In a 2016 presidential debate, Republican nominee Donald Trump pressured Democratic rival Hillary Clinton, calling her a “bad woman” and saying she didn’t have the “look” or “stamina” to serve as commander in chief.
Tuesday’s nationally televised debate, the first face-to-face meeting between Trump and his Democratic rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, could be a turning point in the race eight weeks before the Nov. 5 election.
Trump has already made numerous racist and sexist attacks against Harris. The former president has falsely claimed that Harris, who is Black and South Asian, only recently “became a black man.” He reposted a vulgar online message that suggested she used sex to advance her career. He has also spoken derogatory about women and Black people, calling them “weak,” “stone-stupid” and “lazy.”
Delivering those attacks in front of tens of millions of viewers — and Harris’ response — would be risky for both candidates, according to interviews with eight pollsters, debate and political experts and Black activists. More than 51 million TV viewers tuned in to watch the debate between Trump and Democratic President Joe Biden in June.
According to John Geer, a Vanderbilt University professor and expert on presidential politics, Trump’s outrageous statements could alienate key voter groups, including women, black voters and liberals. “They will be turned off by this kind of rhetoric,” he said.
But Republican strategist Ford O’Connell said the continued strong polling shows Trump’s attacks have not eroded his support.
Harris, who would be the first woman, Black woman and South Asian American to become president, faces a complicated political calculus on Tuesday.
If she ignores Trump’s attacks on the debate stage, as she has done during the campaign, she could be seen as unwilling to stand up for herself. If she joins in with Trump’s rhetoric, she could be dragged into Trump’s mudslinging and expose herself to accusations, fair or unfair, that she is exploiting her race and gender.
Kelly Dittmar, research director at Rutgers University’s Center on American Women and Politics, said too forceful a response risks fueling the image of the angry black woman.
Dittmar said, “If Kamala speaks openly about this, will she be accused of playing the caste card, the gender card?”
‘I am calling’
Harris faces an additional challenge as she confronts Trump’s attacks while also defining herself to voters who are still trying to get to know her after her surprise election win seven weeks ago.
In a national poll released Sunday by The New York Times and Siena College, 28% of likely voters said they needed more information about Harris, while opinions about Trump remained largely fixed.
Harris will try to avoid getting embroiled in personal controversies while aiming to drag Trump into offensive comments that could go viral, campaign sources said.
Harris, a former prosecutor, may be able to send more subtle signals about Trump’s attacks without explicitly calling them racist or sexist. She did so in the 2020 vice presidential debate against Mike Pence, when she responded to Mike Pence’s interruptions by saying, “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” a moment that went viral.
“It was an effective way to acknowledge the gendered style of interaction that men had with women,” Dittmar said.
In a radio interview broadcast Monday, Harris said she was ready for Trump’s strategy.
“(Trump) is playing this old, worn-out tactic,” he said on “The Rickey Smiley Morning Show.” “There’s no limit to how low he’ll stoop.”
Speaking with reporters on Monday, former Democratic congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard, who was advising Trump ahead of the debate, said the former president would focus on Harris’ record and speak to her the same way he did to Biden.
“President Trump respects women and doesn’t feel the need to patronize or talk to women in any other way than he talks to men,” Gabbard said.
Trump had earlier rejected calls from advisers and fellow Republicans to soften his tone and stick to the issues, telling reporters, “I have to do things my way.”
personal attacks
But the former president has worked hard to find an effective attack against Harris, who unlike Clinton is not weighed down by decades of political baggage, and who has generated a wave of energy among Democrats since taking over Biden’s faltering reelection campaign.
Democratic research firm Blueprint conducted a survey of a variety of negative messages against Harris in late July and found that personal attacks based on her race, gender or family were “incredibly unproductive” for all voter groups, including independent voters, according to Evan Roth Smith, a pollster for the firm.
Criticisms that focused on immigration and economic policies or painted Harris as a California liberal fared better, Smith said.
The firm also examined Harris’s potential rebuttals to attacks focused on her race and gender. Responding to Trump by calling him a racist was far less effective than dismissing the insults as a distraction from Trump’s “extreme” agenda.
Andra Gillespie, a professor who researches African American politics at Emory University, said some of Trump’s attacks — such as questioning Harris’s blackness — are so obviously false that Harris doesn’t need to respond directly.
“It was so incredibly humiliating that everybody was saying, ‘This is ridiculous.’” “She didn’t have to say anything,” he said.
But University of Michigan debate expert Aaron Call said Trump should not be underestimated. Call said Trump has proven himself a skilled debater, defeating more experienced opponents with sharp retorts and unexpected arguments and using his background as a reality television star to control the camera.
“He may be the best counter-punching debater ever,” Call said. “He takes people off the mark. His language is natural and he talks like undecided voters. He has a great understanding of voters’ concerns.”
(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)
