Patrick Healy, the deputy Opinion editor, hosted an online conversation with the Times Opinion columnists Jamelle Bouie, Ross Douthat, David French, Michelle Goldberg and Tressie McMillan Cottom about Tuesday’s debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump.
Patrick Healy: Heading into tonight’s debate, what do you want to hear or learn from the candidates?
Michelle Goldberg: Honestly this question kind of infuriates me, because it assumes that what matters about tonight is some contest of policy positions, which is absurd. The media, I realize, has collectively decided that we’re going to treat Trump like a normal political candidate, and while that might be the right call in terms of preserving our journalistic institutions — though I’m genuinely unsure — it obscures the stakes. In this debate, the only thing that matters is whether Harris wins. It’s a cliché to say it, but she’s all that’s standing between us and autocracy.
Ross Douthat: For Harris, at least, I think there’s a clear upside to acting like the debate is a contest of policy positions, however the media covers it. Her campaign has been signaling — perhaps sincerely or perhaps as misdirection — that she wants to challenge Trump, to interrupt and pick fights and fact-check him.
But since this is only Harris’s second appearance in a challenging high-profile format since she locked up the nomination, I think she might benefit more from a kind of reintroduction of her candidacy, with more policy detail than her convention speech (her campaign finally debuted its issues page on Sunday). The much-discussed Times/Siena poll this past weekend found that a number of undecided voters want to hear more about who Harris is and what she stands for. That seems like it might be a better use of her time than trying to bait Trump, who has survived plenty of bad-seeming debate performances.
Jamelle Bouie: It would be a waste of time for Harris to try to bait Trump or get him to overreact. Instead, she should use the time to, as Ross said, reintroduce herself to the public, present her policies, contrast them with those of the former president, and demonstrate that she has the clear capacity to serve as chief executive. With that said, I do hope that at some point Harris makes clear that Trump’s policy of “mass deportation” would be a social, economic and moral catastrophe of the highest order.
Tressie McMillan Cottom: Harris has usurped some of Trump’s strengths on national security and patriotism. Her campaign is doing a better job than Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden of caricaturing Trump as unserious and incoherent. Trump has to find a way to hit back because he controls news cycles by demoralizing political opponents. Can Trump take a punch from Harris? Trump’s acolytes want more of what they got in his first campaign — a sarcastic, prowling authoritarian who intimidates his debate rivals. If he cannot deliver, it could look like weakness with a voter base that values strength above all else.
Healy: Tressie, how might Harris’s positioning on national security and patriotism help her in the debate?
McMillan Cottom: I am not the audience for Harris’s new Make America Diverse and Great message. Still, I can appreciate how many Democratic voters love it. They want to feel good about being an American. The 2016 election demoralized them. Years of social movements made them feel guilty. Harris rebooted herself as a neoconservative national security hawk during the Democratic convention delivering lines like, “will never waver in defense of America’s security and ideals,” with a natural aplomb. That scares the party’s progressive wing, but it inspired some centrist suburban stalwarts.
Can Harris deliver a sequel to her neocon rebrand with Trump standing next to her? She cannot let him get any visuals like the one of him stalking Hillary Clinton across the debate stage. Trump has managed to smooth over his most egregious behaviors during these nationally televised events. If Harris scores on style and substance, she could force Trump to act out.
David French: If there is one thing we know from previous debates, it’s that Trump will unleash a fire hose of lies. It’s impossible to refute everything, or Harris’s entire debate will be derailed into responding to Trump. It will be vital for her to pick her spots, to highlight the most glaring falsehoods and — above all — reach for reason more than virality in her responses.
It’s always tempting to try to trigger some kind of Trump meltdown, but the truth is his greatest enemy. Harris needs to calmly but clearly rebut the foundational lies of his campaign — that he was robbed of the 2020 election, that American crime is out of control and that the American economy is failing. You can’t really argue people out of their subjective feelings about crime and the economy, but you can make the case that Trump’s policies will make their problems worse.
