Democrats are privately acknowledging growing anxiety over the Tuesday night debate between Vice President Harris and former President Trump, arguing that how Harris performs could go a long way in defining her as a candidate.
Four years ago, Harris enjoyed a good night against former Vice President Mike Pence, and that debate might be best remembered for the fly that landed on Pence’s head.
Harris’s public appearances have been tightly scripted since President Biden exited the race and handed her the baton, and a long evening behind the debate podium with only a pad of paper, a pen and a bottle of water presents an array of uncertainties that makes Democrats nervous.
Ray Zaccaro, a Democratic strategist and former Senate aide, said Democrats are mindful that the high-stakes debate could be “catastrophic or monumental” after Biden’s campaign was derailed by the June 27 debate against Trump.
He said Democrats were already nervously anticipating this week’s debate at the height of the Democratic convention in Chicago, knowing an hour on stage could make or break a candidate who largely stayed out of the spotlight during her time as vice president.
“We were already moved on from the convention at the convention because of the anxiety of what this debate could actually turn out to look like. People are extremely anxious about her performance,” he said. “There’s a sense of real caution about expectations on her performance.”
The strategist said Harris, a former prosecutor and former senator who participated in Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearing, has the tools to turn in a great performance. But he noted that sometimes a debate can turn on something as trivial as a candidate looking at his watch, like former President George H.W. Bush did in 1992, or sighing loudly, like Al Gore did in 2000.
Zaccaro said Harris has yet to flash the kind of magic in spontaneous campaign settings that made former President Obama a star in 2008. That’s partly because her campaign has carefully controlled her public appearances.
“Given how well her rollout has gone — I think there have been relatively few missteps and everything has gone according to plan — based on the current polling, it is somewhat surprising that she’s not doing better in the polls. This is a make-or-break moment for Harris,” he said.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a candidate with more weight on a given moment than this candidate will have at the debate Tuesday,” he added.
A Democratic senator, who requested anonymity, said anxiety is running high within the party ahead of Harris taking the stage.
“If you’re a conscious, informed Democrat, you’re nervous. How could you not be? All these battleground states are 48-48 [percent], 49-49 [percent] and there’s a lot of support there for Trump that seems incomprehensible but it’s there,” said the senator, who explained that voters’ view of the economy is a factor.
“Yeah, I’m nervous,” the lawmaker said. “She’s not tested. I think she is going to be as well-prepared as anyone could possibly be and they’ll go over every foreseeable scenario” about what Trump may say or do on stage.
“I think the critical thing in this debate is for to have three really good lines,” the senator added.
A New York Times/Siena College poll of 1,695 likely voters nationwide published Monday showed Trump at 48 percent support and Harris at 47 percent.
The poll showed that while voters’ views of Trump are largely fixed, 28 percent of the likely electorate said they need to learn more about Harris.
Two-thirds of likely voters said they need to learn more about Harris’s policy and plans, while less than half of voters said the same thing about Trump.
Polling expert Nate Silver is giving Trump a 64 percent chance of winning the Electoral College, while other political handicappers have rated the race a toss-up.
Republicans have voiced their own anxieties about Trump’s performance on the debate stage this week. Some prominent strategists urging him to stick to the issues and to avoid personal attacks that could make him look like a rude bully and further alienate women voters.
Harris is fully aware of the high stakes for her campaign and spent days holed up at the Omni William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh to prepare for her face-to-face showdown with Trump.
Harris’s practice sessions are being guided by Karen Dunn, a former adviser to Hillary Clinton, who squared off against Trump in three debates during the 2016 election.
Her campaign team has also invited Philippe Reines, a former senior adviser to Clinton, to play the role of Trump at practice sessions and heighten the realism by wearing a power suit and long red tie.
Other Democratic strategists say they believe Harris would be on course to beating Trump on Nov. 5 if she can “get past” the debate without committing a major gaffe or leaving voters with doubts about her leadership vision.
“She has to get past this debate. It shouldn’t matter as much as it’s going to matter, but it does,” one strategist said. “If she gets by and does well, then from there, 10, 15 days later, early voting starts in some of these states and you’re off to the races.”
Mail-in ballots in Pennsylvania, for example, will be available 50 days before election Day.
The strategist said Harris’s performance will be important in defining herself to white working-class voters in the key swing states — such as Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, which make up the "blue wall" that Democrats are counting on to beat Trump.
“We have a problem with white working-class voters, and Trump performs really well with those folks,” the Democrat acknowledged.
The strategist said Democrats are wary that the polls may not be capturing the reluctance of some voters to elect a Black woman as president.
“There are people that will not tell you that they’re uncomfortable with a Black woman being president of the United States. It’s hard to measure that,” the source warned. “There are some older white voters that voted for Biden because they saw themselves in Biden. …. I could see her losing some of that. But young people are really enthusiastic about her right now.”
If Harris loses any of those blue wall states, she’d have to win more traditionally Republican-leaning states, such as Arizona, Georgia or North Carolina, to secure the 270 electoral votes needed for victory.
Morgan Jackson, a Democratic strategist based in Raleigh, N.C., said “it’s truly a jump-ball election in North Carolina right now” and cited “white women in the suburbs” as a key piece of the electorate along with young and Black voters, who make up the Democratic base.
But he said a lot is riding on Tuesday night.
“The stakes are high at this debate,” he said. “I think Harris has a real opportunity to introduce herself to voters and to prosecute the case against Donald Trump.
“The debate is a big deal, it’s a very big deal."
