The stage is set for a historic showdown between United States Vice President, Kamala Harris, and former President Donald Trump, as they face off in their first and possibly only televised debate before the 2024 election.
The high-stakes ABC debate, scheduled to hold in Philadelphia on Tuesday, will be a critical test for both candidates.
Harris, 59, has unified the Democratic party and overhauled Trump’s lead in the polls, but insists she remains the “underdog” in a tight race. She has been preparing for the debate, spending five days in Pittsburgh, while Trump, 78, is expected to opt for an aggressive approach after Harris’s entry into the race upended his White House bid.
The debate will be a chance for US voters to finally see the two go head-to-head, after a month of shadow-boxing since President Joe Biden threw in the towel as the Democratic candidate. The gloves will be off in what is a critical test for both, with Harris facing an opponent who has called her “crazy” and subjected her to racist and sexist taunts.
According to Erin Christie, of the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information, “These are two very different candidates that have previously never met in person. So, it will prove to be a very enlightening debate which could even be the make-it-or-break-it factor in the election.”
The debate is happening in Pennsylvania, the most bitterly fought of the battleground states that will decide the election, adding an extra layer of tension to the encounter. Americans will be watching closely to see how it actually plays out on stage, with opinions differing about how much US presidential debates generally move the polls.
While few are predicting anything quite as dramatic from Tuesday’s encounter between Trump and Harris, it still has the potential to be a decisive moment in the final sprint to November 5. Biden himself will be watching on Tuesday, his spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre said on Friday.
“The vice president is smart. She is someone that knows how to get the job done,” added Jean-Pierre, a former senior aide to Harris during her failed 2020 campaign.
Harris will rely on her coolly cutting style and her history as a prosecutor, as she takes on a convicted felon who also faces charges of conspiring to overturn his 2020 election loss against Biden. However, she will still have to battle sexist and racist stereotypes about “angry Black women,” said Rebecca Gill, a political science professor at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas.
Trump’s challenge will be to decide just how much Trump voters want, with his angry, rambling style firing up his right-wing base but remaining to be seen how it will play against a candidate vying to be America’s first Black woman president. All eyes will be on ABC’s moderators too to see if they fact-check what will be a stream of falsehoods, if Trump’s six previous presidential debates are anything to go by.
“This debate may go down in the history books. Break out the popcorn,” said Andrew Koneschusky, a former press secretary for US Senate leader Chuck Schumer.
