How to score the Trump-Harris debate

This Tuesday’s debate is the most consequential moment of the “second” campaign, just as Trump’s debate with Biden was the most consequential of the “first” campaign. Biden’s self-immolation ultimately forced his withdrawal.

His withdrawal sets the stage for the current debate, and not just because it produced a new Democratic candidate. It produced her so quickly, with so little discussion or opposition, that Kamala Harris was not forced to persuade the party’s progressive voter base.

A “primary” campaign would have damaged Harris, and the powers behind the Democratic throne, Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer, saved her from it. How would it have hurt her? Because Harris would have needed to win over the progressive Democratic base, which would have forced her to restate her leftist positions on fracking, off-shore drilling and immigration — and to do it as the November election approaches. Harris had taken those positions in her failed 2019-2020 campaign and is now trying to wriggle out of them. Her escape is difficult, and it would have been even harder if she had restated those leftist positions in August and tried to change them in September.

Pinning Harris to those unpopular positions will be Trump’s main goal in the Tuesday debate. To do it, though, the former president will have to avoid the personal attacks and rambling fulminations that have characterized all his campaigns and nearly all of his interviews. Harris will, of course, try her best to provoke Trump into making those mistakes.

Beyond tripping Trump, Harris needs to accomplish some positive goals. She needs to lay out her policy positions, explain why so many have changed so dramatically and handle follow-up questions (if the moderators ask them) without lapsing into word salads.

Ultimately, Harris has two overriding goals: she needs to show that she has the judgment, policies, record and gravitas to ascend to the presidency and that Trump, by contrast, does not, that he is an angry narcissist, willing to commit crimes to help himself even if he endangers our democracy in the process. She has to paint him as a dictator in waiting.

Those are the central differences, but they aren’t the only ones. We need a scorecard to follow what the candidates and moderators need to accomplish in this debate and what they need to avoid.

What Trump must do

• Emphasize the key question: ‘Are you better off now than you were during the Trump administration?’
• Focus on policies (immigration, crime, inflation) since polls show he has an advantage on most policy issues, except reproductive rights and healthcare
• Show discipline
• Link Harris to bad outcomes of Biden administration
• Highlight Harris’s absence of any positive achievements for past decade
• Explain that her flip-flops and absence of policy statements mean voters don’t know what she would actually try to do as president
• Contrast his policy achievements with those of the Biden-Harris administration

What Trump must not do

• Look like a bully
• Emphasize his long list of ‘sour grapes’
• Highlight personal issues, either for him or against Harris
• Ramble. He needs to be sharp, clear and the near-impossible: succinct
• Look backwards, especially to the 2020 election and lawfare
• ‘Take the bait’ since Harris will try to provoke him and have canned responses

What Harris must do

• Show that she is actually qualified to lead the country
• Articulate policy positions that differentiate her from Biden without attacking the administration of which she is a key part
• Focus on reproductive rights (abortion) and healthcare, where polls show she has an advantage
• Explain why Trump’s position (‘states should decide’) is not acceptable to her and many voters
• Avoid responsibility for the massive influx of illegal immigration, nearly all of which occurred before the proposed compromise bill that Trump rejected
• Look like an agent of change, a difficult task since she is the second-ranking official of the current administration)
• Reconcile her new policy positions with her old, far-left ones
• Try to avoid explaining why she changed unless pressed by Trump or the moderators
• Underscore the danger of ‘Trump as dictator’

What Harris must not do

• Toss up a word salad
• Look vague or ill-prepared on specific issues

What the ABC moderators must do

• Appear fair and neutral, whatever their personal opinions
• Ask follow-up questions to get beyond canned, pre-arranged answers
• Press both candidates on their most vulnerable issues

What the ABC moderators must not do

• Show bias
• Let initial questions and incomplete answers dangle, unchallenged

That’s the scorecard. Batter up!