A first Trump-Harris face-off will be decisive for the American presidential election

Photo: Joseph Prezioso Agence France-Presse Julia Nikhinson Associated Press “Donald Trump thinks he's going to have a debate on September 10. Kamala Harris should sue him,” wrote Chris Truax, former chairman of Republican candidate John McCain's 2008 primary campaign in California, a few days ago.

Fabien Deglise

Published at 0:00 Analysis

• United States

As the first televised debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris approaches on September 10, the vice president’s campaign sought this week to lower expectations, arguing that the negotiated framework for the face-off will “fundamentally disadvantage” the Democratic nominee.

The Problem ? Each candidate’s microphones will ultimately be muted when the other speaks, a provision adopted last spring in the debate between Trump and Biden, who had not yet left the race, and that Harris’s entourage has sought, since she entered the scene at the top of the Democratic ticket, to reverse.

The request was met with a firm refusal by the former president's team, which even threatened to cancel the debate if the terms were changed. A resistance to change “that will serve to protect Donald Trump from direct exchanges with the vice president,” Kamala Harris's entourage stressed in a press release on Wednesday.

Closed microphones will also prevent the Republican from having this debate turn into a tight and muscular interrogation on his many lies, half-truths and inconsistencies from a former attorney general of California who, just a few weeks ago, claimed to have experience in confronting “predators”, “fraudsters” and “cheaters”. And she added: “Trust me when I say that I can see the kind of guy Donald Trump is. »

“Donald Trump thinks he’s going to have a debate on September 10. Kamala Harris should make it a trial,” Chris Truax, former chairman of John McCain’s 2008 primary campaign in California, wrote a few days ago. “A good trial is not just about evidence,” he added. “It’s also about weaving that evidence into a compelling story.”

In the current election campaign, in terms of televised debates, the bar was set very low last June by Joe Biden, whose catastrophic performance against Donald Trump ended up convincing him to withdraw from the race a few weeks later. But the challenge remains great nonetheless for Kamala Harris, who, from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, will cross swords on Tuesday evening with an unpredictable candidate, notoriously combustible, who for 90 minutes risks wanting to keep alive the “alternative realities” that he imposed on his followers on elections, inflation, immigration, crime… He will also seek to put an end to the honeymoon that Kamala Harris has been enjoying with American voters since she entered the race, and which is illustrated in polls that now give her a lead or a reduced gap over her political opponent in several key states.

“The vice president’s experience as a prosecutor will certainly influence how she approaches this presidential debate,” political scientist Meena Bose, director of the Center for the Study of the American Presidency at Hofstar University, said in an interview. “The evidence she will present against Trump’s candidacy should boost the energy and enthusiasm of his supporters, but it may not be enough to convince swing voters. As for Trump, he will have to demonstrate that he can transition from a campaign against President Biden, in which he was the younger of the two, to one in which he is the older, with all the questions that that raises about his acuity, focus and agility…”

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Kamala Harris will approach this debate, which will be her first face-to-face meeting with the former president, with the mission of taking political advantage of Donald Trump's many weaknesses that he revealed during his first debate with Biden in June, but which the Democrat's confused and hesitant tone and haggard look had ended up relegating to the background in the assessment of the meeting.

With a jury finding him guilty of 34 counts of fraud and accounting manipulation, the Republican, who is accumulating legal proceedings under serious accusations of attempted coup d’état and attempted election theft, is not without flaws. His persistence in defending the insurrectionists he encouraged to storm the Capitol on January 6, 2021, in repeating his unfounded accusations about electoral fraud or in boasting about having strengthened the ultraconservative majority of the Supreme Court, which allowed the radical right to lead a systematic attack on abortion rights throughout the United States, could thus backfire on him. Kamala Harris will seek to highlight the fact that Donald Trump really believes in the absurdity or radicalism of his statements. She could also expose the fact that her fabrications, her many breaks with reality, represent a dangerous threat to the country and Americans when formulated from the White House.

“Kamala Harris comes into this debate with an advantage over Donald Trump, that of being very experienced and very disciplined,” notes Robert Rowland, a political communications specialist, contacted by Le Devoirat the University of Kansas. For his part, Trump has television experience and is very adept at playing on the sensitive skin of voters. Kamala Harris will have to present herself as a credible future commander in chief who has a real plan to fight inflation, crime and illegal immigration,” themes dear to Donald Trump that he manages to keep in the column of America’s problems, and this, often in contradiction with the facts or with himself.

During the Democratic National Convention in Chicago in August, Kamala Harris also recalled that Democrats and Republicans had agreed in Congress to adopt severe policies strengthening immigration control at the borders, but that this bill was suddenly shelved at Trump’s request, for political calculation, in order to have a crisis to exploit during his campaign.

The explosion of violence in the United States also exists in the Republican's mind, but a little less in the FBI statistics, which mainly establish that, since 2022, the level of violent crime has been at its lowest in 50 years in the country. As for inflation, it is in the White House's sights, with notable successes in lowering the price of certain drugs and others that are still awaited on the price of food and gasoline.

In 2020, Kamala Harris emerged as the big winner of the televised debate of the presidential campaign opposing her to the then vice president, Mike Pence, according to several polls.

“To succeed in this one, she will have to show that she is ready to occupy the Oval Office and present a clear and detailed political program,” says Meena Bose. “Her answers will also have to appear sincere and authentic if she wants to get the better of the former president,” adds Robert Rowland.

Anchored in the heart of the Democratic city of a state whose result will be crucial next November, the first contest between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will begin on Tuesday at 9 p.m. and will become a determining milestone in the rest of the electoral campaign.