Vice President Kamala Harris has been thinking about Tuesday’s debate against former President Donald Trump for a long time.
“What we need is someone who is going to be on that debate stage with Donald Trump and defeat him by being able to prosecute the case against four more years,” Harris said in July 2019 during a CNN Democratic presidential primary debate. “And let me tell you, we’ve got a long rap sheet,” she added.
When it comes to political debates, Harris herself has over a decade of priors. Tuesday’s ABC News debate will be the first time Harris and Trump come face-to-face, and only the third time she will face a Republican. But the Democrat’s past debate appearances going back to 2010 provide some clues on how she plans to make her case against Trump and for her own candidacy — what techniques and tics she leans on, potential vulnerabilities and other common threads stretching across years of state and national debates.
She previewed some of her go-to Trump criticisms during the 2020 presidential race, calling the then-president “corrupt” and “unpatriotic,” chiding his “weird” obsession with erasing former President Barack Obama’s accomplishments, and saying that Trump “doesn’t understand what it means to be honest” while looking directly at Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, during the vice presidential debate.
“I’m speaking,” Harris repeated during that debate as Pence spoke over her.
And she often appears to come prepared with memorable one-liners and scores of statistics to make her case — and to make a moment that might get attention long after the debate finishes.
Harris has been diligently preparing for Tuesday’s debate between campaign stops and her White House duties, strategizing how to derail Trump and how to navigate his expected attacks.
“She knows that every word matters, every facial expression matters and the stakes are very high at this level,” said Brian Brokaw, a former Harris campaign aide.
“You can have the smartest people around you prepping you for weeks or months,” Brokaw later added, “but ultimately there is only one person standing under the bright lights with the microphone and she has to be the one in the moment to know how to capitalize.”
Preparation is key
One key theme across Harris’ past debates: It’s clear how much she prepares, often coming armed with highly specific policy and statistical details or attacks on her opponents.
That preparation has paid off with some big moments for Harris — as well as some that have fallen flat.
During her Democratic debates, she sought to separate herself by laying out specific pieces of her policy platform, she regularly rattled off key statistics to reinforce her point, and repeated catchphrases and quotable lines.
Asked during her first appearance on the Democratic presidential debate stage in June of 2019 to name her specific plans on immigration, Harris was ready.
“Immediately on January 20th of 2021, I will — first of all, we cannot forget our DACA recipients, and so I’m going to start there. I will immediately, by executive action, reinstate DACA status and DACA protection to those young people,” she said. Then she continued, ticking off plans for other deportation deferrals, asylum review, improving conditions in detention centers and getting rid of private detention centers altogether.
During her 2020 debate with Pence, Harris jumped on the Trump administration’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic, calling it “the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country,” before rattling off a series of stats about deaths, contractions, shuttered businesses, effects on front-line workers and the unemployment race.
Brokaw, who ran Harris’ campaign for California attorney general and advised her 2016 Senate campaign, noted her attention to detail.
“She would want to spend a lot of time having a thorough conversation on the substance,” Brokaw said. “That can be frustrating for the people doing the prep because the point we were trying to make is look, you just need to have a good, punchy sound bite in order to best make your point. But she actually wants a thorough understanding of every issue that could possibly come up.”
Brokaw acknowledged that overpreparing comes with its own risks, but he stressed that Harris is also quick on her feet, stemming from her experience in a courtroom as a prosecutor.
Still, on multiple occasions, Harris took clear stances or landed clear punches on her rivals that may have helped her in the moment, but ultimately backfired.
The most prominent example of that came in that first 2019 Democratic presidential debate, where she took then-rival Joe Biden to task for his opposition to using federal funds to desegregate schools through busing.
“There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools, and she was bused to school every day. And that little girl was me,” Harris said, in a moment that reverbated on the stage.
Harris’ campaign immediately launched merchandise and fundraising pitches around the comments, and it appeared to give her candidacy a jolt of energy as she sought to separate herself in a crowded field. But a muddier message in subsequent days on the issue blunted her momentum, and the issue — and Harris’ primary campaign — both faded.
