Sutton’s attorney, Ari Stein, confirmed his client had decided to drop out but didn’t offer a reason for the change of heart. The decision leaves Sutton’s opponent, Mark Bohenstiel, as the only candidate who will appear on the November ballot. Incumbent Jessica Owens is not seeking reelection.

Sutton’s decision came shortly after Virginia Beach Circuit Court Judge Afshin Farashahi declined a request from Bohenstiel for an emergency order that would have prevented Sutton’s name from being included on the ballot as the registrar’s office prepares to send out mail-in ballots and begin early voting next week. Bohenstiel filed a lawsuit last week in which he claimed Sutton had failed to meet all the requirements needed to be eligible to run.

Farashahi’s ruling on Monday, however, was only a temporary measure until a trial on the matter could be held. No trial date was set, but it would have been held before the election.

Bohenstiel’s case centers on the petitions Sutton submitted to qualify for the race. Candidates had to obtain 125 valid signatures from qualified voters in the district. While Bohenstiel’s lawsuit didn’t challenge the authenticity of the signatures, it did question the dates included with some of them, as well as the process followed when the petitions were notarized.

During a hearing Friday before Farashahi, Sutton testified he did his best to follow all the rules for obtaining and submitting signatures. The retired teacher and school administrator said he dated the pages of signatures he collected as Feb. 3, which is when he began gathering them. Some, however, were obtained on Feb. 4 and Feb. 5, he said.

A former student of Sutton’s who attends the University of Virginia helped collect signatures, along with two of his fraternity brothers, Sutton said. A notary public in Charlottesville who notarized the petitions submitted a written statement in which he said the petitions were signed before they were presented to him. In such cases, he wrote, the standard practice is to have the presenters swear to their signatures in the notary’s presence and then re-date them. They weren’t re-dated in this case, he said.

Farashahi said there wasn’t enough evidence presented at last week’s hearing to indicate whether Bohenstiel was likely to succeed at trial.

He also said that while Bohenstiel would suffer “irreparable harm” if Sutton’s name is included on the ballot at this time, and then he’s later determined to be ineligible, the harm to Sutton would be greater if he were kept off the ballot now and then were to prevail at trial.

Jane Harper, jane.harper@pilotonline.com

WASHINGTON (AP) — It could be a well-rehearsed zinger, a too-loud sigh — or a full performance befuddled enough to shockingly end a sitting president’s reelection bid.

Notable moments from past presidential debates demonstrate how the candidates’ words and body language can make them look especially relatable or hopelessly out-of-touch — showcasing if a candidate is at the top of their policy game or out to sea. Will past be prologue when Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday?

“Being live television events, without a script, without any way of knowing how they are going to evolve — anything can happen,” said Alan Schroeder, author of “Presidential Debates: 50 years of High-Risk TV.”

Here’s a look at some highs, lows and curveballs from presidential debates past.

Biden blows it

Though it’s still fresh in the nation’s mind, the June debate in Atlanta pitting President Joe Biden against Trump may go down as the most impactful political faceoff in history.

Biden, 81, shuffled onto the stage, frequently cleared his throat, said $15 when he meant that his administration helped cut the price of insulin to $35 per month on his first answer and inexplicably gave Trump an early chance to pounce on the chaotic 2021 withdrawal of U.S. forces from Afghanistan. It got even worse for the president 12 minutes in, when Biden appeared lose his train of thought entirely.

“The, uh — excuse me, with the COVID, um, dealing with, everything we had to do with, uh … if … Look …” Biden stammered before concluding ”we finally beat Medicare.” He meant that his administration had successfully taken on “big pharma,” some of the nation’s top prescription drug companies.

Biden at first blamed having a cold, then suggested he’d overprepared. Later, he pointed to jetlag after pre-debate travel overseas.

In the frantic hours immediately after the debate, a Biden campaign spokesperson said, “ Of course, he’s not dropping out.” That was correct until 28 days later, when the president did just that, bowing out and endorsing Harris on July 21.

The age question

Biden was asked in Atlanta about his age and got into an argument with Trump over golf. It was the opposite of knowing a sensitive question was coming and still making the answer sound spontaneous — a feat President Ronald Reagan pulled off while landing a line for the ages during 1984’s second presidential debate.

Reagan was 73 and facing 56-year-old Democratic challenger Walter Mondale. In the first debate, Reagan struggled to remember facts and occasionally looked confused. An adviser suggested afterward that aides “filled his head with so many facts and figures that he lost his spontaneity.”

So Reagan’s team took a more hands-off approach toward the second debate. When Reagan got a question about his mental and physical stamina that he had to know was coming, he was ready enough to make the response feel unplanned.

Asked whether his age might hinder his handling of major challenges, Raegan responded, “Not at all,” before smoothly continuing: “I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent’s youth and inexperience.” The audience, and even Mondale, cracked up.

Then, capitalizing on years of Hollywood-honed comedic training, the president took a sip of water, giving the crowd more time to laugh. Finally, he grinned and left little doubt that he’d rehearsed, adding, “It was Seneca, or it was Cicero, I don’t know which, that said, ‘If it was not for the elders correcting the mistakes of the young, there would be no state.’”

Years later, Mondale conceded, “That was really the end of my campaign that night.”

Reagan is further remembered for using a light touch to neutralize criticisms from Democratic President Jimmy Carter in a 1980 debate. When Carter accused him of wanting to cut Medicare, Reagan scolded, “There you go again.”

The line worked so well that he turned it into something of a trademark rejoinder going forward.

Gaffes galore

In 1976, Republican President Gerald Ford had a notable moment in a debate against Carter — and not in a good way. The president declared that there is “no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration.”

With Moscow controlling much of that part of the world, the surprised moderator asked if he’d understood correctly. Ford stood by his answer, then spent days on the campaign trail trying to explain it away. He lost that November.

Another awkward moment came in 2012, when Republican nominee Mitt Romney got a debate question about gender pay equality and recalled soliciting women’s groups’ help to find qualified female applicants for state posts: “They brought us whole binders full of women.”

Aaron Kall, director of the University of Michigan’s debate program, said key lines affect not just who a debate’s perceived winner is but also fundraising and media coverage for days, or even weeks, afterward.

“The closer the election, the more zingers and important debate lines can matter,” Kall said.

Not all slips have a devastating impact, though.

Then-Sen. Barack Obama, in a 2008 Democratic presidential primary debate, dismissively told Hillary Clinton, “You’re likable enough, Hillary.” That drew backlash, but Obama recovered.

The same couldn’t be said for the short-lived 2012 Republican primary White House bid of then-Texas Gov. Rick Perry. Despite repeated attempts and excruciatingly long pauses, Perry could not remember the third of the three federal agencies he’d promised to shutter if elected.

