept. 10 — from which Trump has threatened to withdraw, though I doubt he will — will be the first chance voters have to assess Harris as a nominee when she’s not reading from a script or rallying the faithful. They’ll see how she reacts to substantive challenges from the moderators and bullying from her opponent. Given how Harris emerged as the nominee, it’s bound to be one of the most important televised debates in history.
Simply managing to avoid damage in that venue would only enable Harris to preserve the status quo — the start of a long slog to a close finish. If she wants to put Trump away, she’ll need to demonstrate that the warmth and optimism voters heard in her acceptance speech wasn’t simply the work of good speechwriters and set designers.
Harris’s advisers are probably telling her the same thing that Clinton and President Joe Biden were told before they debated Trump — that the debate is mostly about him and specifically his temperament. They’re likely to tell her that he can be provoked to fits of childish anger, that if she can highlight his instability and meanness, she will win. That’s probably why the Harris campaign is pushing for open mics, hoping Trump will lose his composure while she’s talking and say something especially unhinged.
I don’t do debate prep (I have sat in once or twice), but I’d actually tell her the opposite. Trump is who he is, and everyone on the planet already knows it. This next debate is, in fact, entirely about her — her command of the facts, her demeanor under fire, and, maybe more than anything, her emotional security and tolerance for disagreement. Trump matters only as a blathering prop. It’s Harris, a much lesser-known quantity than Clinton or Biden, whom voters will be watching more closely.
If I were Harris, I wouldn’t waste time provoking Trump, which gets you nothing but another round of outrageous sound bites and self-righteous recrimination. I’d put all my energy, instead, into embodying generational change and the modern American story, as she did so ably at the convention. Talk about your mixed race, your mother, your hope for all of our daughters. When Trump blusters, brush him off gently like a cranky old neighbor who has forgotten to take his pills.
Because, in the end, how you treat your opponent in a debate tells us a lot about how you’ll treat the rest of us. (This is why Barack Obama’s patronizing line in a primary debate — “You’re likable enough, Hillary” — appalled so many women.) Voters don’t need to see contempt and moral posturing from Harris. They want a candidate who can respond to craziness with grace, warmth, humor and confidence — all the things Trump so painfully lacks. They want someone to get us unstuck from a long moment of useless fury.
If Harris can do that, she will have done more than earn herself a hearing. She will have gone a long way toward cementing the verdict.
