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Trump thinks he will dominate Harris in debates. But she has moves.

Trump thinks he will dominate Harris in debates. But she has moves.

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WASHINGTON — Donald Trump seemed so confident he would beat Kamala Harris in a televised debate that last month he proposed holding three.

We will find out on Tuesday whether he was right.

In the October 7, 2020, vice presidential debate against Mike Pence, Harris held her own. She demonstrated her authority as a prosecutor by demanding that Pence stop interrupting her, a potentially useful exercise when her opponent is Trump on the debate stage. She showed the discipline to stick to her talking points even when—or perhaps especially when—she dodged the actual question at hand.

I know. I was the moderator for Harris’ last turn on the debate stage.

It was sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates and took place in Salt Lake City. The audience generally listened to my pleas to stay out of the way so that there would be no cheering or booing until the debate was over.

This time, ABC News is sponsoring the Trump-Harris debate on Tuesday, with hosts David Muir and Linsey Davis moderating.

When Trump and President Joe Biden debated on CNN in June, Biden’s performance was so shaky that the ensuing outcry prompted him to withdraw from the 2024 election altogether. That may have fueled Trump’s confidence in winning debates.

Now Trump is even comparing Harris unfavorably to the president. “She’s actually not as smart as he is,” he said at a press conference at Mar-A-Lago in early August, signaling his enthusiasm for the debate by accepting invitations from Fox News and NBC. “I don’t think he’s very smart, either, by the way.”

During several Democratic primary debates in the 2020 election cycle, Harris appeared unsure of her position on Medicare-for-all and other major issues. These missteps contributed to the California senator’s exit from the nomination race before the Iowa caucuses had even taken place.

But since becoming her party’s presumptive presidential nominee this time around, Harris has been sharper and more energetic at campaign rallies than Biden. She knows how to provoke Trump with humor. (“I know his type,” she says in a frequent remark that resonates with her audience.)

Debates, of course, require a different skill set than meetings, which tend to follow a script and often use teleprompters. Backstage at the 2020 debate, Harris and Pence seemed quite tense, and understandably so.

Below are some of my key insights from what happened next.

“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking”

Though Pence had a reputation as a polite, rule-abiding Hoosier, he appeared to have learned lessons from Trump for the vice presidential debate, exceeding the time limits set by the two campaigns and repeatedly interrupting Harris.

Or tried.

“Mr. Vice President, it’s my turn,” she said after nine minutes when he interrupted her response about the Trump administration’s response to the COVID-19 crisis.

“Well, I have to give my opinion—” he began.

“I speak,” she repeated with more force. It was an effective and probably premeditated tactic. The honorific “Mr. Vice President” made her respectful. The follow-up phrase “I speak” risked making him seem disrespectful if he continued talking.

The rules of the game are different this time around, with candidates’ microphones muted when they’re not supposed to be speaking. Still, a similar standoff could be more unsettling for Trump, who has struggled to find the comfortable ground in challenging Harris that he demonstrated against Biden. Trump has been criticized, in part, for questioning Harris’ racial identity in front of an audience of Black journalists.

During the 2020 debate, Pence reentered the discussion 30 minutes in when Harris brought up taxes.

“Mr. Vice President, I have the floor,” she said.

“Well—” he began.

“I speak,” she repeated, with a look of: Don’t test me.

“It would be important if you told the truth,” he replied, leading to a word salad of bipartisan protests over what exactly Biden would do about taxes if elected.

“If you don’t mind me finishing…” Harris finally said.

“Please,” Pence replied with a sarcastic undertone.

“…then we can have a conversation,” she decided.

Finally, 65 minutes into the interview, Pence tried again when she tried to answer a question about the Supreme Court.

“Mr. Vice President, I am speaking,” she said. “I am speaking.”

Pence finally stopped talking out of turn. It’s possible she was more successful than I was in enforcing that rule.

The discipline of evasion

The value of debates is their spontaneity, their ability to force candidates to raise issues they would rather avoid at campaign events they control.

That spontaneity is also a danger for the candidates.

Hence the avoidance of the debate.

I asked Harris four years ago if she had spoken to Biden about “safeguards or procedures when it comes to the issue of presidential disability,” given his age. Did she think she should?

“Let me just tell you first of all, the conversation with Joe Biden, which was actually over Zoom, was one of the most memorable days of my life when I was asked to join him on this ticket,” she began, before filling her two-minute slot with a tribute to Biden’s willingness to choose a groundbreaking running mate and a fond memory of her mother.

She “came to the United States at 19, gave birth to me at 25 at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland, California,” she said, though Biden’s date of birth would have been more relevant. Biden was 77 at the time of the Harris-Pence debate, while Trump was 74 and just days removed from a COVID-19 diagnosis.

By the way, when I asked Pence the same question, he took it a step further and pointed to the Trump administration’s record-breaking development of a COVID vaccine.

At the time, the Supreme Court was hearing the case challenging Roe v. Wade. If the high court were to strike down the abortion access established in that decision, as it later did, I asked Harris whether she would want her home state of California to adopt abortion rights without restrictions.

“I will always fight for a woman’s right to make decisions about her own body,” she responded after some warming words, without ever addressing whether she would support any restrictions. She then attacked Republicans for trying to repeal the Affordable Care Act, a completely different issue.

Do you remember the fly?

The plexiglass barriers between Pence and Harris, intended as protection during the pandemic, looked a bit awkward on stage.

But none was stranger than the fly that somehow breached security, flew to the center stage at the University of Utah, and landed on Pence’s head, where it remained for a moment. The vice president’s silvery-white hair made it hard to miss—at least for the millions of viewers watching on television.

Not for me. I couldn’t see it. Pence didn’t know it was there either, he told me afterward. I heard Harris could see it, but decided not to mention it. What could she have said? “Mr. Vice President, there’s a fly on your head”?

That wasn’t an issue strategists had likely discussed in preparation for the debate, so her reticence was good judgment on the spot, so to speak.

And the winner was…

As the debate ended and the TV cameras stopped, both candidates seemed more relieved to have survived than convinced they had won. As agreed, Pence left stage right and Harris left stage left, where family members were waiting.

That was pretty much what the polls said afterward. Harris had a good night, but Pence didn’t have a bad one — and neither performance had a meaningful impact on the outcome of the election.

An Ipsos poll of respondents conducted before and after the poll found that Harris improved her approval rating slightly, from 45% to 51%, while Pence’s approval rating rose slightly, from 37% to 39%. A CNN poll found 59%-38% of respondents said Harris was outperforming Pence.

But the direct presidential election in the Ipsos poll remained the same, and a majority in the CNN poll said the debate had no effect on their vote.

That’s not surprising, considering it was a debate between the vice-presidential candidates.

The stakes will be higher and the impact will almost certainly be greater, as the debate this time around will be between the top candidates.

Susan Page is the Washington Bureau Chief for USA TODAY.

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