Healy: Let’s zero in on each candidate. First, Donald Trump. I would argue that in his six previous general election presidential debates, Trump has never won a debate. I think Biden lost the last debate, in June, more than Trump won it. Tonight, he needs to keep the focus on Harris and hope that enough voters find her performance wanting or concerning. But he’s botched the job in debates before. What do you think success or failure looks like for Trump tonight?
Douthat: Success in conventional terms means tying Harris tightly to the Biden administration’s unpopular record and her own left-wing positions from the far-off days of 2019 and 2020. Success in Trumpian terms probably means matching the level of normalcy he achieved in parts of his June debate with Biden (though only in parts), restraining his impulse to wander off into paranoia and personal grievance, and avoiding any sort of a shouting, bullying performance.
French: Harris’s greatest vulnerability is her first race for president, in 2019 — not because she lost, but because she signaled either interest in or sympathy for a series of far-left policy positions that were politically unworkable then and even more so now. I agree with Ross that success for Trump will mean highlighting those policies. If Trump’s smart, he’ll do it policy by policy throughout the debate — from the Green New Deal, to defund the police, to single-payer health care, to fracking bans.
To think of what failure for Trump could look like, I remember one of the few primary debates in 2016 where his opponents directly and aggressively challenged him with facts about his many falsehoods and failures. He was so rattled that Corey Lewandowski broke the debate rules by huddling with Trump onstage. When he’s defensive, he can lose control, and putting him on the defensive is Harris’s most important task.
Bouie: Let’s rewind the tape back to the June debate. The focus on President Biden’s inability to defend his administration obscured the extent to which Trump was barely intelligible for most of the debate, ranting and raving with little apparent grasp on reality. If it did not immediately read as such, it was because he did so with vigor. Yes, we can certainly say what Trump needs to do to win, and it is easy to imagine the particular strategies — hitting Harris on alleged flip-flops and trying to tie her to left-wing views — that might be effective. But none of us were born yesterday! We all know that Trump will manage, at most, about 15 minutes of something that looks like discipline before he descends into incoherence, taunting and general nonsense.
He has neither the ability nor cognitive capacity to win. The question is whether Harris will lose.
McMillan Cottom: Trump is a known entity. He does not have to “win” the debate, certainly not on the merits of policy or temperament. He has to win the media cycle. His biggest risk is being ineffectual at commanding attention.
Healy: Now let’s turn to Harris. I’ve heard from some Democrats, as well as independent and undecided voters, who won’t vote for Trump but aren’t sure they will vote for her. They want her to “close the deal” with them, to convince them to vote for her on her own merits. What does success or failure look like for Harris tonight?
Goldberg: Success for Harris will lie in appearing fluent and unflappable, and in rattling Trump, especially on abortion. When it comes to abortion, my hope is that she can do two contradictory things simultaneously. Her first priority should be showing the public why Trump is a threat to reproductive rights, even as he tries to wriggle out of his responsibility for abortion bans. But it would be great if she could also get Trump to say things that will further demoralize some of his hard-core anti-abortion supporters by baiting him into trying to prove he’s not beholden to them.
Douthat: Along with some sort of policy reintroduction, I would say that fluency and terseness are key, by which I mean avoiding the sort of “Veep”-style word-salad answers that help create her “Veep”-esque reputation in the first place. To the extent that she goes hard after Trump, I think she needs to focus not just on abortion but also on the economic issues where Trump has the polling advantage now — hitting his tariffs as a middle-class tax hike, trying to tie him to the most unpopular Republican economic proposals, reminding voters that his administration tried to repeal Obamacare.
Trump often becomes more unpopular the more he appears as a generic Republican on economic policy rather than a sui generis populist, and the Harris campaign needs voters who remember the Trump economy fondly to have a little more anxiety about the economic policies that Trump 2.0 might usher in.
Goldberg: Ross, I agree with this. And Trump has been giving her plenty of material by telling billionaires on the campaign trail how much he’s planning to do for them!
French: Harris is going to have to have an effective answer for her policy shifts, and she is going to need to show that there is a significant gap between herself and Trump in both policy and poise. The committed Harris voters fully understand Trump’s threats to the rule of law. Uncommitted voters, by contrast, tend to be more concerned about the price of groceries, or by chaos on the southern border.
