The Dos and Don'ts of Debating Donald Trump

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

52% : She must lay out her vision and convince voters that she is ready to be the commander in chief, all the while keeping cool as Trump tries to rattle her.
48% : Those who have worked with Harris, however, say that Trump knows her only as a right-wing caricature.
43% : "Let Trump be Trump, and [don't] debate him point for point, back and forth."
37% : Yet she has never gone up against someone as tenacious or unscrupulous as Trump.
31% : Democrats believe that Trump has even less discipline four years later.
31% : "Democrats I spoke with expect Harris to hold back if Trump flings any racist or sexist attacks her way, as she did after he said in July that she only "happened to turn Black" a few years ago, suggesting that she was playing up that part of her identity for political purposes.
27% : "Trump has belittled Harris's intelligence, and his campaign has needled her for agreeing to few formal interviews and press conferences, implying that she is weak in situations that she cannot script in advance.
26% : Shrum said he thought Harris would be fine regardless: Trump "behaves badly in ways that send messages about his character, and they're not good messages."
21% : Shrum added that he knew he was supposed to raise expectations for Trump's performance, "but I'm not going to."With Biden off the stage, many Democrats hope the debate will expose Trump as the diminished candidate, a 78-year-old who rambles even more than he used to and who struggles to complete a coherent thought.
20% : Rather than getting bogged down in a defense of the president's policies, Etienne said, Harris should pivot quickly to her vision for the future and a critique of Trump: "Her most important thing is not to defend her record.
19% : Her task, they acknowledged, is tricky: If President Joe Biden's goal in debating Trump in June was to demonstrate that he was fit to serve another four years in the White House -- a test he rather famously failed -- Harris enters this matchup needing to clear a much higher bar.
16% : "Watch: The candidates prepare to debateTrump, Messina predicted, "is going to get really nasty with her and whale away."
13% : As an example, he said, Harris should ignore Trump if he calls her a Communist, which he characterized as an outdated attack line that voters would find "absurd," given that Harris's economic positions are well within the Democratic Party's mainstream.
11% : The Harris campaign, for example, has complained that the vice president will be "fundamentally disadvantaged" because neither ABC News, the network hosting the debate, nor the Trump campaign would agree to its request that the candidates' microphones stay on throughout the debate; as during the Biden-Trump debate in June, the mics will be muted when the candidates aren't speaking, which could prevent viewers from hearing Trump if he tries to interrupt Harris.
11% : Think of George H. W. Bush's glance at his watch in 1992, Gore's heavy sighing in 2000, and Biden's open-mouthed stares in June's debate with Trump.
5% : Trump's frequent interruptions of Biden during their first debate in 2020 played poorly and prompted one of Biden's snappier retorts when he said to Trump, "Will you shut up, man?"
3% : Elaina Plott Calabro: The prosecutor vs. the felonTrump will likely try to tie Harris to Biden's unpopular economic stewardship, blaming them for inflation.

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