Harris prepares for the showdown she’s long sought with Trump as he takes more informal approach

(CNN) — The most important moment in the race between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump comes this week, as the vice president prepares for what could be her only opportunity to directly confront a former president whose political dominance she is pledging to end.

Their Tuesday night debate is particularly important for Harris, who is battling to define herself in voters’ eyes and keep up the positive momentum she’s enjoyed since becoming the Democratic Party’s new nominee this summer.

The debate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia will be the first face-to-face encounter between Harris and Trump, who are locked in a tight race.

For Harris, it’s a marquee moment to show Americans that she is ready to assume the presidency, a question very much on the minds of voters as the fall campaign intensifies.

“Look, it’s time to turn the page on the divisiveness,” she said during a weekend stop in Pittsburgh, taking a break from her debate preparations. “It’s time to bring our country together, chart a new way forward.”

Trump, meanwhile, is eager to negatively shape voters’ perceptions of his Democratic rival and halt the gains she has made since ascending to the top of the Democratic ticket in July. Harris has eliminated what for much of the year had been Trump’s lead over Biden in presidential polling.

Both Harris and Trump are offering themselves as change agents of sorts. Harris has pitched herself as a clean break from a bitterly divisive era of politics dominated by Trump. The former president, though, points to Harris’ time in the Biden administration and says she bears the blame for inflation, higher mortgage rates and more.

Trump’s campaign and his allies have accused Harris of avoiding policy particulars. But Trump’s incoherent answer last week to a question about how he would make child care more affordable was a vivid reminder that the former president has long brushed aside policy details and questions about the practicality of his proposals.

Trump has also lobbed racist and lewd attacks against Harris, including falsely claiming in July that she “happened to turn Black” a few years ago (she’s the daughter of Indian and Jamaican immigrants) and sharing on social media references to her former relationship with onetime San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown.

Whether Trump makes similar comments — and how Harris responds — could shape voters’ perceptions of their clash Tuesday.

The debate, moderated by ABC anchors Linsey Davis and David Muir, is scheduled to last 90 minutes. Like the CNN debate between Trump and Biden in June, candidates’ microphones will be turned on when it’s their turn to speak and muted otherwise.

Those rules — agreed to by the Biden and Trump campaigns — have frustrated Harris, who hoped to tap into her skills as a former prosecutor during any onstage engagements with Trump.

“Vice President Harris, a former prosecutor, will be fundamentally disadvantaged by this format, which will serve to shield Donald Trump from direct exchanges with the Vice President. We suspect this is the primary reason for his campaign’s insistence on muted microphones,” the Harris campaign said Wednesday in a letter to ABC News agreeing to the debate.

Tight race in key swing states

The debate comes just before early voting begins in several key states. Polls have shown a tight race nationally and in key battlegrounds — including the “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, as well as the Sun Belt states of Arizona, Georgia, Nevada and North Carolina.

Both campaigns have paid particular attention to Pennsylvania and Georgia, where recent CNN polling found no clear leader between the candidates. Should Trump hold North Carolina, a state he’s won twice, victories in Pennsylvania and Georgia could push him past the 270 electoral vote threshold even if he does not win any of the other battleground states.

Harris got a jolt of good news late last week, when her campaign announced it had pulled in almost triple her Republican rival’s fundraising haul in August — $361 million to Trump’s $130 million — entering September with $404 million in cash reserves for the final two-month sprint to November. That sum far surpasses the $295 million Trump’s political operation says it has in the bank.

A Sunday New York Times/Siena College poll, however, underscored the importance of the fight over defining Harris. The survey, which showed the two candidates about evenly matched nationally, suggested that a sizable share of voters still need more information about the vice president: 28% of likely voters said they feel like they need to learn more about Harris, while just 9% said the same about Trump.

The poll also offered some potential warnings for Harris. While 61% of likely voters said they thought the next president should represent a “major change” from Biden, just 25% said they thought Harris represented such a change, while 53% said Trump did.

The same poll found that 47% of likely voters found Harris too liberal, despite her attempts to moderate in recent weeks, compared with 32% who said Trump is too conservative.

Pittsburgh debate camp

The two candidates have taken drastically different approaches to preparing for their Tuesday showdown.

No presidential nominee in the modern age has done more televised general election debates than Trump. Harris and her team have been carefully studying all six of them — three with Hillary Clinton in 2016, two with Biden in 2020, and another with Biden in June — as she prepares for her turn onstage.

