Kamala Harris and Donald Trump set for high-stakes debate showdown

On the night of 10-11 September, Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will face off in a televised debate. The previous debate caused a political storm, and the poor performance of incumbent President Joe Biden forced the Democrats to change their candidate. Tuesday's clash may, therefore, be crucial for the election outcome.

This will be Kamala Harris's most serious test since entering the presidential race. How the Democratic candidate handles Trump's open hostility, aggression, and expected provocations may determine voters' opinions on whether the current Vice President has the mental strength to handle one of the world's most demanding tasks.

For Trump, the debate will be an opportunity to finally break his opponent's winning streak, regain initiative in the campaign, and launch an effective attack on Harris.

The Democratic candidate seems to be approaching the debate from a slightly stronger position—albeit weaker than the one she enjoyed right after the Democratic convention in Chicago. The convention ended the "honeymoon" period of Harris's campaign when the enthusiasm of her base buoyed the candidate. Almost every decision she made—including choosing Tim Walz as the vice-presidential candidate—turned out to be a campaign bullseye.

The first difficult moment for the Democratic campaign was a major interview that Harris and Walz gave to CNN last Thursday. Its review sparked considerable controversy among American commentators and voters. Even among Democratic sympathisers, there were voices that the interview failed Harris.

Critics attacked both what the Vice President said and the decision to appear in the interview with Walz. According to critics, Harris sends the signal that she cannot handle an interview where she has to answer tough questions about the details of her political plans.

Undecided American voters speaking to the BBC consistently declared that the Vice President did not convince them. However, some voices also presented the interview as a great success for the Harris-Walz duo.

The dominant opinion lies somewhere in the middle. Commentators generally admit that Harris's performance on CNN was not a significant political talent showcase, but the Democratic candidate achieved what she had planned.

First, she showed that she is not afraid of extended, detailed interviews, countering one of the constant charges against her in recent weeks. Secondly, she signalled her shift towards the centre on several key issues, where she had previously stood more clearly on the liberal-left side. This mainly concerns punishing attempts at illegal migration to the United States and fracking—the environmentally controversial method of extracting fossil fuels that Harris previously wanted to ban.

Harris's change in stance disappointed some of her more progressive voters. However, Democratic candidates always try to move closer to the centre in the months leading up to the elections, and Harris's team consciously decided that it was more politically beneficial for the Vice President to deal with accusations of changing her mind than to take positions too far removed from the views of the voters she needed to win the election.

Fracking, for example, plays a significant role in the Pennsylvania economy—a state that could determine the outcome of this year's election. If Harris had stuck to her previous stance, it might have cost her defeat in that state. And the disappointed progressive electorate—as Democratic strategists assume—when confronted with the vision of a second Trump term, will still eventually vote for the Democrat.

Harris’s campaign can still generate positive reactions. Last Wednesday, the Democratic candidate unveiled another part of her economic programme, which included proposals for tax relief for small business start-ups. In another area, the programme positioned the Democrat closer to the centre and was very well received by commentators.

Crucially, Harris is still leading in the polls nationwide and in key swing states. In the polling average calculated by "The New York Times," Harris leads Trump by three percentage points: 49 to 46. According to the same newspaper’s calculations, the Democratic candidate leads Trump in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania and ties in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina—states where Democrats seemed to have little chance of realistically competing when Biden was the candidate.

However, analysts believe that while Harris leads Trump, the growth rate in her support has slowed. Some even say that the development has halted. The great wave of enthusiasm following the announcement of Kamala's candidacy changed the state of play, but it may have already exhausted its striking force.

At the same time, Trump doesn’t seem able to capitalise on Harris’s campaign's slowdown. Since the Democrats pulled Biden out of the race, Trump's campaign has been continually "out of breath." His team has failed to generate any event, image, message, or narrative favouring the Republican in this period.