Finally, he sheepishly muttered, “Oops.”

The Energy Department, which he later ran during the Trump administration, is what slipped his mind.

Getting personal

Another damaging moment opened a 1988 presidential debate, when Democrat Michael Dukakis was pressed about his opposition to capital punishment in a question that evoked his wife.

“If Kitty Dukakis were raped and murdered, would you favor an irrevocable death penalty for the killer?” CNN anchor Bernard Shaw asked. Dukakis showed little emotion, responding, “I don’t see any evidence that it’s a deterrent.”

Dukakis later said he wished he’d said that his wife “is the most precious thing, she and my family, that I have in this world.”

That year’s vice presidential debate featured one of the best-remembered, pre-planned one-liners.

When Republican Dan Quayle compared himself to John F. Kennedy while debating Lloyd Bentsen, the Democrat was ready. He’d studied Quayle’s campaigning and seen him invoke Kennedy in the past.

“Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy. I knew Jack Kennedy,” Bentsen began slowly and deliberately, drawing out the moment. “Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you’re no Jack Kennedy.”

The audience erupted in applause and laughter. Quayle was left to stare straight ahead.

Wordless blunders

Quayle and George H.W. Bush still easily won the 1988 election. But they lost in 1992 after then-President Bush was caught on camera looking at his watch while Democrat Bill Clinton talked to an audience member during a town hall debate. Some thought it made Bush look bored and aloof.

In another instance of a nonverbal debate miscue, then-Democratic Vice President Al Gore was criticized for a subpar opening 2000 debate performance with Republican George W. Bush in which he repeatedly and very audibly sighed.

During their second, town hall-style debate, Gore moved so close to Bush while the Republican answered one question that Bush finally looked over and offered a confident nod, drawing laughter from the audience.

A similar moment occurred in 2016, as Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton faced the audience to answer questions during a debate with Trump. Trump moved in close behind her, narrowed his eyes and glowered.

Clinton later wrote of the incident: “He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled.”

That didn’t stop Trump from claiming the presidency a few weeks later.

WASHINGTON — With the political conventions in the rearview mirror, Congress returns this week facing the traditional election year push and pull of members wanting to get out of Washington as quickly as possible while doing just enough to avoid a government shutdown.

House conservatives have been agitating about attaching a noncitizen voting bill to the September stopgap spending bill, and for Speaker Mike Johnson, R-La., to pitch a plan to punt the spending debate into 2025.

The stopgap bill released Friday night by House Republicans would combine a six-month continuing resolution with a House-passed bill that supporters say would help to ensure that noncitizens can’t vote in federal elections — something Democrats note is already against the law. If it becomes law, the continuing resolution would set a March 28 deadline to avert a partial government shutdown.

As with any spending bill in the narrowly divided House, its path to passage is far from certain. And in any case, Senate Democrats are unlikely to seriously entertain the noncitizen voting legislation — which likely would set up a scenario where the Democrat-led Senate would kick back a “clean” stopgap bill that would force a decision on Johnson’s part.

Aside from that, appropriators might rather tackle spending issues in the lame-duck session, while current members are still in office. That would set the stage for an omnibus spending package — exactly what House conservatives would like to avoid.

“Democrats support a CR to keep the government open,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, D-N.Y., wrote in a weekend letter to colleagues. “As I have said before, the only way to get things done is in a bipartisan way. Despite Republican bluster, that is how we’ve handled every funding bill in the past, and this time should be no exception. We will not let poison pills or Republican extremism put funding for critical programs at risk.”

Spending won’t be the only thing on the agenda, however.

The farm bill lapses at the end of September, meaning it will need an extension either as part of the continuing resolution or in some other legislative vehicle. And the fiscal 2025 national defense authorization measure is still awaiting action.

Schumer began the recess talking up the possibility of attaching legislation advanced by the Rules and Administration Committee intended to counter the use of deepfakes in political advertising.

“These are American bills. We are going to fight because democracy is at such risk. We’re going to fight to get these done in every way that we can, and we hope our Republican friends will relent,” Schumer told NBC News. “As I said, we do have some Republican support. This is not a Democratic or Republican issue. Democracy is at risk if these deepfakes are allowed to prevail.”

The House is kicking off a week full of bills targeting China, many of which are likely to have bipartisan support because they are being considered under suspension of the rules, an expedited procedure that requires a two-thirds majority vote to pass.

That may be the primary substance, but there’s also plenty of room for more politics.

In the Senate, Schumer could opt to call another vote on legislation intended to support access to and availability of fertility treatments like IVF. A procedural vote to advance the measure back in June only got 48 votes. Republican Sens. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska and Susan Collins of Maine crossed over in support. Sixty votes were needed.

Still, since then former President Donald Trump has been talking up his support for IVF and there may be a political advantage for Democrats to forcing another vote, especially if the Trump doubles down on his support during Tuesday night’s presidential debate.

House Republicans will surely have plenty of politically charged votes of their own.

There is an ongoing possibility of an effort to impeach President Joe Biden — which could be forced onto the floor agenda by conservative agitators even if Republican leaders would prefer to focus on other matters.

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©2024 CQ-Roll Call, Inc., All Rights Reserved. Visit cqrollcall.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

WASHINGTON — When Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump take the stage Tuesday for their first — and perhaps only — presidential debate, the stakes will be enormously high.

With just eight weeks to election day and early voting in Pennsylvania beginning Sept. 16, there’s little time for either candidate to recover from a bad performance.

“The debate could be another defining moment,” said Berwood Yost, director of the Franklin & Marshall College Poll. “This is the first time we get to see these two on the same stage. … Who knows what could happen given what’s happened so far?”

It will be one of the few chances Harris has to show the nation and Pennsylvania residents how she operates under pressure.

Pennsylvania is a must-win for each candidate.

The debate stage is in Philadelphia; Harris is prepping in Pittsburgh. Both sides have been campaigning regularly here and pouring unprecedented amounts of cash into the state, the most populous of the battleground states whose trove of 19 electoral votes likely will decide whether Trump or Harris takes the oath of office in January.

The Real Clear Politics polling average has the race as a dead heat in Pennsylvania after Trump led President Joe Biden by 4.5 percentage points. Harris is spending the weekend in Pittsburgh’s Omni William Penn hotel preparing for the debate after joining Biden in the city at a Labor Day rally. Her running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, just finished a two-day barnstorming tour, while Trump picked Harrisburg for a Fox News Channel town hall meeting last week, and his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, toured businesses in Erie.

Tobe Berkovitz, associate professor of advertising emeritus at Boston University, said the candidates need to “stay on message and most importantly stay under control.”

