The Brooklyn Rail

During the convention, Nate Silver had Kamala Harris up 20 points over Donald Trump to win the presidential election. As of September 5, Silver has flipped the scenario, with Trump up 20 points over Harris, and having a 60% chance of winning. “Harris is still ahead in many polls,” said Silver, “but she needs higher margins to win; her leads are relatively static, and time is running out.”

Time is indeed running out. The advantages of a shortened campaign to Harris have mostly already been harvested, and a new push is needed. This is why the debate on Tuesday at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia is so critical. It was the last (first) debate (on June 27 in Atlanta) that changed everything, with Joe Biden’s catastrophic failure causing the Democrats to change candidates near the end of the race. Now Harris needs to shake things up again with a decisive victory over Trump in this debate. Trump is the more experienced debater, with seven presidential debates under his belt, but Harris is a career prosecutor going up against a convicted felon. Harris seems to be getting stronger and stronger as a candidate as the campaign goes on, while Trump has been showing increasing signs of exhaustion and mental disintegration. But Trump is still very slippery, and it’s difficult to rationally debate someone who is not rational. To him, it’s all show business, and Harris will have to beat him on that level.

As a powerful Black woman, Harris is just inherently a big problem for Trump. But she needs to get under his skin and expose him, so people can see how weak he really is. Trump’s reaction after the assassination attempt shows that he is still very quick to respond to an attack in a way that benefits his messaging.

The one thing that Trump fears most is humiliation. Laughing at him can be a potent weapon, and Harris has a great contagious laugh. Trump can’t laugh, and he has no defense against laughter. After all, this is how we got Trump the politician in the first place: Barack Obama’s relentless roasting of Trump at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner on April 30, 2011. Maybe Harris should have hired David Letterman to help with the debate prep.

The thing I’m hearing most from “undecided” voters now is that they just don’t know enough about Kamala Harris. In this debate, she needs to introduce herself to these voters and show them who she is and what she stands for. Her acceptance speech at the Democratic Convention went a long way toward doing this, but she needs to do it again.

And because Trump’s support remains resilient, Harris also needs to somehow get Trump off his game, and to open a rift between the confident, Alpha self he performs at rallies and the insecure vengeful bully and wannabe dictator he actually is. If she can do that, she may shake a few thousand or a few million would-be voters loose. There are about 250 million Americans of voting age. This election, like all other elections in America, will be determined by the people who don’t vote. If that involves more would-be Trump voters, Harris will win. If it involves more would-be Harris voters, Trump will win, and the 250-year-old experiment of American democracy will come to an excruciating end.