Harris has spent the days leading up to the debate hunkered down with aides at a hotel in Pittsburgh, making only occasional, brief public appearances. But aides said she has been thinking about a debate with Trump since the moment Biden ended his bid for reelection in late July.

“I think the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage,” Harris told reporters last month. “I’m ready. Let’s go.”

She’s been reading briefing papers about Trump’s comments, positions and even the insults he’s directed at her, aides said, as well as familiarizing herself with how Trump comported himself with his two previous Democratic opponents, particularly Clinton.

Harris has spoken extensively to both Clinton and Biden about debating Trump, hoping to benefit from their experiences.

And she began telegraphing her approach to Trump even before her nomination became official, telling a crowd in Atlanta in late July: “If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face.”

A strategy for Harris, aides said, is not only to stand up to the former president, but to make the case that it’s time for the country to move beyond the Trump era. Any of his taunts on race are expected to be diminished and dismissed as the “same old, tired playbook,” as Harris said during her sit-down interview with CNN last month.

While many candidates have outwardly bristled at debate preparations, aides said Harris is digging into the practice sessions with mock debates against a Trump stand-in, longtime Clinton aide Philippe Reines, and preparing like she did during her years as a prosecutor.

Karen Dunn, a Washington lawyer who has helped Democratic candidates prepare for debates for more than a decade, is running the practice sessions for Harris. Dunn, who worked with Clinton ahead of her encounters with Trump in 2016, got to know Harris when she prepared her to face Vice President Mike Pence in 2020.

“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking. I’m speaking,” Harris said at one point during that debate, delivering a line that could be reprised on Tuesday if she is faced with any interruptions. “If you don’t mind letting me finish, we can have a conversation. OK? OK.”

Trump’s informal approach

In recent days Trump has ribbed Harris over her preparations and claimed that his debate performance won’t get a fair review.

“If I destroy her in the debate, they’ll say, ‘Trump suffered a humiliating defeat tonight,’” the former president said at a Saturday campaign rally in Mosinee, Wisconsin.

Trump, who argued he doesn’t need formal preparation such as mock debates, has been meeting with senior advisers, policy experts and outside allies to ready himself for Tuesday.

The “policy discussions” — the Trump campaign’s version of debate prep — largely mirror those the former president held in the weeks leading up to his June 27 debate with Biden, sources familiar with the meetings told CNN.

Trump senior adviser Jason Miller has been handling the meetings, which have included sessions with former Trump administration official Stephen Miller, Trump campaign policy adviser Vincent Haley, and former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, among others.

The sessions have largely focused on helping Trump sharpen his messaging on a range of issues, from the economy to immigration and American democracy at large.

The Trump campaign also deliberately scheduled a slate of events in the days leading up to the debate, such last week’s policy speech to the Economic Club of New York and his town hall with Fox News, in an effort to have him hone his messaging in public, his advisers said.

People close to Trump argue one of the most crucial aspects of his Tuesday matchup with Harris is ensuring the former president does not appear overly aggressive toward her and strikes the right tone. As with his June 27 debate with Biden, Trump’s advisers and allies have been encouraging him to appear more restrained while onstage.

However, many privately acknowledge that will be even more important this time. Not only is Harris a more popular candidate than Biden was then, but she is also a woman, and the optics of particular attacks will resonate differently, they say.

Gabbard, who recently endorsed Trump, has been a key player in that effort. The Hawaii Independent was among the 2020 Democratic presidential contenders who challenged Harris on the debate stage. She has been working with Trump to help him better understand Harris’ debate style.

Trump’s advisers believe Gabbard’s attacks on the then-California senator — particularly the scrutiny of her record as a prosecutor — helped undermine Harris’ candidacy in 2019.

The former president’s team has told him to specifically needle Harris on the issues where she has changed her position.

“We want to keep him steered toward hitting her record. On fracking, on her flip flops, and show that she is just as responsible for the Biden administration’s failed policies as Biden is,” one adviser said.

Those helping Trump prepare have also directed him to focus his answers on the core policy issues where he polls higher than Harris, such as the economy, immigration and crime, sources familiar with the meetings said.

“The most important part is finding pivots, finding ways to be critical of her, deflecting attacks from her,” a senior Trump adviser told CNN. “It’s not about her interrupting him or how she’ll act. It’s about him being on target on his responses on policy. That’s been the main focus.”

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