Harris and Trump in debate, new highlight of an extraordinary campaign

The debate between Joe Biden and Donald Trump in June had changed the face of the pre-election ;American residential. Will it be the same for the confrontation on Tuesday between Kamala Harris and the former president, one of the most anticipated meetings of this extraordinary campaign?

The Democratic vice president and the Republican candidate have never spoken to each other. They will face off starting at 9:00 p.m. local time (01:00 GMT Wednesday) in front of millions of viewers but without an audience, without notes, for 90 minutes.

Both have agreed to strict rules, designed to prevent untimely interruptions or direct challenges.

Their debate, the first and possibly last before the November 5 election, will be moderated by two ABC journalists and will take place in Philadelphia, in the crucial northeastern state of Pennsylvania.

The Republican camp is approaching the evening with a flourish: “It's impossible to prepare (to debate) with President Trump. (…) Imagine a boxer trying to prepare to fight Floyd Mayweather or Muhammad Ali,” Jason Miller, one of his close advisers, said Monday.

– “No limits” –

The Democrat warned, in a radio interview broadcast Monday, that her rival had “no limits in baseness and we have to be prepared for that.” Kamala Harris also said she expected “a lot of lies.”

Since the first televised debate in 1960 between John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, these duels had allowed one or the other candidate to distinguish themselves with a sally or a hard-hitting retort, but they had never really shaken up the campaign.

Until June 27, 2024. That day on CNN, Joe Biden, the Democratic candidate already weakened by incessant questions about his age, had lost his footing live against Donald Trump.

The poor performance led to the historic withdrawal of his candidacy on July 21. Since then, Kamala Harris has revived Democratic hopes.

Where the octogenarian president was left behind, she is neck and neck with Donald Trump in the polls, including in the “swing states”, the six or seven pivotal states that carry so much weight in the American system of indirect elections.

– Trump's age –

Many Americans – 28% of voters who plan to go to the polls, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll – say they have trouble understanding the 59-year-old vice president, her personality, her ideas, her program.

The Democrat's first goal on Tuesday night will therefore be to make a good impression on these undecided.

Donald Trump has no need to make himself known, neither to his extremely loyal supporters nor to his equally fervent detractors. The 78-year-old billionaire, surrounded by legal proceedings, is taking part in his seventh presidential debate on Tuesday.

The Republican, the target of an assassination attempt in June, will try to accuse his rival of all the failures, in his opinion, of Joe Biden's mandate, particularly in terms of immigration and inflation.

And in a complete reversal compared to the June debate against the American president, this time it will be Donald Trump's cognitive abilities that will be scrutinized, facing an opponent almost twenty years younger.

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