Vice President Kamala Harris is reportedly facing challenges in preparing for a debate against former President Donald Trump due to an overwhelming amount of policy details. Despite being the Democrat nominee without receiving one primary vote, Harris is conducting debate prep to avoid being criticized as she was by then-Democrat Rep. Tulsi Gabbard during the 2020 presidential debates.
A person who worked with Harris in 2019 told NOTUS that they had not done a good job preparing her for such attacks, which led to her eventual withdrawal from the race. The same source acknowledged the effectiveness of Gabbard’s attack on Harris during the debate.
To avoid another catastrophe, the Harris campaign is trying to address the vice president’s “rust as a debater and her tendency to overprepare and fixate on the details,” according to nearly a dozen people involved with or aware of the preparations. Articulating policy specifics appears to be difficult for Harris, who is known for awkward statements about simple ideas.
Harris’ debate sessions have reportedly “careened sideways when the vice president focused too narrowly on minute details, effectively derailing the sessions,” according to two people familiar with the process. As a result, her mock debate sessions do not include policy discussions to avoid too much focus on facts, another source revealed.
Instead, the sources said that Harris’s debate prep has shifted away from discussing every single policy issue and towards providing her with reading materials to review before each session. This new approach aims to help her better prepare for the debates and reduce her tendency to fixate on details.
Reports indicate that Harris plans to attack Trump’s character during the debate instead of focusing on specific policies, which contradicts her campaign’s previously touted “joyful” approach. The strategy might be an attempt to avoid Trump’s broad appeal on specific issues such as migrant crime, immigration, soaring costs, and the deadly Afghan withdrawal – all issues that have arisen under the Biden-Harris administration.
However, Harris faces a conundrum in addressing these issues, particularly regarding rising costs, which have increased by about 20 percent across the board since she took power in 2021. She cannot campaign on reducing soaring costs without undermining the Biden-Harris administration’s policies but must promote the administration’s policies to validate her record and candidacy.
CNN’s Dana Bash highlighted this conundrum during Harris’ first pre-taped interview, where she both owned the Biden-Harris administration’s economic record while blaming Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump for it. The contradiction created an outcome that forced Harris to validate her candidacy by touting the administration’s policies while simultaneously undermining her own record and candidacy.