Whatever Kamala Harris is doing to prepare for her debate with Donald Trump on Tuesday, she has already shown that she knows how to handle his provocations: swatting them away like the familiar little mosquitoes that most of them are.
“The same old tired playbook. Next question, please,” was all Harris said. say When asked by CNN's Dana Bash on August 29 about Trump's stupidity in saying Harris had decided to “go black,” he deserved all of her disdain. Trump's entire speech, including the incitement of racism, has become boring, even to some voters. who supported him twiceAnd this is how Harris should react: she is tired of his nonsense, isn't she? So much the better for her, the sitting vice president, if she manages to show herself as a new agent of change alongside America's crazy uncle, her bar fanatic.
Opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical eye to the national political scene. She has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
One thing is certain: The picture the two nominees will present on stage will be very different from the face-off between Trump and President Biden in June. Trump was terrible in that encounter, but Biden was worse, confused and looking older than his 81 years.
Trump did not defeat Biden, despite all his blatant propaganda of the remains of the “knockout suit” Biden beat Biden. Now Harris needs to show her best self as a prosecutor in Philadelphia, let the few undecided voters get to know her better, show some political skill and not take the bait. Let Trump beat Trump.
Simply ignoring her performative bullying has its limits, however. We can expect Harris to score points with one or three well-executed counterattacks, turning Trump on his head or provoking him into an unhinged tirade, or both. Among the big questions from previous presidential debates was Hillary Clinton’s failure to challenge Trump when he was in office. stalked her during their town hall-style confrontation in 2016.
As Clinton later wrote in a memory“No matter where I walked, he followed close behind me, staring, making faces… It made my skin crawl. It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching, ‘Well, what would you do?’ Do you stay calm, keep smiling, and carry on like he wasn’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn around, look him in the eye, and say loud and clear, ‘Back off, you pervert’?”
I can't forget watching that scene and wishing, like so many women, that Clinton would turn around and verbally put that pervert in his place.
For the second time in three presidential campaigns, Trump, the misogynist in chief, is facing a woman as his opponent — and now a woman of color, at that. Any other male candidate would have to be careful not to be offensive or condescending. But not Trump. Direct affronts are his modus operandi, and his voters love it. That and affront. He’s been complaining for weeks that he won’t face Biden again, mumbling nonsense about how the Democrats staged a coup. Now he’s facing this smart, vibrant woman he doesn’t even know. I smell fear.
When Bash expressed surprise in the CNN interview that they had never met, Harris simply nodded. It was a missed opportunity.
In the debate, she should take any opportunity—or create one—to point out that she and Trump have never crossed paths for a good reason: Trump is the first president since the 19th century to hop The sore loser went to Mar-a-Lago instead of watching the Biden-Harris inauguration at the Capitol, two weeks after his supporters' failed insurrection there.
In the weeks after Biden dropped out of the race, Trump lashed out at him and threatened to sit out the debate over replacing the president. Harris he mocked He at his noisy rallies, with that laugh that bothers him so much: “As the saying goes, if you have something to say, say it to my face.”
A little mockery is good. On Tuesday, he could teach Trump a lesson. How to pronounce your nameIf he brings up his new nickname for her, “Comrade Kamala,” she might respond with bemused disdain for outdated Cold War rhetoric and point out the irony of Vladimir Putin’s friend calling her his “comrade.”
Trump will surely repeat his campaign speech attacks on Harris for reversing her stance on long-held liberal positions, such as her opposition to fracking in 2019, which is important in Pennsylvania, a battleground state. After a quick riposte (for example, on how her current positions represent an appropriate compromise now that she has been in office for nearly four years), how about we criticize Trump for her Are you still exchanging positions on abortion?
The policy-phobic Trump will surely offer insensitive word salads to questions about substantive issues, such as His two-minute gibberish On Thursday at the New York Economic Club, he was asked how to make child care affordable. It’s worth watching the entire thing to see how he absurdly conflates the country’s tariff revenue (using false claims) with families’ child care costs. (“We’re going to get trillions of dollars, and as much as there’s talk about child care being expensive, in relative terms it’s not very expensive compared to the numbers we’re going to get.”) In short, he’s clueless.
Trump’s falsehoods about his record are so well-known that Harris should be well-prepared with concise fact checks, as Biden was not, especially on issues like the economy and immigration, where she has an advantage.
His pomposity must be criticized, the mosquito swatter must be taken out, people must be made to laugh, but above all, persuadable voters must be shown what a serious presidential candidate looks and sounds like.
@jackiekcalmes
