ANALYSIS — Vice President Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will be face-to-face for the first time Tuesday night as they debate, aiming to keep the other out of the Oval Office.
Harris closed the polling gap on Trump after her surprise ascension to the Democratic nomination, but she still trails in some polls. She will have a chance to change that when the nominees square off in Philadelphia.
The vice president had narrow leads nationally in a list of polls released in the past few weeks, but her campaign got a surprise Sunday when a New York Times-Siena College survey put Trump up 1 percentage point — suggesting her surge after President Joe Biden dropped out has ended.
But a strong debate performance against the unpredictable, bare-knuckle debater Trump could give her White House bid a boost with less than two months until Election Day. The stakes couldn’t be higher in a race that shows ample signs of a photo finish on Nov. 5.
“If her momentum continues, Harris will probably win. But it may not. If she stumbles in the Sept. 10 debate, the momentum of the race may change,” according to William Galston of the Brookings Institution, a former White House aide under President Bill Clinton. “Trump’s campaign could regain its balance and sharpen its focus. And unforeseen events could shift the dynamic between the candidates.”
Polls suggest voters want to hear from Harris about policy, and prognosticators in Las Vegas say she has a better chance of winning the debate. “Latest odds reveal Harris has an implied probability of 57% of winning the debate, while Trump only holds a 53% chance,” according to Vegas Insider. “Kamala Harris’ past debate performance gives her a 55 percent chance of winning the debate, while Donald Trump has a 45 percent shot.”
Here are three things to watch as Harris and Trump debate.
Donald the distracted?
The nominees have taken different paths to Philadelphia, with Harris debate-prepping in Pittsburgh and Trump saying and posting more outlandish things — even threatening, if elected, to throw his opponents in the slammer.
“Therefore, the 2024 Election, where Votes have just started being cast, will be under the closest professional scrutiny and, WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,” Trump wrote in a post on Sunday. “Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.”
That followed a wild Friday press appearance in New York during which Trump repeatedly insulted several women who have accused him of sexual assault at a time when women voters could decide the election.
The former president’s antics in recent weeks led one Republican pollster to question whether his heart really is in the presidential race.
“I have never seen a candidate more determined to blow an election. Instead of talking about affordability and immigration security (the top public issues), Trump is once again screaming about prosecuting his opponents,” pollster Frank Luntz wrote on X. “Message to Donald: Focus on helping voters, not yourself.”
Abortion access
Harris has been telling supporters at her rallies for more than a month that the election likely will be extremely close and that Democrats have work to do to secure enough votes to put her in the White House.
She and her campaign are banking that access to abortion will help her with women voters, especially college-educated white suburban ones who often vote Republican.
“The impact of abortion on the 2022 midterms, when Democrats did much better than expected, is undeniable. But some evidence suggests that its impact may be more muted in this year’s contest,” Galston noted.
Abortion ranked second, at 15 percent, in the Times-Siena survey when likely voters were asked what issue was most important to them. The economy was first, at 22 percent, and immigration third, at 12 percent.
But, to Galston’s point, abortion ranked eighth when registered voters in seven swing states were asked by polling firm Blueprint about their top issues. Still, more of them said they trusted Harris more on abortion than Trump by an 11-point margin. Notably, among registered independent voters in those battlegrounds, the vice president’s advantage grew to 24 percentage points.
Expect her to try to appeal to more voters in that crucial bloc on Tuesday night.
‘Old guard’
It’s doubtful anyone had this on their election-year bingo card: A Democratic presidential nominee praising Iraq War architect and staunch conservative Dick Cheney. In any other year, that might seem laughable.
After all, Democratic lawmakers and officials spent most of the super-hawkish Cheney’s run as vice president harshly criticizing him over his moves as President George W. Bush’s right-hand man on national security and foreign policy after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
Yet, in this campaign, which already has been defined by twist and turns, it seems fitting and could add a twist to Tuesday’s debate. Harris on Saturday told reporters she is “proud” to have Cheney’s endorsement. Her campaign also released an ad Monday showing members of Trump’s administration, including former Vice President Mike Pence, saying they would not support him again this year.
It’s an effort to win over Republicans uncomfortable with Trump that Harris began by having GOP speakers at the Democratic convention last month. But bringing up Cheney could give Trump, who has struggled to settle on an anti-Harris message, a much-needed line of attack. In fact, Trump could opt to use the Cheney endorsement to try painting Harris as too much of a wild card on national and global security matters — especially amid worries of a regional Middle East war and the ongoing Russia-Ukraine conflict.
Cheney has long been a proponent of using U.S. military force, even starting preemptive wars. Trump is unabashedly anti-war, often calling them “stupid” and even appearing, at times, to harshly judge those who have made the ultimate sacrifice.
“Well, he’s clearly the old guard, the guard that, you know, the country club Republicans that don’t support Donald Trump,” Corey Lewandowski, a Trump campaign adviser, told Fox News on Sunday.
“And so, look, I don’t really care what Dick Cheney says. We saw what happened to Liz Cheney in her last election,” he added. Cheney’s daughter Liz was ousted from House GOP leadership for questioning Trump’s false claims about election fraud and then lost her reelection bid in the 2022 Wyoming Republican primary by a more than 2-to-1 margin after serving as vice chair of the special committee that investigated the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol riot. “She was absolutely destroyed. … So they’re bitter and they’re angry and they’re living in the past. It’s time to move forward.”
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