I spoke to people who have debated Harris and Trump. This is what they told me

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Andrew Feinberg

White House Correspondent

It all comes down to this. Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump will square off in Philadelphia tonight for what is so far their only scheduled debate.

Harris will be abiding by the rules put in place when President Joe Biden was still the nominee. That means microphones will be turned off when it’s the other candidate’s turn to speak. There will be no live audience and there will be no pre-written notes or sitting.

Even though she must abide by rules Biden set, Harris must, to borrow a phrase, be unburdened by what has been. As Susan Estrich, who ran Michael Dukakis’s campaign in 1988, told The Independent, “It can't be just Biden 2.0 — it's got to be Harris 1.0.”

So what does Harris 1.0 look like? She only had one major one-on-one debate on the national stage in 2020, when she squared off against the unflappable Mike Pence. Otherwise, she mostly participated in the television gameshow that was the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, though she famously got a good swipe in with Biden on busing.

Quite frankly, Trump has to prove himself too. He went through the ringer of Republican debates in 2016. But he largely avoided direct hits as his opponents attacked each other. He skipped all of the Republican prmary debates this year and very few people remember his performance against Biden thanks to the president’s meltdown (save for that infamous joke about “Black jobs.”)

The Independent spoke multiple Senators who have been in the ring with Harris and Trump about what that experience is like, and where their respective strengths and weaknesses lie.

Senator Elizabeth Warren and Harris notably clashed onstage one time, specifically about whether to ban Trump from using Twitter as Warren’s campaign began to eclipse Harris’s in momentum.

“Donald Trump should worry about having to meet a tough woman who will not be bullied,” Warren told The Independent in August. “She's smart. She's always well-prepared. And she just doesn't put up with any nonsense.”

Senator Michael Bennet of Colorado also debated Harris in what he’s called his “not very-well-noticed presidential campaign.” But he is also friends with Harris and they crafted one of her signature policies: an expanded Child Tax Credit.

He only had one sentence when asked about Harris’s expected performance: “I think she'll crush Trump on the debate stage.”

Kirsten Gillibrand of New York and Harris were two of the first senators to call on Al Franken to resign amid multiple accusations of inappropriate sexual behavior. Gillibrand was also a part of those 2020 Democratic primary debates.

“I think she'll be able to cross-examine Trump very effectively, especially when he says things that aren't true,” Gillibrand told The Independent. “And I think she'll be able to share a vision very clearly.”

The final stretch of the 2016 primary turned into a showdown between Senator Ted Cruz of Texas and Trump, with former Ohio Governor John Kasich serving as a third wheel. Cruz famously bested Trump in the Iowa caucuses, which led to Trump accusing him of dishonesty and giving him the moniker “Lyin’ Ted.”

Cruz, for his part, has an Ivy League debating pedigree, having worked on the competitive debating circuit when he was a student at Princeton. When he spoke to The Independent, he showed off his special debate skill that he honed there: Gish-galloping.

“Look, they're both effective debaters,” he told The Independent. “Kamala’s weakness is her abominable record. This is a very different election.” Cruz — who is running for Senate in a tighter-than-expected race — then went on to soliloquize about Harris’s record on the US-Mexico border and Trump’s own presidential record.

“I thought the last debate against Joe Biden was by far the most effective debate Trump has done and I think that augurs well for the next debate,” he concluded.

Of course, Trump didn’t just steamroll Cruz. He did the same to Cruz’s colleague from Florida, Senator Marco Rubio. Telegenic and charismatic, Rubio was once seen as “the savior” of the Republican Party. But Trump continuously belittled him, famously calling him “Little Marco.”

Rubio tried to respond by calling him “Big Don” and mocking the size of Trump’s hands. That one might have been an example of mud-wrestling with a pig: Rubio got dirty and Trump liked it.

“We were with 12 other people and eight other people on the stage, but he's very good debater because he's a very good communicator,” Rubio told The Independent, when asked about the secret to Trump’s effectiveness. “He knows how to play the television audiences and get his message across. He’s unorthodox. You can't really practice a debate against him.”

Of course, the debate on Tuesday evening will not have an in-person audience, which will make it harder for Trump to work the crowd the way he did in the GOP primary debates. And Harris has never debated at the top of the ticket, let alone against someone like Trump. The chances are, as a woman, she would face a sexist backlash if she tried saying, “Will you shut up, man?” the way Biden did in 2020.

Trump, for his part, will not be able to swat away Harris the way he did Cruz or Rubio. And he can forget about calling her “low energy” like Jeb Bush. Nor will he get away with calling Harris ugly, as he did with Carly Fiorina (before backing away from his comments when confronted by them and subsequently calling her “beautiful”.)

That kind of behavior just won’t fly this time. And we aren’t talking about the one that landed on Pence.