Even though it is tempting to make the case that this is no ordinary election, millions upon millions of voters do, in fact, treat this like an ordinary election. She needs to meet those voters where they are. “Are you concerned about inflation? Trump’s tariffs will make it worse. Are you concerned about the border? Trump was responsible for torpedoing the toughest border bill in a generation. Are you concerned about chaos abroad? Imagine the catastrophe if Russia conquers Ukraine.”
The rule of law is at stake, yes, but so are consumer prices. Make both cases at once.
Goldberg: David, isn’t that another way of saying she should pander? It’s true that Trump’s tariffs would raise prices, but there’s also not a great deal the president can do to lower them.
French: It’s not pandering when you tell the truth. Trump’s tariffs would be terrible for inflation. Trump’s foreign policy would create more chaos and danger, not less. He did torpedo a tough border bill. All of those arguments aren’t just fair, they’re necessary to make to blunt Trump’s case. Trump wants to use his power in ways that will directly and negatively impact consumers. She should make sure voters know.
McMillan Cottom: Everyone laughed as if it is unserious policy, but consumer-friendly policies are popular. People understand shrinkflation in a way that they do not understand progressive taxation. These are also economic policies that disproportionately impact female and minority consumers. If “balancing a checkbook” is a middle-class economic device, then the cost of tampons and school lunches are female economic devices. I would link those to other gender-based policies where Harris has been strong, e.g., motherhood mortality, abortion and reproductive justice.
Goldberg: Tressie, I agree with you about emphasizing consumer-friendly policies, especially since they’ve been an often unacknowledged strength of the Biden administration. Lina Khan, who Biden put in charge of the F.T.C., is doing so much to address the way ordinary people feel abused by the market.
Healy: Ross referred earlier to the new Times/Siena College poll that shows Trump with an edge against Harris nationally among likely voters. That result is still within the margin of error, but it was a bit surprising to our colleague Nate Cohn, in part because of the great six weeks that Harris had. I’m curious why you think Trump has an edge right now, and do you think Harris is in trouble?
Goldberg: Because we live in a broken world.
Bouie: Just to announce my priors, I think the extent to which people in our profession obsess over singular polls ends up obscuring more about the political situation than it can explain to readers. The most recent Times/Siena poll shows Trump up one point over Harris among likely voters with a margin of error of plus or minus 2.8 points. A recent Emerson College poll, conducted within the same period, shows Harris up two among likely voters, with a similar margin of error. These are the same results. Both are consistent with either a slight Harris national lead or a slight Trump national lead. Both tell us that this is a close election that will be decided on the margins. That’s all the information we have, and everything else is narrative.
Now, if I had to choose which campaign I’d rather be going into the debate, it is the Harris campaign. She clearly has a higher ceiling than Trump, who has been stuck at essentially the same share of the two-party vote for nearly a decade. If she can perform well, Harris might be able to break the stalemate.
French: I’m with Jamelle. While the Times/Siena poll is the gold standard, there is still a margin for error, and we need see more gold-standard polling (especially after the debate) to know where we stand as we begin the final push before Election Day.
This race was always going to be close, and Harris’s great first six weeks weren’t going to change that reality. Plus, there are ways in which Trump is just more formidable as a challenger than as an incumbent. His ironclad hold over the G.O.P. gives him a very high floor of support, and then if he can just grab a few more votes from voters who are dissatisfied with the status quo, he’s within striking distance of victory.
After the disastrous Afghan withdrawal and the inflation surges of 2021 and 2022, a “Morning in America” style landslide was off the table for Democrats. If Trump weren’t the nominee, the Republican challenger would likely be the clear favorite, especially after the deception and confusion surrounding Biden’s fitness. Harris had to come from behind. That’s always hard, and no one should be surprised that her momentum might have stalled, at least for the moment.
McMillan Cottom: If this was Biden or any other traditional political candidate, Harris’s polling after six strong weeks might indicate “trouble.” But Kamala Harris is not a typical candidate. It is good politics for her campaign to play this down, but it is critical for political observers not to do the same. Harris is a unique candidate. She does not have a legislative record. She has not had a typical campaign cycle. She is a woman. She is not white. Given all of that, it is remarkable that she is polling competitively with likely voters.