Polling shows most Americans have already made up their minds and won’t be swayed; a handful of undecideds will determine the next president. Yost estimated that 85% of the electorate is locked, with about 15% still up for grabs.

Both candidates need to play to those undecided voters, experts said.

“This election, as with the last one, will be decided on the margins,” acknowledged Halie Soifer, CEO of the Jewish Democratic Council of America.

Trump needs to appeal to the almost 1 in 5 Pennsylvania Republican voters who backed former South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley in this year’s Pennsylvania primary, even though she had ended her campaign weeks before.

Harris needs to address energy issues and thread the needle on an increasingly complicated union vote.

Her appearance at Pittsburgh’s Labor Day event was another effort to keep the union support Biden, a native of Scranton, had shored up. Biden won 56% of the votes of union households in 2020, up from the 51% who supported 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton four years earlier, according to CNN exit polls. Meanwhile, Trump’s share of the union vote fell from 46% in 2016 to 40% in 2020.

Harris joined Biden — and Trump — in siding with the United Steelworkers union and opposing the proposed sale of U.S. Steel, Pittsburgh’s iconic company, to a Japanese concern, Nippon Steel Corp.

But even as labor leadership opposed the deal, 400 steelworkers rallied Downtown last week in support of Nippon’s proposed purchase, and U.S. Steel’s CEO warned that local jobs — and possibly the company headquarters itself — could be lost if the merger failed.

That’s an issue that could affect the outcome of the election in Pennsylvania, and therefore nationally, whether or not U.S. Steel is brought up during Tuesday’s debate.

“With the intense media focus, and the social media and the 24/7, for both of these candidates this is make or break,” Berkovitz said, “Plus, we’re going into early voting. … There’s not a lot of time or events for them to recover. We’re on a tight time frame as it is.”

Vetting the VP

Harris was not vetted by voters in the presidential primaries, becoming the party’s nominee only after Biden decided not to seek reelection following a disastrous performance in the first debate. Though she has served as vice president for more than three years, her national debut as a presidential candidate came last month in Chicago when she delivered her acceptance speech to an enthusiastic crowd at the Democratic National Convention.

Her nomination has energized an electorate that was going through the motions and preparing for a rematch between Trump and Biden, meaning a larger audience on Tuesday.

The debate will be just one of her initial chances to command the attention of a nation as a candidate for the White House.

“She’s making a first impression this time around,” said Vince Galko, a Pennsylvania Republican strategist.

Harris is no stranger to debates, however. As Biden’s running mate, she faced off against then-Vice President Mike Pence four years ago. And during the 2020 Democratic presidential primaries, she enjoyed a short-lived burst of support after confronting Biden over his relationships with segregationist Democratic senators and his initial opposition to school busing.

In one response, she talked about a little girl who rode the bus to integrate the public schools. “That little girl was me,” she said.

Trump made the 2016 Republican debates must-watch TV as he gave his primary opponents unflattering nicknames. He skipped the primary debates in 2024, and was on stage during Biden’s dismal debate performance in June.

He’s already named his opponent “Comrade Kamala” as he falsely charged her with being a communist.

“His only hope is to drag Harris down,” said former U.S. Rep. Jim Greenwood, R-Pa., who is helping to lead a group of Pennsylvania Republicans backing Harris. “He’s going to use his usual absurd characterizations that she’s a communist, she’s a lunatic, she’s going to destroy the country. She’s probably a good enough debater that she can parry those criticisms back at him.”

Democratic consultant Glenn Totten said Harris also needs to empathize with those tuning in to the debate.

“The only hurdle she has to get over is to make people believe and make people understand that she’s on their side,” Totten said. “Almost everybody will acknowledge that Donald J. Trump is all about Donald J. Trump. As long as Vice President Harris can make people understand she’s there to protect their interests and move the country forward, she’ll walk away with all the roses.”

Still, Harris’ previous opposition to fracking and her deciding vote to spend billions of dollars for clean energy projects is a hurdle she must overcome in Western Pennsylvania, Galko said.

She’s backed off on opposing fracking, and those clean energy projects include two hubs to develop clean hydrogen in opposite ends of the state, but Galko said a lot of her positions are at odds with those of Pennsylvanians.

“Let her talk,” Galko said. “As more people get to know her, they see her positions are not within those of average Americans. … I’m curious to see how she moderates on issues that relate to Pennsylvania, whether it’s fracking or late-term abortions. Does she lead with that or wait for that to come up?”

Indeed, Trump, in a speech Thursday to the Economic Club of New York, hit hard on energy, insisting that Harris still opposed fracking and promising to ratchet up oil and gas production while ending funding for clean energy projects like the hydrogen hubs.

“We have more liquid gold under our feet than any other country, including Russia and Saudi Arabia. We will be using it,” Trump said. “We will blast through every bureaucratic hurdle to issue rapid approvals for new drilling, new pipelines, new refineries, new power plants and new electric plants and reactors of all types.”

Wooing Republicans

Still, many Republicans already oppose Trump, and a strong performance at the debate by Harris could encourage them to pull the lever for her in November, Greenwood said.

“What the vice president needs to do is first be herself, second be presidential,” Greenwood said. “She talked about putting a Republican in her Cabinet. I think she needs to contrast herself with Trump, who shows little interest in bipartisanship and more interest in appealing to his pretty far-right-of-center base.”

Harris’ presence atop the Democratic ticket is attracting more interest from those who previously had not been excited about this November, pollsters said.

“What the polling right now is showing is because of the enthusiasm about having a fresh face, you’re going to get significantly more voters who are not committed watching this debate who would not normally watch a debate,” said Patrick Murray, director of the Monmouth University Polling Institute. “It could have more of an impact than a typical debate has when the only people paying close attention are real partisans.”

Those persuadable voters are more independent, more moderate, and less likely to show up at the polls, Yost said. He said Harris needs to address their issues, such as the economy, abortion, immigration and saving democracy.

“You’ve got to talk in a way that speaks to those people who are still truly making up their minds. You have to approach those questions in a way that is perceived as being more moderate than partisan,” he said. “Some of them are looking for credentials that you can do the job. It’s not just about these issues but it’s about talking about the issues in a way that not only appeals to these voters but gets them to vote.”

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(c)2024 the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. Visit the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette at www.post-gazette.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

PHILADELPHIA — The spotlight aimed at Pennsylvania is going to need a new bulb soon.

Tuesday’s debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris at 9 p.m. at the National Constitution Center will become the latest high-stakes moment in an unprecedented presidential campaign playing out in Pennsylvania.

The impact could be huge. The race is essentially tied in Pennsylvania, which could determine the whole election — and while polling shows that Harris has made up ground from where President Joe Biden was, she’s far from definitively overcoming Trump, who still enjoys substantial support in the state.

