Vice President Kamala Harris is preparing for the big Tuesday night debate with Donald Trump by holing up in a Pittsburgh hotel where she’s had to “go back to the drawing board” on her strategy because she was unsuccessful in trying to get the rules changed and have open mics. Her plan had been to constantly interrupt and challenge Trump and get him off his game, but now she’s going to have to deal with the rules as they were originally agreed to by Joe Biden when he was the candidate.
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She’s cramming as hard as she can and even working with a Trump impersonator:
Vice President Kamala Harris is holed up for five days in a Pittsburgh hotel, doing highly choreographed debate practice sessions before Tuesday night’s clash. There’s a stage and replica TV lighting and an adviser in full Lee Strasberg method-acting mode, not just playing Donald Trump but inhabiting him, wearing a boxy suit and a long tie.
If you’re wondering, the faux Trump—a guy named Philippe Reines—revealed one thing he didn’t do when he played him in the past: “I dressed up like him, but I didn’t put on an orange face or a wig.”
Harris wants to come across as someone with gravitas:
Bringing out Trump’s most self-destructive instincts is a priority for Harris, as is coming across as coolheaded and presidential.
“She should not be baited, she should bait him,” Hillary Clinton, the last woman to debate Trump, said in an interview Thursday. “When I said he was a Russian puppet, he just sputtered onstage. I think that’s an example of how you get out a fact about him that really unnerves him.”
Kamala should definitely take advice from Hillary Clinton, seeing as the former secretary of State lost to Trump in 2016.
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It could be one for the ages:
NBC Dishes Some Hilarious Details About What Harris Is Planning for the Debate
Yes, Kamala Harris Is, in Fact, Screwed by the Debate Rules
Harris Finally Surrenders on the Debate Rules, and Her Crying Is Hilarious
Whether she can pull it off or not, we’ll just have to wait and see, but the Democrat nominee, who has never won a single primary delegate, does have a plan:
Unlike Biden, she has not focused squarely on portraying the former president as a fundamental threat to American democracy. She has tried to minimize him as a stale old act who is repeating his same tired playbook. And she has painted him as a rich guy who cares only about helping other rich guys — a populist line of attack that resonates with voters in focus groups.
Harris has also ditched Clinton’s unsuccessful strategy of denouncing Trump as a racist and a misogynist. The vice president’s aides believe it’s a waste of time to tell voters what a terrible person Trump is, given how hard it is to find a voter who does not already have a fixed view of his character — good or bad. Instead, Harris is trying to connect with the thin slice of undecided voters who feel sour about the economy and worried about the future, and who want to hear what each candidate will do to improve their lives. [Emphasis mine.]
How on earth is she going “to connect with the thin slice of undecided voters who feel sour about the economy and worried about the future”? She’s been second in command for the last three-and-a-half years and has overseen the conditions that have them feeling that way in the first place.
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I’m sure her team will be hoping she puts on a more believable performance than this one:
The stakes are high in this gabfest. If either one of them stumbles, it could be the difference in this hotly-contested election. Of course, we all know that if Kamala gets through it without falling down, the media will portray it as a massively massive, humongous win for the VP—but what the voters think will be the important thing.