Instead, Trump keeps making more blunders. On Thursday, he appeared before leaders of the American economy at the Economic Club in New York. He had the opportunity to present the economic programme for his second term. As commented by "The New York Times":

"Mr. Trump took time in the speech to take aim at Ms. Harris, saying at one point that "as everyone knows, she is a Marxist." But not all Marxism is bad in his telling, apparently: "China was built on doing exactly what we’re going to be doing," he said. If China had five-year plans and the Great Leap Forward, Mr. Trump had prescriptions that were a little more vague. At one point, he did nod to the future — "A.I., controversial," he said, "but we got to be the top of it." Yet he spent more time on the wonders of the past, without acknowledging how much has changed since 1890, when McKinley, as a U.S. Representative, drafted the law that raised import tariffs by 50 per cent to protect American industry, and 1901, when McKinley, as president, was assassinated."

Of course, the "New York Times" is not particularly friendly to Trump. However, Trump recently answered all questions about economic or social policy the same way: "tariffs." He claims we need to "put America first," "protect the American market with tariffs," and then, in his view, well-paying industrial jobs will return. The American economy will grow to the point that it will be possible to fund expenses such as support for preschool care.

The simplicity of this cure can already raise doubts. Moreover, most economists are sceptical about Trump's proposals and point out that their first effect will be a significant cost increase for American consumers.

Trump is also politically burdened by the issue of women's rights, which the former President doesn't always handle well politically. Recently, in an NBC interview, he seemed to declare that in a referendum on liberalising abortion regulations in Florida, which will take place together with the elections in November, he will vote for liberalisation.

However, his team quickly walked back this declaration and started convincing that the President didn’t actually say that—probably fearing the reaction of Trump's conservative base. The problem is that they diverge radically in these matters from most Americans.

As if that weren't enough, this week, the prosecutor's office revealed that a company cooperating with a group of influential Trump-supporting influencers was illegally financed by Russia, acting as a tool of Moscow's influence on American politics. This again draws voters' attention to the uncomfortable topic of Trump's relations with Russia.

But what’s worse for the former President is that none of the attacks he has tried on Harris have worked so far. Trump has already attacked Harris for her laughter, for allegedly "becoming black" only when she started thinking about the presidency, for dancing, accusing her of a lack of intelligence, weakness, and even "destroying California"—all to no avail.

In recent days, Trump has been trying to label Harris not even as a politician to the left of the centre or radically left but literally as a Marxist and communist. Trump most often refers to his opponent as "comrade Kamala".

The problem is that, as noted by Sohrab Ahmari in "New Statesman," Trump attacking Harris's rather moderate economic programme as "communism" aligns with the rhetoric of the most radical post-Reagan right-wing, and that’s not the language that won him the election in 2016.

Trump won then by convincing the working class of the Midwest to vote for him with economically populist language. He wasn’t afraid to question the principle of Reagan's radically free-market orthodoxy. In other words, the more Trump repeats a message that looks like it's taken from Reagan's days, the more he weakens his impact as an economic populist.

For a long time, there have been voices from Republican party insiders reaching the media that Trump is making a mistake by attacking Harris in this way, that he should focus on criticising specific political decisions of the past four years, not on personal attacks.

However, Trump has no intention of changing his tactics. According to Stephen Collinson, who analysed the last weeks of the former President's campaign in an article written for CNN, there is a certain logic in this. Even at the peak of his popularity, Trump never gained more than 49 per cent of the votes in the decisive states. He knows he has no chance of improving this result this year. So he assumes he must maximally discourage Harris voters. Therefore, he escalates attacks on the opponent, thinking that something will eventually stick.

The question is whether voters will see these increasing attacks as a sign of Republican helplessness and desperation. Such voices are increasingly appearing among commentators.

Trump certainly won’t spare Harris during the debate. We can expect a brutal fight without gloves, especially where the former President will not fight cleanly. If he loses, playing dirty and brutally, the debate will further sink his campaign and give new energy to his opponent.

However, if Harris cannot handle Trump, if she shows that the former President’s attacks work on her, the dynamics of the race may turn against her.

So both will give their all on Tuesday.