Debates can be consequential, as this election season has already shown. And Tuesday could wind up being the only debate between Harris and Trump before the November election.

So what do both candidates have to do, and what are we watching for?

Trump allies hope he keeps his cool, focuses on issues

Trump comes in with an advantage of experience, as this will be his seventh general election debate — more than any other candidate in history. His team also won the war over muting the candidates’ mics when they’re not speaking, which means he’ll have less leeway to interrupt or go on tangents.

His allies want him to stick to the issues, particularly immigration and inflation, and to tie Harris to Biden on both. He’ll also likely try to argue Harris, who is less well-known than the presidential candidates before her, is not yet ready to run the country. It’s all an opportunity to slow some of the momentum Harris enjoyed coming out of the Democratic National Convention.

“[Harris] told the world on CNN ‘my values have not changed,’ so we’re going to pin her actual record to her,” Trump senior adviser Tim Murtaugh said, previewing an attack on Harris over issues she’s pivoted on, like fracking. “Her record is what it is… She is a San Francisco liberal who is pretending not to be one and she will not be allowed to get away with that.”

Murtaugh said Trump will also emphasize Harris is part of the Biden-Harris administration Harris and Trump are readying for their first debate in Philly. Here’s what’s at stake. “She cannot run as an outsider.”

Calm and disciplined aren’t typically words used to describe Trump on stage, RNC chairman Andy Reilly acknowledged. But he said it’s the former president’s best chance at capturing undecided voters, a small but potentially crucial group in neck-and-neck swing states like Pennsylvania.

“Sure, there will be times Trump goes off message and can’t help himself. I tell him, [when it comes to] persuadable voters, that’s not gonna ring the bell for them.”

Harris looks to further define herself and let Trump be Trump

Harris, who will conduct her debate prep from — where else? — Pennsylvania, will look to hammer Trump on issues like reproductive rights and threats to democracy while laying out her priorities. It will be the first time the two have shared a room since Trump’s State of the Union addresses when Harris was a senator, and comes after Trump has unleashed racist and sexist attacks on her.

Thus far, Harris has established herself as above the often racist and sexist accusations he’s wielded at her, rarely engaging in any response — and that strategy may continue on the debate stage on Tuesday. There’s also the question of whether Trump will further alienate himself from some voters by doubling down on those attacks on stage.

Eric Stern, a Democratic strategist in Pennsylvania, said Harris’ best move is to “let Trump dig himself into a hole.”

“He has a unique talent to do that.”

Stern thinks that’s an achievable mission for Harris, even in a format without muted mics, which could restrain Trump somewhat. “She should let him take his full 60 — and then 30 and whatever — to tell us all what he really thinks,” Stern said.

Both will be making their pitch to a very small group of undecided voters

Even after Harris replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee, voters expressed frustration with the political system — a sentiment that’s often especially true for undecided voters, who tend to be moderate or independent.

While both Trump and Harris have served in the White House, they have each tried to present themselves as the candidate who can bring a fresh start. Some of Trump’s campaign signs read “Let’s Save America.” Harris has been vice president for nearly a term, but frequently talks to voters about “fighting for a brighter future.” As both candidates make a pitch that they’re the change the country needs, who will do it more effectively?

“He has to remember that his target audience is a swing persuadable voter,” Reilly said. “This is when the swing voter is focusing in on the race and he has to debunk the Kamala 2.0 movement for them. He needs to remind people, with facts in a calm way, that Harris was there. Harris had a long record prior to being the vice president and as vice president, she supported views of Biden’s which have turned them off.”

For Harris’ part, Stern thinks she needs to tell voters about the specifics of her plans and how they can help working-class Americans, a key voting bloc in Pennsylvania and other “Blue Wall” states.

“I’m excited for her to talk about abortion rights and greedflation and going after corporate price gouging,” he said.

Ultimately, he thinks her best appeal to undecided voters who may be watching is an anti-Trump pitch.

“Tell them, this guy is a crook, this guy is dangerous. He has been convicted of crimes … he will not be good for you, he is dangerous.”

Look for questions about fracking, U.S. Steel, and other direct appeals to Pennsylvania

The two candidates are bound to cover a lot, but with the debate taking place in Pennsylvania — the state both Trump and Harris see as a pathway to the presidency — look for appeals on two very commonwealth-specific issues: Fracking and the sale of Pittsburgh’s U.S. Steel.

“I think you might hear a thing or two about fracking,” Murtaugh, the Trump campaign adviser and a Pennsylvania native, said.

Ironically, they’re also both issues Harris and Trump agree on now. But on both, Harris has only recently solidified her stance, saying she won’t ban fracking and also opposes the sale of U.S. Steel to Japan.

Look for Trump to try to argue he’s the legitimate champion of the Rust Belt, and for Harris to double down on her positions.

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©2024 The Philadelphia Inquirer, LLC. Visit at inquirer.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

Demoralized by the Biden administration’s handling of the Israel-Hamas war, Palestinian American Samia Assed found in Vice President Kamala Harris’ ascension — and her running mate pick — “a little ray of hope.”

That hope, she said, shattered during last month’s Democratic National Convention, where a request for a Palestinian American speaker was denied and listening to Harris left her feeling like the Democratic presidential nominee will continue the U.S. policies that have outraged many in the anti-war camp.

“I couldn’t breathe because I felt unseen and erased,” said Assed, a community organizer in New Mexico.

Under different circumstances, Assed would have reveled in the groundbreaking rise of a woman of color as her party’s nominee. Instead, she agonizes over her ballot box options.

For months, many Palestinian Americans have been contending with the double whammy of the rising Palestinian death toll and suffering in Gaza and their own government’s support for Israel in the war. Alongside pro-Palestinian allies, they’ve grieved, organized, lobbied and protested as the killings and destruction unfolded on their screens or touched their own families. Now, they also wrestle with tough, deeply personal voting decisions, including in battleground states.

“It’s a very hard time for Palestinian youth and Palestinian Americans,” Assed said. “There’s a lot of pain.”

Without a meaningful change, voting for Harris would feel for her “like a jab in the heart,” she said. At the same time, Assed, a lifelong Democrat and feminist, would like to help block another Donald Trump presidency and remain engaged with the Democrats “to hold them liable,” she said.

“It’s really a difficult place to be in.”

She’s not alone.

In Georgia, the Gaza bloodshed has been haunting Ghada Elnajjar. She said the war claimed the lives of more than 100 members of her extended family in Gaza, where her parents were born.

She saw missed opportunities at the DNC to connect with voters like her. Besides the rejection of the request for a Palestinian speaker, Elnajjar found a disconnect between U.S. policies and Harris’ assertion that she and President Joe Biden were working to accomplish a cease-fire and hostage deal.

