What we can learn from Trump’s and Harris’ old debates

Setting some benchmarks for the Trump-Biden debates was easy. In both elections, the Trump campaign portrayed the Democrat as doddering and incoherent. In 2020, Biden didn’t come off that way. In 2024, he did.

One of Trump’s goals, in those races and in this one, was to overwhelm the Democrat with negative attacks, until they slid off-course and got lost in their rebuttals. That worked with Biden. Trump’s opening statement in Atlanta claimed that the country had already bounced back from COVID when he left office, to deny Biden credit for job growth; then, he claimed that the only truly new jobs created since January 2021 were for “illegal immigrants.”

Biden instantly got lost, trying to debunk Trump’s history: “He’s the only one who thinks that, I think. I don’t know anybody else who thinks it was great.” Some of his mistakes, like the syntax pile-up that had him saying “we beat Medicare” instead of “we beat big pharma,” are unlikely to be repeated by a 59-year old Democrat.

But he could try to trap Harris in the weeds on one of the many topics that Republicans see as risks for her. A review of Trump’s own debate performances shows a candidate who takes each question as a chance to unload: Start with the topic, then deploy every relevant negative fact or exaggeration about his opponent. Harris, who only appeared in one national debate four years ago, has been more precise and controlled. And there are ways for Trump to use that against her.

Harris is typically good at avoiding debate pitfalls, more than Republicans might appreciate. Trump invited former Hawaii Rep. Tulsi Gabbard to help him with debate prep, invoking one of Harris’s worst moments as a presidential candidate. Gabbard used the second 2020 Democratic primary debate to attack Harris, from the left, on criminal justice reform and healthcare; the Trump campaign has adopted Gabbard’s view of the exchange, that the congresswoman “whupped” the future vice president.

But Harris wasn’t staggered by Gabbard, or unable to respond. She just didn’t hit back, making a strategic decision to ignore a fringe candidate with little relevance at the time. “That is simply not true,” she said, defending the “important work of reforming a criminal justice system,” and naming a few California accomplishments. The exchange looked worse in post-debate analysis, because there was a loud audience cheering for Gabbard — and because Harris never directly took Gabbard on.

Those conditions (the studio audience, the multi-candidate balance) won’t exist tonight. In one-on-one settings, Harris has been stronger. She has a habit of using three words where one will do, but in her last national debate, against Mike Pence, she didn’t. Post-debate commentators focused on a couple of pieces of trivia: A fly landing on Pence’s head, and Harris saying “I’m speaking” six times in 90 minutes, when Pence began stepping on her answers.

The trivia stood out because Harris made no real mistakes that night, and post-debate polling suggested that she’d won. Asked about COVID, she quickly turned each of her answers to Trump, who’d committed “the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country.” She had quick command of the Biden economic agenda, and didn’t get lost in details. Harris can get obsessed with a particular phrase — “let’s talk about” made eight appearances in the Pence debate — but it’s only been noticeable to viewers when the spare words are being used to paper over missing content.

Trump has never been that careful and has tended to be even wilder in his one-on-one debates. He can skip over words, but he’s never lost for them; he doesn’t repeat stock phrases, but he repeats ideas, like migrants and drugs “pouring” over the border and the Biden administration failing to prevent wars in Ukraine and Gaza. He can mix up facts and turn to hyperbole — Minneapolis didn’t just experience rioting, it was “ripped down” and could have been “destroyed.”

While Harris can over-talk an idea, Trump can under-explain them, often dropping a reference that might not make sense if the listener isn’t attuned to conservative media. “What he said about this whole subject is so off: Peacefully patriotic,” Trump said in the Atlanta debate, taking a shortcut to a point about Biden not taking rioting seriously enough in 2020. A reference to the Jan. 6 committee became “the unselect committee,” of “basically two horrible Republicans that are all gone now, out of office, and Democrats.”

Rally crowds have heard Trump insist that the number of illegal immigrants in America is undercounted by the government. Atlanta debate watchers got a Trump statement that skipped a few steps: “His big kill on the black people is the millions of people that he’s allowed to come in through the border. They’re taking black jobs now and it could be 18, it could be 19, and even 20 million people.”

If the Harris onstage is like the Harris of previous debates, she wouldn’t debate every loose fact in that answer. But there are risks in not taking the bait or in not fighting on every point. When Trump debated Hillary Clinton, he repeatedly attacked her promises by asking why, in power, she hadn’t achieved them, an argument he can clearly recycle for Harris. Having an answer ready — and on multiple topics — could be critical.

The Trump campaign revealed a bit more of its thinking on Monday afternoon, predicting that Harris would try to separate herself from the least popular parts of the Biden record and struggle to explain away her crime record. Florida Rep. Matt Gaetz said she’d let “migrant crime” flourish; Trump strategist Jason Miller said that the former president could blame her for both inflation and American military deaths during the withdrawal from Afghanistan.

A bloodless or evasive Harris answer to Trump’s attacks might work on-stage, in the moment, as she switches topic. But like the exchange with Gabbard, it could be spun, off-stage, into a study of a paper candidate not unwilling to punch back, but unable to. The Trump campaign’s August messaging — could a woman unable to face CNN without her VP at the table really negotiate with Xi Jinping? — was built to take advantage not if Harris erred, but if she retreated.

If she doesn’t retreat, Trump has vulnerabilities. In 2016 and 2020, he had opponents who drove him off message; in Atlanta this year, even an enfeebled Biden could push him into pointless linguistic cul-de-sacs about golf and indictments. Trump’s team previewed the names of criminals it wants the president to talk about; what if Harris prodded him about criminals he’d pardoned?

And how would the moderators handle it? Harder to say. ABC News hasn’t moderated a presidential debate since early 2020, after Harris had ended her campaign. Its plans for a final GOP primary debate in New Hampshire this year were scuttled after Nikki Haley made participation contingent on Trump, who skipped it.

Trump also faces the risk of overconfidence after he essentially ended Biden’s campaign at their June debate — before that night, he had lost every prior general election debate in snap polls, even in his winning 2016 campaign. He has recently predicted another victory over another Democrat he considers lightweight, ignoring the usual expectations game of building up one’s opponent.

“If I destroy her in the debate, they’ll say, ‘Trump suffered a humiliating defeat tonight,’” Trump told supporters in Wisconsin on Saturday.

Harris hasn’t done as much to pre-spin the debate, after campaign tried and failed to take back a Biden negotiating point: mics off while the other candidate is speaking. Her only comments about what’s coming have been predictions that Trump is “gonna lie,” as she told radio host Rickey Smiley on Monday.