Anticipating Tonight's Presidential Debate
Observations and Predictions
Tonight at 9:00 EDT, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will have a debate, probably their only one of this presidential cycle. As many have observed, they’ve never met (because Trump skipped the inauguration).
The Setting: The debate will be held in the auditorium of the National Center for the Constitution in Philadelphia. I was just there on August 31st, so there’s a lot fresh in my mind.
I didn’t go in the auditorium itself (watching a presentation alongside a three year old and nine month old didn’t sound like a plan). But I enjoyed much of the museum. I was fascinated by the life sized statuary of the signers of the Constitution (Washington was tall!). And I was struck by the big meeting space celebrating the First Amendment (funded by Judge Michael Luttig and his wife).
I don’t know if this will happen, but it seems to me that the Constitution should actually be a character in tonight’s drama. It seems to be an open question as to whether these historic structures (strictures) are optional or provide frameworks and guardrails or whether they can be changed or ignored at will.
The Moderators: David Gura and Linsey Davis of ABC News will moderate the debate. For many of these debates over recent years, the moderators have included the Sunday Show hosts (Jake Tapper and Dana Bash in June, for example). This often leads them to ask the kinds of questions Bash asked Harris and Walz in their interview: changes in position, polling and horserace issues. Since Gura and Davis are news anchors, I wonder how they will fare. My hope is that they take advantage of an opportunity to as questions that are different from the standard fare we see. They won’t be live fact-checking (except in extreme circumstances) but hopefully will offer up some needed redirects when one of the candidates filibusters through the alloted time.
The Format: The debate is scheduled for 90 minutes with two commercial breaks. There are no opening statements. Candidates have two minutes to answer a question with another minute reserved for rebuttal. Mikes are muted when the other candidate is speaking. There are no notes allowed. The Harris campaign wanted live mikes so that the audience could hear Trump over-talking during her answers but didn’t get that accommodation.
What Will Trump Do? I saw this morning that the Trump campaign is hoping that they get “Happy Trump” for the debate. These are the same folks who wanted Trump’s convention speech to have a new unifying tone. Once he got off script (which he won’t have), the Angry Trump showed up. It will be interesting to contrast the first 15 minutes of the debate with the remaining 75 minutes. For those hoping for fireworks, I don’t expect Hannibal Lector, sharks, or electric boat batteries to show up. Other pet topics will likely make an appearance (school based sex change operations, post-birth abortion). His answers will likely involve “the weave”, which is how he explains his rambling style that is hard to follow in print and nearly impossible to rebut in a debate. I expect a reference to the assassination attempt and a complaint about Harris replacing Biden. He will lean heavily into the topics of immigration, inflation, and crime. He won’t be using current numbers on these topics (because they are dropping rapidly) but will cherrypick contrasts with his last Covid-era year with whatever high point occurred in the Biden years. He will portray Harris as a weak leader who presents a great risk if she should become president.
What Will Harris Do? Harris will work hard not to take Trump’s bait. As she did in the Dana Bash interview, she won’t waste her time on picky little points (like “turning Black”). She will have some version of Reagan’s “There you go again” to signal that she has more important things to talk about than whatever claim he just made. Biden fell for this trap in the first debate in 2020 as well as this year, being thrown off message to dispute a Trump claim. Harris will return to her commitments to the middle class in contrast to top-down tax cuts. She now has some policy meat on her webpage (Trump has “issues”) and I’d expect the moderators to dig into those policies. Expect her to make quick work of the immigration bill that Trump opposed. She will talk about her biography of public service but couch it in terms of understanding people’s struggles and being willing to work to make change going forward. She will argue that Trump is looking backward and she is looking forward (the campaign released an ad to that effect yesterday).
What to Watch For: When a candidate is using the alloted two minutes, the first thing to note is whether they adequately addressed the question or dodged onto a tangent to make a favorite point (or return to an earlier answer). The ability or inability to address the question tells us a great deal about the candidate’s understanding of the key policy issues. The second thing is to ask yourself if the answer they gave is feasible. Is this something that would address the issue? Could it get through congress? And more than anything, is this the kind of solution that people would support? The third thing to watch is what happens when it’s not the candidate’s turn to speak. When the television is showing the split-screen, how do they respond? Some head-shaking is to be expected but overly demonstrative responses are problematic. On the other hand, the candidate must look attentive. One of the most crushing parts of the June Biden debate is that he looked lost and befuddled during the split screen (which might have been due to camera angles).
What Will They Be Asked About? Unfortunately, I expect most of the questions to cover the same issues addressed in every interview. Abortion, Immigration, the Economy, Law and Order, Health Care, Ukraine/Russia, the Middle East. These will not yield much new information but will provide the candidates with easily clipped segments to put in television and social media spots.
What Should They Be Asked About? I mentioned one earlier: the role of the constitution in their respective administrations. I would love to see a question about the nature of Federalism. How do they understand the relationship between the federal government, states, and localities? We often talk of issues like crime or education or job creation as things that presidents can shape but these happen at more local levels. So how would their administration incentivize states and localities to take certain steps. I would love a question about easing the concerns and fears of those under thirty who will bear the brunt of administration policies far more than someone like me. Most important, I would love a question about the values that undergird their policies. What gives them hope for the future? Why do they believe in the promise of America?
Who knows what will actually happen tonight? There are too many variables and not that much time to work with (especially if there are no more debates). We’ll see what happens and what impact it has over the next tow months (if any).
I’ll return to this post tomorrow and report on how I fared in my prognostications.