The past The past few months in American politics have been a whirlwind: Joe Biden botched the first debate so badly that he had to drop out of the presidential race. Someone tried to assassinate Donald Trump. And the new Democratic nominee, Vice President Kamala Harris, has revitalized the party’s presidential hopes, sparking widespread joy among a previously disillusioned base while generating an unprecedented wave of fundraising.
On the surface, it may have looked like the race had changed dramatically: Harris had launched her campaign flawlessly, and Trump was in absolute hell—angrily airing his feelings while repeatedly complaining that Harris had replaced Biden as the nominee. Yet for all the turmoil, the broad outlines of the 2024 election remain eerily similar: The race is very close—and Trump may still be the favorite.
The stakes of Tuesday’s presidential debate in Philadelphia—the second of the campaign and the first between Harris and Trump—couldn’t be higher. With the race between the vice president and the former president approaching a troubling close point—particularly in recent private and public polls in a handful of swing states that will decide the election—officials in each camp say Tuesday night’s debate could make or break their candidate’s chances of winning the White House.
Harris's team members believe the debate is essential to preserving the democratic system in the face of Trump's fascist whims.
“There is absolutely no room for error,” says one Harris ally, adding that a poor performance could “cost us the election.”
In the assessments of Democrats working on her campaign, the debate is very likely to set the tone — in the political press and elsewhere — for the final two-month race to the 2024 election. If Harris fails to define herself to the American people on live television, it could be disastrous, in a presidential election that appears to be fought on the margins.
New survey from The New York Times Siena College notes that many voters still want to know more about Harris and her plans for what she might do as president. Most likely voters think Harris deserves the blame for rising prices and “trouble at the border,” he says. TimesA Siena Foundation poll shows that Republican attacks on Harris and attempts to define her may be having resonance.
It's all about immersing yourself in positive emotions.
Finally, Harris’s campaign posted an issues page on its website on Sunday, a month and a half after she became the presumptive Democratic nominee, two days before the debate. Now, she needs to get her political vision directly across to the millions of Americans who will be watching her on Tuesday, all while standing just feet away from Trump.
“It would be devastating if we screwed this up,” says one Harris adviser. Rolling Stone“It's really one of those evenings where failure is not an option, isn't it?” he added.
As Harris and Trump prepared for Tuesday night in Philadelphia, their campaigns were actively brainstorming tactics and takeaways that each side thought would work best to upset the other candidate — hoping to provoke an overreaction or stumble that would stick in voters’ minds.
In the lead-up to the debate, Trump's team and allies pressured him to be the “happy Trump” in the debate, not the “nasty, bullying Trump,” according to Times.
According to two sources familiar with the matter, as members of Harris’s team reviewed recent and old videos of Trump — at events, during media interviews, and on stage at televised debates — they noticed that Trump is sometimes not as easy to seduce as some assume.
“Donald Trump is notoriously easy to be lured into acting like the jerk and bully he is,” says one such source, “but if you watch him at points during and after his time in office, you will be able to spot times when he knows someone is trying to get a payoff from him, and then he simply refuses to give them what they want… at least for a short period of time.”
In the weeks leading up to the Philadelphia debate, this prompted further brainstorming among Harris 2024 campaign officials, who wanted to lay out every angle of the types of on-stage attacks and vitriol that had a real chance of provoking the former president.
The two sources declined to disclose the nature of the new ideas, which they added were shared with the vice president, as they aim to surprise Trump on Tuesday.
