The pros and cons of a Trump-Harris debate

Will Donald Trump and Kamala Harris face each other in a debate? Three months ago, Trump and his team agreed to a pair of debates, the second of which was set to take place on ABC News on September 10, obviously assuming both debate would take place against Joe Biden. But ever since Harris has replaced him as the nominee, the Trump campaign appears reluctant to schedule a Trump-Harris match up. 

Trump said in an interview with Fox News that he will “probably” debate Harris, but he “can also make a case for not doing it.” “I want to do a debate. But I also can say this. Everybody knows who I am. And now people know who she is,” said Trump. “The answer is yes, I’ll probably end up debating,” he eventually said.

This, of course, prompted the Harris campaign to claim Trump was “scared” to face the VP in a debate. However, Trump campaign advisor Jason Miller said that Harris’s official nomination “needs to be formalized before we go and lock in all the debates.”

“It was only a month ago that many Democrats who wanted to throw Joe Biden overboard were saying, ‘We need to go to this mini-primary. We need to go with somebody else other than Kamala Harris,’” he added. But, it’s “the exact same people, in fact, that were saying that Joe Biden was OK are the same people that are saying now we have to get behind Harris,” he emphasized.

So what are the implications of a Trump-Harris debate? Both candidates have a lot at stake. 

Pros for Trump

Policy: this will come to Trump’s advantage. He has a better track record than Harris, who has struggled on nearly every occasion as vice president, and she risks poorly defending the administration’s record on topics such as immigration, crime and the economy. This will easily make Trump look much more competent by contrast.

Experience: the last debate Trump participated in ended his opponent’s candidacy. He ran on the fumes from that high for weeks, his campaign reinvigorated by Biden’s demise. He was also supreme in the 2016 primary and general debates.

Attention: He thrives off it, which he has gotten a lot of recently. His near-assassination only bolstered his fan base — and a debate is unlikely to affect their commitment.

Cons for Trump

Likability for undecideds: Trump will struggle with this. It’s almost certain Harris will hit him where it hurts, and bring up the “threat” to democracy he poses. This usually goes hand-in-hand with the 2020 election and January 6, where Trump will risk sounding like a broken record and resort to his usual playground insults and accusations.

Focus: This time around, he will not be going up against a decrepit Joe Biden, so he will have to prove with his own skills that he remains a capable debater and avoid rambling on. Trump should channel his RNC speech-level of cool and show that he can rise above the fray.

Pros for Harris

Debut as the Democratic nominee: A debate will be incredibly important for Harris, as she still has yet to reveal her policy goals and overall stance on many issues, characterized by her vice presidency and time as a prosecutor for the DA. However, she was able to quickly mobilize support since Biden dropped out of the race, indicating that a debate probably won’t change much for her die-hard fans. It will matter for those who are still undecided and have yet to hear her policy agenda. 

Meme-ification: her popularity among Gen-Z voters has skyrocketed recently, being the center of viral memes such as the “coconut tree” and through her endorsements by pop stars like Charli xcx — the youth vote has always been crucial for the Dems.

Cons for Harris

Speech: Harris is a poor orator and often sounds like she’s on another planet, which automatically strengthens Trump’s case. She will also defend her radical far-left positions articulated during her 2020 campaign and failure to address the “root causes” that led to the crisis at the US-Mexico border, bolstering the Biden administration’s failures. Lastly, she’s pretty unpredictable, so who knows what will come out of her mouth on the debate stage?

Bad debate track record: during a Democratic presidential debate in 2019, she opposed Biden’s stance on busing as a means of desegregation. “There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools and she was bused to school every day. That little girl was me,” Harris said. Her history as a prosecutor also came under fire from the left. During a later Democratic presidential debate, Representative Tulsi Gabbard brought up Harris’s background in criminal justice, saying she “owes an apology” to those “who suffered under her reign as prosecutor.”

While Trump is right about the fact that Americans are already familiar with both of them, a debate could be a game-changer for the remaining undecided voters.