“Without stopping U.S. financial support and military support to Israel, this will not stop,” said Elnajjar who in 2020 campaigned for Biden. “I’m a U.S. citizen. I’m a taxpayer … and I feel betrayed and neglected.”

She’ll keep looking for policy changes, but, if necessary, remain “uncommitted,” potentially leaving the top of the ticket blank. Harris must earn her vote, she said.

Harris, in her DNC speech, said she and Biden were working to end the war such that “Israel is secure, the hostages are released, the suffering in Gaza ends and the Palestinian people can realize their right to dignity, security, freedom, and self-determination.”

She said she “will always ensure Israel has the ability to defend itself,” while describing the suffering in Gaza as “heartbreaking.”

While her recent rhetoric on Palestinian suffering has been viewed as empathetic by some who had soured on Biden over the war, the lack of a concrete policy shift appears to have increasingly frustrated many of those who want the war to end. Activists demanding a permanent cease-fire have urged an embargo on U.S. weapons to Israel, whose military campaign in Gaza has killed over 40,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health officials.

The war was sparked by an Oct. 7 attack on Israel in which Hamas-led terrorists killed some 1,200 people and took about 250 hostages. Hamas has been designated as a terrorist organization by the United States, Canada and the European Union.

Layla Elabed, a Palestinian American and co-director of the Uncommitted National Movement, said the demand for a policy shift remains. Nationally, “uncommitted” has garnered hundreds of thousands of votes in Democratic primaries.

Elabed said Harris and her team have been invited to meet before Sept. 15 with “uncommitted” movement leaders from key swing states and with Palestinian families with relatives killed in Gaza. After that date, she said, “we will need to make the decision if we can actually mobilize our base” to vote for Harris.

Without a policy change, “we can’t do an endorsement,” and will, instead, continue talking about the “dangers” of a Trump presidency, leaving voters to vote their conscience, she added.

Some other anti-war activists are taking it further, advocating for withholding votes from Harris in the absence of a change.

“There’s pressure to punish the Democratic Party,” Elabed said. “Our position is continue taking up space within the Democratic Party,” and push for change from the inside.

Some of the tensions surfaced at an August rally in Michigan when anti-war protesters interrupted Harris. Initially, Harris said everybody’s voice matters. As the shouting continued, with demonstrators chanting that they “won’t vote for genocide,” she took a sharper tone.

“If you want Donald Trump to win, then say that,” she said.

Nada Al-Hanooti, national deputy organizing director with the Muslim American advocacy group Emgage Action, rejects as unfair the argument by some that traditionally Democratic voters who withhold votes from Harris are in effect helping Trump. She said the burden should be on Harris and her party.

“Right now, it’s a struggle being a Palestinian American,” she said. “I don’t want a Trump presidency, but, at the same time, the Democratic Party needs to win our vote.”

Though dismayed that no Palestinian speaker was allowed on the DNC stage, Al-Hanooti said she felt inspired by how “uncommitted” activists made Palestinians part of the conversation at the convention. Activists were given space there to hold a forum discussing the plight of Palestinians in Gaza.

“We in the community still need to continue to push Harris on conditioning aid, on a cease-fire,” she said. “The fight is not over.”

She said she’s never known grief like that she has experienced over the past year. In the girls of Gaza, she sees her late grandmother who, at 10, was displaced from her home during the 1948 war surrounding Israel’s creation and lived in a Syrian refugee camp, dreaming of returning home.

“It just completely tears me apart,” Al-Hanooti said.

She tries to channel her pain into putting pressure on elected officials and encouraging community members to vote, despite encountering what she said was increased apathy, with many feeling that their vote won’t matter. “Our job at Emgage is simply right now to get our Muslim community to vote because our power is in the collective.”

In 2020, Emgage — whose political action committee then endorsed Biden — and other groups worked to maximize Muslim American turnout, especially in battleground states. Muslims make up a small percentage of Americans overall, but activists hope that in states with notable Muslim populations, such as Michigan, energizing more of them makes a difference in close races — and demonstrates the community’s political power.

Some voters want to send a message.

“Our community has given our votes away cheaply,” argued Omar Abuattieh, a pharmacy major at Rutgers University in New Jersey. “Once we can start to understand our votes as a bargaining tool, we’ll have more power.”

For Abuattieh, whose mother was born in Gaza, that means planning to vote third party “to demonstrate the power in numbers of a newly activated community that deserves future consultation.”

A Pew Research Center survey in February found that U.S. Muslims are more sympathetic to the Palestinian people than many other Americans are and that only 6% of Muslim American adults believe the U.S. is striking the right balance between the Israelis and Palestinians. Nearly two-thirds of Muslim registered voters identify with or lean toward the Democratic Party, according to the survey.

But U.S. Muslims, who are racially and ethnically diverse, are not monolithic in their political behavior; some have publicly supported Harris in this election cycle. In 2020, among Muslim voters, 64% supported Biden and 35% supported Trump, according to AP VoteCast.

The Harris campaign said it has appointed two people for Muslim and Arab outreach.

Harris “will continue to meet with leaders from Palestinian, Muslim, Israeli and Jewish communities, as she has throughout her vice presidency,” the campaign said in response to questions, without specifically commenting on the uncommitted movement’s request for a meeting before Sept. 15.

Harris is being scrutinized by those who say the Biden-Harris administration hasn’t done enough to pressure Israel to end the war and by Republicans looking to brand her as insufficient in her support for Israel.

Karoline Leavitt, the Trump campaign’s national press secretary, said Trump “will once again deliver peace through strength to rebuild and expand the peace coalition he built in his first term to create long-term safety and security for both the Israeli and Palestinian people.”

Many Arab and Muslim Americans were angered by Trump’s ban, while in office, that affected travelers from several Muslim-majority countries, which Biden rescinded.

In Michigan, Ali Ramlawi, who owns a restaurant in Ann Arbor, said Harris’ nomination initially gave him relief on various domestic issues, but the DNC left him disappointed on the Palestinian question.

Before the convention, he expected to vote Democratic, but now says he’s considering backing the Green Party for the top of the ticket or leaving that blank.

“Our vote shouldn’t be taken for granted,” he said. “I won’t vote for the lesser of two evils.”

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

With polls showing a tight race, the stakes are sky high because the first debate between candidates typically draws a huge audience and has the rare potential to shift opinions of millions of voters all at once.

This debate is crucial for another reason: Harris and Trump have never met or interacted with one another. Americans will get to judge for themselves how they match up and which one they want to lead the country for the next four years.

“People tune in not so much to hear what a candidate has to say on a specific issue but [to assess] their personal character: what blend of strength and sensitivity they’ll bring to their actual leadership,” said Lawrence Levy, a Hofstra University professor.

