Authored by Reid J. Epstein, Erica L. Green and Nicholas Nehamas
Vice President Kamala Harris’ impressive debate performance has propelled her campaign forward into the closing weeks of the race with boosted confidence, more defined strategies for proving former President Donald Trump’s unsuitability for office, and numerous inquiries regarding the road ahead.
The confrontation on Tuesday was long anticipated as the crucial moment for Harris in the campaign timeline, with the vice-presidential candidates scheduled to debate on October 1. However, her team is now fully prepared for a second debate with Trump, although he seems undecided.
While Harris’ senior advisors are excited about her debate performance and Trump’s failure to deliver consistent and coherent attacks, they are only considering minor adjustments to their strategy. The forthcoming steps involve amplifying her presence on the campaign trail, which includes direct engagement in communities, more appearances in the news media, and positioning herself before as many voters as possible in key states. Advisors are convinced that fundamentally, the race remains unchanged.
Nonetheless, Harris is still a significant component of an unpopular incumbent administration in a country where many voters express a desire for substantial change.
Her dilemma was highlighted by the very first question of the debate, when she was asked whether Americans are better off now than they were four years ago. Instead of providing a straightforward answer, she discussed her working-class background and her initiatives to support families. It was almost as if she believed it would be unwise to either align herself too closely with Biden or to clearly separate herself from him.
The core challenge for the Harris campaign, dating back to when it was Biden’s campaign, is less about altering Trump’s numbers — which have barely shifted since 2016 — and more about improving her own. The gamble her team is making is that some crucial voters, who have reservations about both candidates, will support Harris if she can convince them to reject Trump.
Polls indicate that Trump maintains a strong base of Republican support. Surveys in key states depict extremely close races. Even though Trump’s campaign resources are a fraction of what Harris and the Democrats have established, a network of right-wing external organizations is expending millions on advertising, direct mail, and organizing efforts to challenge the vice president.
“This is a game of inches in the swing states,” Gov. Gavin Newsom of California commented in the debate’s spin room Tuesday night. “You need to connect with 20, 30, 40,000 voters in these critical swing districts, these swing states. Really, it’s not just about swing states. It’s about 30 or 40 counties within those states.”
Harris was set to travel to North Carolina on Thursday and then to Pennsylvania on Friday, in a planned tour through battleground states that her campaign asserts will not merely serve as a victory lap following the debate. Her rally on Friday in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, will mark the sixth public event she has held in the state over seven days, showcasing Pennsylvania’s significance to her strategy for securing 270 electoral votes.
Additionally, she plans to conduct interviews with local media in battleground states, as per a memo released by the Harris campaign on Thursday, and she will also participate in an interview next week with the National Association of Black Journalists.
Campaign officials believe that the debate enabled her to achieve something that Biden and his team struggled with, primarily due to his age and declining political acumen: making the 2024 election focused on Trump.
The Biden campaign dedicated more than a year to this effort, even going so far as to successfully advocate for the first general election debate to occur in early summer to ensure Americans understood that Trump could potentially regain power. The Harris campaign’s memo on Thursday indicated plans to launch a series of advertisements showcasing footage from the debate.
Now that Biden is no longer on the ticket, and Democrats have moved past their tumultuous summer, with Harris effectively goading Trump into self-inflicted damage during the 90-minute debate, her team aims to utilize the remaining eight weeks of the campaign to highlight his policies and evaluate his qualifications for office.
“She made a compelling case that unsettled him,” remarked Gov. Roy Cooper of North Carolina, a longtime ally of Harris. “It should convey to the American populace that this individual shouldn’t assume the presidency again.”
One challenge is that despite her over three years of experience as vice president, her record remains largely unfamiliar to numerous voters.
This presents her an opportunity to gain new supporters but also opens the door for Trump to negatively characterize her. And with less than two months before Election Day, as several states anticipate early voting soon, a significantly larger number of people have solidified their opinions about Trump than they have about Harris.
A New York Times/Siena College poll conducted this month revealed that only 12% of voters felt they needed to learn more about Trump, while 31% expressed the same concerning Harris.
Cornell Belcher, a Democratic pollster and strategist, suggested that the Harris campaign should capitalize on the enthusiasm generated by the surge of online memes parodying some of Trump’s outrageous claims made during the debate, including his erroneous assertion that immigrants were stealing and consuming pets in an Ohio town.
“It’s a cultural moment,” Belcher stated. “That’s how most Americans interpret their experiences. It’s not through your extensive economic blueprint or your detailed foreign policy initiatives. It’s the cultural narratives.”