Having said that, her best path to winning is through historic turnout and enthusiasm. Can she excite new voters without turning off her base or the progressive and left wings of her party? Thumping Trump without scaring white voters could go a long way toward exciting voters who are just beginning to tune into the election.
Douthat: I already thought Trump had the advantage before the Times/Siena poll, and wrote as much in my newsletter last week — with my bottom line being that even with a unified party and extraordinarily favorable press, Harris still has to get over the combined hurdle of being an unpopular president’s V.P. and having the record (or at least past positioning) of a doctrinaire progressive.
And sure enough, in the Times/Siena data you see that voters think she’s very liberal and that Trump is more moderate. The Harris campaign has tried to deal with that issue by floating away from her old positions, and it’s been somewhat successful — the race is clearly very close! — but I don’t think anyone should be surprised if it turns out that Trump still has the edge.
Healy: Harris’s strategy of not saying much beyond her stump speech at rallies and encounters with friendly voters seems to be leaving a huge opening for Trump to fill in the gaps.
Goldberg: I wish she’d do a lot more media; I fear her team is dangerously risk-averse. I don’t even mean more interviews with journalists who will ask her to respond to right-wing talking points, though I wish she’d do more of those as well. But she should be flooding the zone on podcasts and talk shows and letting voters develop a parasocial relationship with her. It’s a joke on social media that she should do “Hot Ones,” a YouTube show in which celebrities are interviewed while eating progressively spicier chicken wings. But she should do “Hot Ones”! She should do “Call Her Daddy,” which is one of the most popular podcasts among young women. She should make herself much more ubiquitous for people who don’t follow political news.
Bouie: I agree with Michelle that it would serve the Harris campaign well to do far more media. I think she should go on “Hot Ones.” I think she would do well and reach the kind of broad audience that you would not get with traditional media. I think she should also do “Club Shay Shay,” the in-depth interview podcast with the N.F.L. legend Shannon Sharpe. And it goes without saying that I would happily take an interview with either Harris or Walz.
French: I couldn’t agree more with Michelle and Jamelle. But I will say that I’ve done the “Hot Ones” challenge, and those last spices are formidable. It’s one thing to weep on camera, but gagging and spitting might be a bridge too far!
McMillan Cottom: I don’t think Harris has to do more traditional media. We would like her to for obvious reasons. In fact, I remain available to interview her or Walz! But, this is a messaging war being fought in the populist trenches. She is better served in a short campaign cycle by going on Hot 97, tapping into the D.L. Hughley media universe, dominating on social media (especially TikTok) and doubling down on highly segmented affinity-based messaging. I have a lot of Harris media in my inbox, by the way. She is in everything from my sorority newsletter to my AARP for Gen X social feeds.
Healy: A provocation for the group: I think if tonight’s debate is a draw for Harris, she’s in trouble. She needs to be the decisive winner to firm up shaky Democrats and make more gains with undecided voters, young voters, Latinos, and narrow the gender gap with men. Do you think a draw is enough? Is there a new/better strategy that Harris could pursue to build her support with more voters?
Douthat: Since I think Trump has an advantage, yes, a draw seems like a victory for him. Also, since as you say, Patrick, he has arguably lost every single presidential debate except the Biden debacle, a draw would be spun as a win for him even if he weren’t already possibly ahead.
I think the “new strategy” Harris needs is simple in theory: She needs to seem more substantively moderate and less connected to the Biden White House. But that’s easier to describe than to execute. And if she doesn’t execute at this debate, Trump will have every reason to avoid any further debates, and her opportunities to execute any strategy will narrow.
French: I don’t think a draw changes the dynamics of the race one way or the other. I don’t think anything other than a rout (in either direction) will move the needle meaningfully, especially given that there will inevitably be multiple dramatic news cycles between the debate and November. The debate is a risk at the edges and an opportunity at the edges. The most likely outcome is more of the status quo — a razor-close race that is virtually impossible to predict.