Anyone who doubts if 90 minutes can change the course of history need look no further than President Biden’s disastrous performance in the June clash with Trump, which eventually forced him to abandon his reelection bid and hand the Democratic baton to Harris.

That cataclysmic shift shook up the race and allowed Democrats to erase the strong lead Trump had built and put Harris slightly ahead as the campaign turns into its home stretch.

Here’s some things to watch as the debate looms:

When and how to watch

The debate will air on ABC at 9 p.m. on Tuesday. It will run for 90 minutes.

The moderators will be John Muir and Linsey Davis.

How are Trump and Harris getting ready?

Harris arrived in Pittsburgh Thursday for a weekend of preparations, including mock debates.

Trump says he doesn’t plan to do extensive prep and doesn’t believe practice debates are helpful.

What are the rules?

Both campaigns agreed to debate under the same rules as the previous debate between Trump and Biden.

The candidates’ microphones will be muted when the other one is speaking. There will be no live audience. The clash will be held at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Candidates will stand at lecterns. They may only bring a pen and notepad and water. No notes or props are allowed.

There will be no opening statements and two minute closing statements.

Will there be any more debates?

That’s unclear. Trump has proposed three debates with Harris, including an initial one on Fox News on Sept. 4 that Harris never agreed to.

The Harris campaign says it will negotiate terms for a second debate with Trump in October if the first debate goes off as expected.

What about the VPs?

Democratic vice presidential candidate Tim Walz and Republican JD Vance have agreed to debate on CBS on Oct. 1.

Norah O’Donnell and Margaret Brennan will moderate. No other details have been revealed.

What issues will Trump and Harris stress?

Trump has mostly focused his campaign on two policy issues: immigration and the economy.

He will try to tie Harris to Biden’s unpopular record on both issues, even though both inflation and the crisis at the southern border have eased significantly in recent months.

The former president will also brand Harris a flip-flopper for dropping her previous support for a ban on fracking, a major issue in energy-producing Pennsylvania.

Harris will slam Trump over Project 2025, the controversial 900-page right-wing blueprint for a second Trump term that has struck a surprisingly powerful chord with voters. She will call him a threat to democracy for trying to overturn his loss in the 2020 election.

Perhaps most importantly, she will present herself as a strong advocate for abortion rights, which most Americans support. She will tear into Trump for his appointment of conservative judges who overturned Roe v. Wade as well as his opaque position on an abortion referendum in his home state of Florida.

A split-screen for the ages

Harris is a 59-year-old Black woman who says she’s optimistic about America’s future. She presents herself as a candidate of change.

Trump is 78 and would be the oldest president in history. He says America is a nation in decline and needs a drastic change to pull it back from the abyss.

No one can predict whose vision will win out but it will certainly be one of the most dramatic contrasts in presidential debate history.

“She needs to continue to be the younger, far more appealing optimistic candidate of change and a better future,” said Tom Watson, a Democratic strategist.

Can Harris convince middle America she’s just like them?

Even though she’s been vice president for four years, many Americans say they don’t know much about Kamala Harris. That’s both an opportunity and a potential pitfall.

She’ll try to introduce herself as the product of a normal middle-class California upbringing and stress her mainstream political path, a portrait that might sway undecided Midwestern moderate or swing voters.

So far, Harris has sought to downplay the trailblazing nature of her run to become the first Black woman president. Most pundits don’t expect that to change on Tuesday.

“She’s going to let the optics of that kind of speak for themselves,” said Errin Haines, an editor for The 19th, an independent news site that covers gender and politics.

Soft touch or sharp elbows?

Many pundits say Harris should show she has the chops to tell Trump to his face that he is not fit to serve in the White House, especially after inciting the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol.

Karl Rove, a famed GOP strategist who engineered former President George W. Bush’s two White House wins, said Harris cannot be content to show voters she is smarter or different than Trump.

“[Harris] has to show she can stand up to him, that she can go toe-to-toe with him,” Rove said Saturday at the Texas Tribune Festival in Austin.  “She needs to show she can do the job.”

“She needs to prosecute the case against him,” said Basil Smikle, a Columbia professor and Democratic strategist. “Make us the jury and lay out a case for why he doesn’t deserve to be president.

Watson said Harris must not miss the opportunity to inflict political damage on Trump by laying out the case against him on the debate stage.

“She should sharpen the edges, not soften them,” he said. “Take the hard questions directly at a much reduced and angry Trump. The major pitfall [for her] is in laying back too much.”

Trump’s ‘soccer dad’ problem

Trump inspires unquestioned loyalty from his MAGA base and usually trains all his efforts on winning even more fervent support from them, especially working class white men.

But if there’s an opportunity for Trump in a debate where tens of millions are watching, it’s to try to win a somewhat bigger slice of everybody else.

He could do that by showing he’s just calm and trustworthy enough for a college-educated suburban father, for example, who may prefer Republican economic policies but dislike Trump’s personality.

“Trump would be wise to modulate in ways that Harris may not expect, and which could give him one final look from the moderate voters, particularly suburbanites,” said Levy, who studies political trends in suburbia.

Matt Mackowiak, a Republican strategist, agreed that Trump can win if he keeps his cool and stick to the issues.

“Trump must make her the incumbent, prosecute the case against the Biden-Harris administration, and present a positive vision for the country,” Mackowiak said. “If he does that, he will likely win reelection.”

Can’t they both just get along?

A presidential debate is far more than an exchange of ideas or sparring over issues. It’s a chance for a wide swath of voters to size up the two candidates, side by side, face to face.

Most voters have very strong opinions about Trump. He is likely to say some outrageous things and may even brazenly lie as he has done in past high-stakes appearances.

The spotlight will be on Harris to show how she handles his outsized personality, in part because they may see that as a test of her leadership ability.

“They want to judge how tough she is,” said Larry Sabato, a University of Virginia political analyst. “Everyone knows Trump is a bully, but so are many world leaders she would have to deal with as president.”

Haines predicted there is little chance Trump can resist launching some kind of ugly “racial or gendered” attack on Harris, perhaps by accusing her of being stupid or “nasty” like he did to Hillary Clinton in 2016.

Doing so could be a big mistake for Trump by creating a viral moment that showcases his age and perceived intolerance to a changing America.

“He risks alienating voters the GOP needs,” Smikle said.

David Niven, a University of Cincinnati political scientist, compared sparring with Trump to having “a policy debate with a circus performer.”

“The way to win isn’t to pretend this is a traditional debate, or to start juggling,” he said. “You have to rise above it. Stick to your message. Stick up for yourself.

“And when Trump gets out of control,” he added, “hit him hard.”

