President Obama liked to say that “elections have consequences.” He could have said the same about presidential debates.
Rarely has that seemed more true than today, 51 days after President Biden’s faltering and muddled debate performance against former President Trump helped end the current president’s bid for a second term.
Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris are set to meet for the first and potentially only time at 6 p.m. PDT on Tuesday, in a debate that could again change the course of what has been a bitterly close race.
The stakes of the 90-minute debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia appear even higher than in past elections in the television era, when candidates typically agreed to at least two — and usually three — debates in a general election.
The showdown will be broadcast on ABC News and several other outlets, with ABC anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis as moderators.
If the past is prologue and what the past means, that will liven up the debate.
Harris, 59, is expected to describe Trump's four years in office as a time of turmoil, division (particularly toward immigrants) and curtailment of personal freedoms, particularly a woman's once constitutionally protected right to abortion.
Trump, 78, has argued that his four years as chief executive were a peaceful time in the United States, when both unemployment and inflation were low and foreign wars had not broken out, siphoning off billions of dollars from the country.
The tables will be turned when it comes to assessing the period from 2021 to the present, when Biden and Harris have occupied the White House.
Trump will describe the past four years as a time of chaos and uncertainty, with inflation soaring during the early years of the Democrats' administration and unauthorized border crossings on the rise.
The Republican candidate is likely to borrow a line from a GOP predecessor, Ronald Reagan. In the second of two debates with President Carter, just a week before Election Day in 1980, Reagan faced the camera and asked Americans if they felt “better off” than they had four years earlier.
Harris’ supporters expect her to strike a defiant pose, simultaneously touting the accomplishments of the past four years and suggesting that as president she will be better positioned to address two issues that many voters consider priorities: economic hardship and immigration.
In making that argument, the vice president will almost certainly discuss Democratic initiatives to lower drug prices, particularly insulin, and other pocketbook-friendly policies, such as student loan debt forgiveness.
Trump and his advisers have tried to link Harris to all of Biden's flaws, even suggesting that the vice president has been the shadow power running the Democratic administration. Harris is expected to respond that she was present at the important discussions, but was not the one who made the final decisions.
If Trump pushes hard in that direction, the vice president could fight back: Was Vice President Mike Pence the real power in the Trump White House?
Differences between the candidates include how they have prepared for the debate. Harris settled in Pittsburgh late last week and did formal debate preparation, with mock question-and-answer sessions.
Democratic operative Philippe Reines, a longtime adviser to Hillary Clinton, played Trump in rehearsals.
“We have to be prepared for the fact that he has no obligation to tell the truth,” Harris said in a radio interview on the “Rickey Smiley Morning Show.” “He has a tendency to fight for himself, not for the American people, and I think that’s going to come through during the debate.”
In an interview with his friend and Fox News host Sean Hannity, Trump said he had no particular strategy and would “go and see what happens as the debate unfolds.” Trump quoted former heavyweight champion Mike Tyson: “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”
True to form, Trump has complained that ABC anchors won't treat him fairly. He has disparaged the network, suggesting it is a tool of the Democratic Party. Ahead of the June 27 debate with Biden, he launched a similar preemptive strike, berating CNN as “fake news” and moderators Jake Tapper and Dana Bash as biased.
But after Biden’s stumble, Trump’s advisers chose to keep the focus on the sitting president, saying CNN and its anchors had been fair. It was Biden’s team that complained, saying Bash and Tapper should have called out the former president for his many lies.
Trump’s falsehoods in the June debate included his baseless claim that Biden had directed the criminal prosecutions against him and his assertion — disproven by multiple polls — that the American people wanted Roe v. Wade overturned so states could set abortion policy.
In June, CNN anchors largely left it up to the candidates to call out each other's falsehoods. Whether ABC's Muir and Davis will step in or let the vice president and former president conduct their own truth squad is anyone's guess.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