McMillan Cottom: Harris does not have to convince Americans to like her, which is itself significant given she is a woman of color. Instead, she has to convince Americans who are afraid of Trump’s G.O.P. that she can win. How she chooses to make that case would give clues to her team’s internal polling. Her message has to convince a terrified but risk-averse centrist voter, of either party, to take a chance. Is that message abortion rights, or national security? Will she speak to working-class or middle-class values? If she has a viable path to winning, Tuesday night we should expect a message aimed at those voters.
Healy: Trump is one of the most unpopular politicians in American history. His electoral success has always come down to destroying opponents — making them even less acceptable with more voters than he is. But does he need to do things differently against Harris, in this debate or in the rest of the campaign, to win in November? In other words, can Trump win in this debate and in this election with the same old playbook, or does he need to do something more or different?
Douthat: A key feature of this race is that Trump is less unpopular than in the past. In the Times/Siena poll, for instance, his favorability rating is 46 percent, versus 52 percent unfavorable — that’s not good, obviously, but in a polarized country it’s in the normal range, not the extraordinarily unpopular range. Which in turn suggests that yes, he can win as himself — and honestly that’s the only self we’re likely to see at the debate, since every effort to imagine or create a new Trump always ends with the old one coming back.
French: Like Ross, I’ve been intrigued by the polling that seems to show that Trump’s favorability has risen, and I’m starting to wonder if his favorability really is that high or if pollsters have finally figured out how to properly measure Trump’s level of support. After all, 46 percent is roughly his share of the presidential vote in the last two elections — 45.9 percent in 2016 and 46.8 percent in 2020.
Goldberg: Ross, you’re right that Trump is less unpopular than in the past, which fills me with unutterable despair for this country. Conservatives have often argued that American democracy only works with a virtuous populace, and I’m ready to concede that they are correct. If Americans like Trump more rather than less after Jan. 6, this whole experiment might be nearing its end.
That said, enthusiasm for Trump has actually declined. I recently asked Don Levy, the director of the Siena College Research Institute — the New York Times’s pollster — how the excitement of Trump voters compares over the last three cycles. He told me that, scored on a scale of 1 to 100, the enthusiasm of Trump voters was at a 90 in 2016, 88 in 2020 and 81.6 now, compared with 82.7 for Kamala Harris. It’s the first time in three cycles that the enthusiasm score for the Democrat is higher than for the Republican.
Most people are assuming that polls undercount Trump support as they have in the past, and that may well be true. But it’s not a given.
Bouie: Trump has not changed at all since 2015, except only to decline. I think the question to ask is whether the American public has a long-enough memory to remember this fact and act accordingly.
Douthat: It’s interesting, I assumed at one point that the assassination attempt would create off-the-charts enthusiasm for Trump. But that was so long ago, I guess, in the kind of political time we live in now.
McMillan Cottom: Trump’s inability to spin that assassination attempt into media domination is the best evidence yet that we could be at the beginning of the Trump bubble bursting.
The big story of Trump’s win in 2016 was that voters were angry and experts missed it. Donald Trump has exploited that better than anyone. The story in this election is that voters are still angry and we may still be missing it. I spent time talking to female voters in nail salons, hair salons and waxing salons. Why there isn’t a story from every nail salon in America remains a mystery to me. The women I talked to in those female spaces are angry and afraid. As one low-information voter told me, she wants someone to look like a fighter. My sense is that Harris does not have to win this debate in the traditional sense. She has to sell a better story to those scared, angry voters. If she even hints at a better story during this debate, it bodes well for the final leg of this campaign. I will be worried if it looks like they are still message-testing during this debate.
Trump has to not only write a different playbook for Harris — he also has to demonstrate that he is able to rewrite his playbook. He has never before demonstrated that adaptability. His voters have interpreted that intractability as strength. But having one authoritarian, illiberal hammer for every nail could turn off some voters. And the Harris campaign looks nimble. That can look like confidence. This will come down to how voters read their economic fundamentals. If they feel like those are sound, nimble confidence could resonate more than brute strength.
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