NEW YORK (AP) — He claimed she would raise taxes and accused her of supporting open border policies that would allow an influx of unvetted migrants into the country. He blamed her for a litany of the current administration’s failures and cast her potential presidency as four more years of the same.

Donald Trump wasn’t facing Vice President Kamala Harris. It was Hillary Clinton on the debate stage.

As Trump and Harris prepare to debate for the first — and potentially only — time Tuesday, his three meetings with Clinton in 2016 illustrate the challenges facing both candidates in what is again shaping up to be an extremely close election.

Harris will face a skilled and experienced debater who excels at rattling his rivals with a barrage of insults and interruptions, while projecting unflappable confidence and conviction. And Trump will be up against a longtime prosecutor known for landing pointed punches. He again faces a woman who would become the country’s first female president, and must contend with the underlying gender dynamics at play.

Trump started out on good behavior

During their first 2016 debate in late September, moderated by NBC’s Lester Holt, Trump began on his best behavior. He and Clinton warmly shook hands after taking the stage and Trump, in his first answer, said he agreed with his rival when it came to the importance of affordable child care.

After referring to the former first lady, senator, and secretary of state as “Secretary Clinton,” he checked to make sure she approved.

“Yes? Is that ok? Good. I want you to be very happy. It’s very important to me,” he said, drawing laughs from the audience and Clinton herself. (In later debates, he called her “Hillary,” while she consistently used “Donald.”)

It was Clinton who took the first digs of the night when she criticized the then-reality TV star and real estate developer for supporting “Trumped-up trickle-down” economics and said their different perspectives were borne from the fact that Trump had received millions of dollars from his wealthy father, while hers had worked hard printing draperies.

In the audience, she said, was a worker who accused Trump of stiffing him on bills.

As the debate wore on, Trump became more combative as he pressed Clinton on why she hadn’t done the things she was proposing as a candidate for president during her decades of public life.

“Typical politician: All talk, no action. Sounds good, doesn’t work. Never gonna happen,” he said.

Clinton’s strategy: laugh it off

Clinton’s strategy in responding to Trump’s attacks was clear from the beginning: Don’t get rattled. Laugh it off.

She never appeared flustered and instead smiled widely as she dismissively brushed off what she at one point cast as Trump “saying more crazy things.”

“No wonder you’ve been fighting ISIS your entire adult life,” Trump quipped at one point as he tried to cast Clinton as an “all talk, no action” politician, of the group that formed in 2013.

“I have a feeling that by the end of this evening, I’m going to be blamed for everything that’s ever happened,” Clinton responded with a smile.

“Why not?” Trump answered.

Trump, meanwhile, sought to turn the arguments she made against him back onto her.

“I have much better judgment than she has…. I also have a much better temperament than she has,” he declared. “I think my strongest asset — maybe by far – is my temperament. I have a winning temperament.”

‘You ought to be ashamed of yourself’

The second debate between Trump and Clinton was far more combative. The town hall came just two days after the release of the “Access Hollywood” tape in which Trump bragged about sexually assaulting women.

With his campaign in freefall and top Republicans urging him to leave the race, Trump invited women who had accused former President Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton’s husband, of sexual misconduct, creating a spectacle as the women sat in the audience in the debate hall and spoke at a press conference beforehand.

There was no handshake this time, and the debate quickly devolved into accusations as Trump insisted what former president Clinton had done was “far worse” than his self-described “locker room talk.”

“Bill Clinton was abusive to women. Hillary Clinton attacked those same women and attacked them viciously,” he said. “I think it’s disgraceful, and I think she should be ashamed of herself.”

Later, Trump zeroed in on the thousands of hacked emails that Wikileaks had begun to publish the day of the tape’s release, as well as Clinton’s use of a personal email server during her time as secretary of state.

As Clinton sat on her stool, Trump approached her, and said that, if he won, he would instruct his attorney general to hire a special prosecutor to investigate her conduct.

“There has never been so many lies, so much deception,” he said. “There has never been anything like this. … Lives have been destroyed for doing 1/5th of what you’ve done, and it’s a disgrace.”

Clinton, again refusing to be flustered, directed viewers to her website where she said her campaign had fact-checked his false allegations.

“It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” she said.

“Because you’d be in jail,” Trump responded to cheers from the audience.

Trump lurked behind Clinton

Beyond encapsulating the sheer nastiness of the race, the debate, which was co-moderated by ABC’s Martha Raddatz and CNN’s Anderson Cooper, also underscored the gender dynamics at play. Trump, who is physically far larger, lurked behind Clinton at times.

As she apologized for using a private email server, Trump loomed ominously behind Clinton.

During a subsequent question on the Affordable Care Act and rising healthcare costs, Trump stood right behind Clinton as she stepped forward to respond to the audience member who had asked the question. The scene was immortalized in endless memes and parodies and has often been cited as a cautionary tale for male candidates debating women.

“’This is not okay,′ I thought,” Clinton later wrote in a memoir recounting the episode. She said that, on the small stage, “no matter where I walked, he followed me closely, staring at me, making faces. It was incredibly uncomfortable. He was literally breathing down my neck. My skin crawled.”

“It was one of those moments where you wish you could hit pause and ask everyone watching: ‘Well, what would you do?’ Do you stay calm, keep smiling, and carry on as if he weren’t repeatedly invading your space? Or do you turn, look him in the eye, and say loudly and clearly, ‘Back up, you creep, get away from me, I know you love to intimidate women but you can’t intimidate me, so back up.”

“I chose option A,” she said, “aided by a lifetime of dealing with difficult men trying to throw me off.”

“I wonder, though,” she went on, “whether I have chosen option B. It certainly would have been better TV.”

‘No puppet. You’re the puppet’

By the third debate, which was moderated by Fox News’ Chris Wallace, allegations of Russian election interference were dominating the news.

“We’ve never had a foreign government trying to interfere in our election,” Clinton said, expressing outrage that Trump had encouraged espionage against Americans and accusing him of touting the line of Russian President Vladimir Putin in exchange for assistance.

“She has no idea whether it’s Russia, China or anybody else. She has no idea,” Trump retorted, contradicting the conclusions of a long list of American intelligence agencies. He insisted he didn’t know Putin, whom he derisively said had no respect for Clinton.

“Well that’s because he’d rather have a puppet as president of the United States,” Clinton responded.

“No puppet, no puppet. You’re the puppet,” Trump shot back.

(Trump later said he condemned election interference “by Russia or anybody else.”)

Clinton, in an interview with The New York Times, referenced the “puppet” moment as an example of what she hoped Harris would do on stage Tuesday night.

