Why Kamala Isn't Preparing to Knock Out Trump at the Debate

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

44% : Just last week, the Democratic research group Blueprint tested messaging and found that pro-Harris forces would be smarter to rely on ads featuring a contrast and positive lines about Harris over negative ones on Trump -- voters are twice as likely to be moved by the former than the latter, which are only useful on the margins.
43% : What worries those closest to Harris most is how she might react if Trump gets personal, as they all expect he will.
42% : (Philippe Reines, a longtime Hillary Clinton aide, has been playing Trump in debate-practice sessions, reprising his 2016 role.)
40% : And for a candidate whose rallies feature "A NEW WAY FORWARD" signage and repeated audience chants of "we're not going back," that primarily means trying to keep the focus on her own vision for the future and contrasting it with Trump's.
40% : That has included reminding reporters and cable-TV audiences that Trump has participated in six presidential general-election debates to Harris's zero.
35% : This is the tack her campaign has mostly taken in its paid advertising, even if some of its social-media output has also been trolling Trump for his incoherence and, indirectly, his age.
33% : What she left unsaid: that this is also why the debate is so risky for Harris, since Trump has a chance to define her, too.
30% : The debate, say Democrats close to Harris, is simply not the venue for just pumping up her partisans or trying to fulfill a liberal fantasy of so aggressively confronting Trump that his own supporters have second thoughts about voting for him.
23% : "The vice-president can rise and take the conversation back to the questions and not follow Trump into a ditch.
19% : And among this group, Trump was the candidate most commonly identified as the change agent, not Harris.
16% : That's not to say Harris is unlikely to criticize Trump, just that those critiques will likely be more along policy lines than personal ones.
14% : "She must stay on offense even if Trump decides to go low," says Donna Brazile, a Harris confidant and the former chair of the Democratic National Committee.
13% : Yet Harris has also at times stumbled when put on the spot in debates, like when in 2019 she got into a back-and-forth with Tulsi Gabbard (who is now advising Trump).

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