Debate Preview: Harris on the Hot Seat
Kamala Harris will have ABC News in her corner during tonight’s debate, but it might not be enough.
Admittedly, it lasted a bit longer than we thought, but the Kamala Harris honeymoon is finally over — and just in time for tonight’s one and probably only debate between the incumbent vice president and her Republican challenger, Donald Trump.
The latest New York Times-Siena poll delivered the bad news to Kamala’s campaign in the form of a narrow 48-47 lead for Trump. If past is prologue, those numbers portend a blowout loss for Harris. Recall that Trump won narrowly in 2016 despite the final national polls showing him to be trailing Hillary Clinton by around three points. And recall that he “lost” narrowly to Joe Biden in 2020 despite once again trailing by around three points in the national polls. If Trump and Harris are essentially tied in the national polling, it means he is likely leading where it matters: in the swing states.
Furthermore, if Harris is polling south of 50% among likely voters, it means that Trump is positioned to win not just the Electoral College but also the popular vote — which a Republican has done just once since 1988. Indeed, there are no “shy” Harris voters — which is to say, voters who support Harris aren’t reluctant to say so. But history has shown that plenty of folks are reluctant to tell strangers, including pollsters, that they support Trump. So Harris’s number, 47%, is likely her real number, while Trump’s real number is somewhere north of 48%.
Why, it’s almost as if the voters are just now reminding themselves of what a woefully unpopular presidential candidate Harris was in 2020 and what a woefully unpopular veep she’s been ever since. If only the Democrats had seen this coming.
Lefty polling guru Nate Silver knows all this, which is why his latest projection gives Trump a 63.8% probability of winning on November 5, compared to Harris’s 36%. Silver, in fact, has the former president winning every swing state.
This brings us to tonight’s debate. The stakes are especially high for Harris, who’s been largely in seclusion in recent days, trying to perfect her mannerisms while memorizing a series of poll-tested two-minute answers to the kid-glove questions she’ll likely get from ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis.
As for that bias: The Media Research Center recently reviewed 100 campaign stories that aired on ABC’s “World News Tonight” from July 21, the day Harris entered the race, to September 6. What did MRC find? Not a single negative statement about Harris, while the network’s coverage of Trump during that same period was almost exclusively negative. In short, ABC News delivered 100% positive coverage for Harris compared to 93% negative coverage for Trump.
And yet, word is that the Harris campaign is nervous. Why? Might it be because their candidate hasn’t yet been tested? That she hasn’t held a single press conference in the 51 days since she’s been the Democrats’ nominee? We wonder: Whatever happened to the cocky, confident, “say it to my face” Kamala of a few weeks ago?
“He plays with a really old and tired playbook,” said Harris of Trump during a friendly conversation with a radio host named Ricky Smiley. “There’s no floor for him in terms of how low he will go,” she said, adding that Trump wasn’t “burdened by telling the truth.”
That’s rich coming from Harris, who keeps claiming that her values haven’t changed even though it seems all her positions have — from fracking to border security to single-payer healthcare to mandatory gun buybacks to defunding the police to mandating electric vehicles to banning plastic straws.
You might say Harris is burdened by what has been.
She’s also burdened by the truth that fellow leftist Bernie Sanders accidentally uttered on Meet the Press this weekend: that she’s not a laughable flip-flopper, but is instead “doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.”
This video needs to be everywhere
— DCDraino (@DCDraino) September 8, 2024
Bernie Sanders is confirming that Kamala is doing whatever it takes to win the election
Then she’ll enact Marxist policies
They’re openly telling us their plans
pic.twitter.com/C2SfpD2yBZ
While Harris has been squirreled away, Trump has been out campaigning. It’s a study in contrasts. “You can go in with all the strategy you want, but you have to sort of feel it out as the debate’s taking place,” said Trump during a recent town hall. Trump then quoted former boxing great Mike Tyson: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.” Iron Mike said “mouth,” but it’s all good.
Columnist Marc Thiessen has some sound debate advice for Trump. First and foremost, the former president should remember that he’s not trying to win over his base. Instead, his audience is the independents, that thin sliver of the electorate that’s still persuadable. He should remind these swing voters of what they like about him — namely, his policies — rather than what they don’t like about him — namely, the bombast and the bullying. Here’s Thiessen:
Harris will try to goad Trump into leveling insults and personal attacks. And she will try to bait him into defending his actions on Jan 6, 2021. He can’t take the bait. Many swing voters are considering voting for him despite his conduct that day, because they believe Biden and Harris are a disaster and remember that their lives were better under Trump. For these voters, hearing Trump defend Jan. 6 is like fingernails on a chalkboard. If he is talking about Jan. 6, he is losing. When Harris brings it up, he should pivot and remind voters that on Jan. 6, inflation was low, the border was secure, and the world was at peace.
In addition, Trump should continually remind viewers that Harris is the incumbent and that he, Trump, represents change.
Here, we’d refer again to that NYT-Siena poll, which shows that 61% of those surveyed said they want the next president to be a change from Joe Biden. And who do these people believe represents change? Donald Trump, by a whopping 53-28 margin.
In the end, expectations for Harris will have been set so low that she’ll win just by showing up to the debate — at least in the eyes of the mainstream media. But if Trump can keep his cool, if he can stay away from the bait and instead stay focused on the issues and on that miserable Biden/Harris record, it won’t matter that he’s debating David Muir and Linsey Davis as well as Kamala Harris.
Frankly, I’d love it if Trump closed things out by addressing those few undecided voters with this self-effacing remark, a variation of which he uttered a few days ago at a town hall in Pennsylvania: “You might be saying to yourself, ‘I can’t stand that guy,’ but there’s no way you can vote for Kamala Harris. No way. For the sake of our country, you’ve just got to vote for me.”
Trump’s message to Pennsylvania voters:
— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) September 5, 2024
“You can’t take the chance! You have no choice! You’ve gotta vote for me! Even if you don’t like me! You can sit there and say ‘I can’t stand that guy, but there’s NO WAY I’m gonna vote for her!’” pic.twitter.com/LRZIbwzRGj
Updated with a clip of Bernie Sanders’s “Meet the Press” gaffe and one last suggestion for President Trump.