"It's clear she has those things rehearsed and ready to go as she looks for that viral moment," said Marc Short, Pence's former chief of staff and a NBC News contributor. He added that might be one reason why Harris' campaign pushed, unsuccessfully, to keep the microphones unmuted for the whole debate, in the search of a viral moment pushing back on Trump.
A related issue also surfaced during a review of her 2019 debates: Many of the positions she took while trying to appeal to a Democratic primary electorate will be exactly the kinds of policies Trump may point to onstage next week.
It was a tactic Pence used in 2020, and one that Short said could work well for Trump, too.
"It would play even better for Trump because she's now repudiated all those positions. The border is one of the best issues for Trump," he added, noting Harris' 2018 call to "critically re-examine ICE and its role."
"The question is: Can Trump actually prosecute a policy case?" Short asked.
Breaking the fourth wall
Some of the most notable moments from Harris’ past debates came when she effectively broke the fourth wall, reacting to opponents in real time and trying to bring the crowd onto her side.
Toward the beginning of her first presidential primary debate, Harris took advantage of a moment to address her fellow candidates, and the audience, to paint herself as above the fray of a group of politicians talking over each other.
“Hey, guys, you know what? America does not want to witness a food fight, they want to know how we are going to put food on their table,” she said to applause that set her up to deliver an answer about economic inequality.
In her 2010 debate for California attorney general, one such moment became a key part of her victory against Los Angeles District Attorney Steve Cooley.
With the debate nearly over, a moderator asked Cooley whether he planned to “double dip” and take both a pension and a salary if elected, and Cooley responded that he did plan to do so, knocking the “incredibly low salary” for state attorney general.
Asked if she had anything to add, Harris simply gestured to Cooley and said, “Go for it, Steve,” and laughed. Her campaign quickly turned Cooley’s answer into a TV ad in L.A. County, cutting into his base of support.
Six years later, Harris’ opponent for Senate, then-Democratic Rep. Loretta Sanchez “dabbed” after her closing statement. The dance move was not caught on the debate stream but went viral afterward, when a local news reporter shared the video online.
Although Sanchez’s dance move was not initially clear to viewers, Harris reacted, her eyes widening. She let out a laugh and proceeded to paint herself as a more serious candidate than Sanchez, starting, “So, there’s a clear difference between the candidates in this race.”
“She’s good at knowing when to strike and when to perhaps let your opponent inflict damage on themselves,” Brokaw said.
Harris broke the fourth wall more often in her debate against Pence, looking right into the camera to speak directly to viewers, at one point saying, “America, you deserve better,” after ticking through Trump’s controversial comments about Mexican immigrants, Proud Boys and the 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia.
Harris has also made references to the historic nature of her candidacies, sending a signal to viewers to think of women in these positions. From her 2010 debate for state attorney general to her 2019 presidential debates, Harris made a point of using the pronouns “she” and “her” when referring to those officeholders.
Navigating criticism
Harris has navigated moments of criticism in past debates often by jotting down notes. While the ABC News debate rules don’t allow candidates to bring pre-written notes, they will be provided a pen and a pad of paper, the network announced Thursday.
And her past debates offer a preview for how Harris might respond to attacks on her record. In 2020, Pence criticized her past support for the so-called Green New Deal, her vote against a trade agreement between the U.S., Mexico and Canada, and offered an analysis that deemed Harris the most liberal senator.
In some instances, Harris deflected the criticism onto the Trump administration. But when pressed on her support for the Green New Deal, Harris looked right into the camera and said, “Joe Biden will not ban fracking. That is a fact.”
Some of her most memorable and direct debate clashes in 2019 came with former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who is now backing Trump. After Gabbard criticized the Democratic Party during the November 2019 debate, Harris sought to prosecute her record.
“It’s unfortunate that we have someone on this stage who is attempting to be the Democratic nominee for president of the United States, who during the Obama administration spent four years full time on Fox News criticizing President Obama,” she said, before admonishing Gabbard for cozying up to Trump.
After Gabbard pushed back, Harris didn’t take the bait. Instead, she pivoted to her campaign’s elevator pitch and her slogan: Kamala Harris for the people.