“She just should not be baited. She should bait him. He can be rattled. He doesn’t know how to respond to substantive, direct attacks,” she told the outlet. “I mean, when I said he was a Russian puppet and he just sputtered onstage, I think that’s an example of how you get out a fact about him that really unnerves him.”

Taking advantage of the split screen

But the debate also provided a clear illustration of why Trump is such an effective debater. While Clinton tried to remain above the fray and laugh off attacks, Trump appeared in control, frequently interrupting with quips and commentary.

He also took advantage of the split-screen that kept the camera on both of the candidates’ faces through much of the debate, often looking straight ahead, projecting strength, and visibly reacting.

When Clinton at one point spoke about her experience, he interjected: “Give me a break.”

“Wrong,” he retorted, after she accused him of having mimicked a disabled reporter.

“Wrong,” he said again after she noted his past support for the invasion of Iraq.

Repeatedly, he tried to direct the proceedings, complementing Wallace or offering direction. After being asked about allegations of sexual assault by a long list of women, Trump insisted the stories were nothing but “lies” and “fiction” and then tried to deflect by pivoting to Clinton’s emails.

“What isn’t fictionalized is her emails,” he said. “That’s really what you should be talking about. Not fiction.”

Later, Clinton took a swipe at Trump as she discussed her plan to raise taxes on the rich to keep Social Security solvent.

“My Social Security payroll contribution will go up, as will Donald’s, assuming he can’t figure out how to get out of it,” she said.

“Such a nasty woman,” he said, shaking his head.

Time is a flat circle

The debates also demonstrated how little has changed over the last eight years.

During the third debate, Trump was asked for a second time about his efforts to sow doubts about the integrity of the election and claims that it was being rigged. Would he commit to accepting the results, he was asked?

“I will look at it at the time,” he said, complaining that a dishonest media was working to “poison the minds of the voters” and claiming, falsely, that millions of people were registered to vote who shouldn’t have been.

He also took issue with Clinton’s candidacy, as he has with Harris after she replaced Biden as the Democratic nominee.

“She shouldn’t be allowed to run. She’s guilty of a very, very serious crime,” he said.

He was asked again whether he would commit to a peaceful transition of power.

“What I’m saying is that I will tell you at the time,” he responded. “I’ll keep you in suspense.”

Clinton called his answer “horrifying” and noted that anytime anything is not going in Trump’s favor — from that year’s Iowa caucuses to losing at the Emmy Awards — he alleges it is rigged.

“Should have gotten it,” Trump said, drawing laughs.

“That is not the way our democracy works,” Clinton insisted.

ATLANTA (AP) — From her earliest campaigns in California to her serving as President Joe Biden’s running mate, Kamala Harris has honed an aggressive but calibrated approach to debates.

She tries to blend punch lines with details that build toward a broader narrative. She might shake her head to signal her disapproval while her opponent is speaking, counting on viewers to see her reaction on a split screen. And she has a go-to tactic to pivot debates back in her favor: saying she’s glad to answer a question as she gathers her thoughts to explain an evolving position or defend a past one.

Tuesday’s presidential debate will put the Democratic vice president’s skills to a test unlike any she’s faced. Harris faces former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, who will participate in his seventh general election debate since 2016 for an event that will be seen by tens of millions of viewers just as early voting in November’s election starts around the country.

People who have competed against Harris and prepared her rivals say she brings a series of advantages to the matchup, including her prosecutorial background juxtaposed with Trump being the first U.S. president convicted of felony crimes. Still, Harris allies warn that Trump can be a challenging and unpredictable opponent who veers between policy critiques, personal attacks, and falsehoods or conspiracy theories.

“She can meet the moment,” said Marc Short, who led Republican Vice President Mike Pence’s debate preparation against Harris in the fall of 2020. “She has shown that in different environments. I would not underestimate that in any way.”

Julian Castro, a Democrat who ran for president against Harris in the 2020 primary, said Harris blended “knowledge, poise and the ability to explain things well” to stand out during crowded primary debates.

“Some candidates get too caught up with trying to be catchy, trying to go viral,” Castro said. “She’s found a very good balance.”

Balancing narrative and detail

A former Harris aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to talk about her approach, said the vice president views the events like a jury trial she would have led when she was district attorney in San Francisco or querying a judicial nominee on Capitol Hill as a U.S. senator. The idea, the former aide said, has always been to win the debate on merit while leaving more casual or piecemeal viewers with key takeaways.

“She understands that debates are about the individual interactions themselves but also about a larger strategy of offering a vision for what your leadership and style looks like,” said Tim Hogan, who led Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s 2020 primary debate preparation.

Kathleen Hall Jamieson, a political communications professor at the University of Pennsylvania, said Harris makes deductive arguments but folds them into a broader narrative — the same way she would talk to jurors.

“She states a thesis and then follows with fact, fact, fact,” Jamieson said.

Jamieson pointed to the 2020 vice presidential debate in which Harris hammered Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economy, and to her most memorable 2019 primary debate when she skewered Biden for how he had talked about race and institutional racism. She weaved her critique of Biden’s record with her own biography as a young, biracial student in the early era of school integration.

“That little girl was me,” Harris said in a widely circulated quip that punctuated her story about court-ordered busing that helped non-white students attend integrated schools.

“Most people who are good at the deductive argument aren’t good at wrapping that with an effective narrative,” Jamieson said. “She’s good at both.”

Landing memorable punches

Castro said Harris has a good feel for when to strike, a quality he traced to her trial experience. In 2019, as multiple Democratic candidates talked over one another, Harris sat back before getting moderators to recognize her.

“Hey, guys, you know what? America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how we’re going to put food on their table,” she said, taking control of the conversation and drawing applause.

When Harris faced Pence in 2020, it was a mostly civil, substantive debate. But she got in digs that framed Pence as a serial interrupter, as Trump had been in his first debate with Biden.

“Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,” she said at one point, with a stern look. At another: “If you don’t mind letting me finish, we can have a conversation.”

Finding traps in policy

Debates have sometimes put Harris on the defensive.

In the 2020 primary matches, Tulsi Gabbard, who this year has endorsed Trump, blitzed Harris over how aggressively she prosecuted nonviolent drug offenders as a district attorney.

That fall, Pence made Harris sometimes struggle to defend Biden’s positions. Now, her task will be to defend not just Biden’s record, but her own role in that record and what policies she would pursue as president.

Short, one of Pence’s top aides, noted that Republicans and the media have raised questions about more liberal positions Harris took in her 2020 primary campaign, especially on fracking, universal healthcare, reparations for slavery and how to treat migrants who cross the U.S. border illegally.

“We were surprised that she missed some opportunities (against Pence) when the conversation was centered around policy,” Short said.

Timing, silence and nonverbal communication

One of Harris’ earliest debate triumphs came in 2010 as she ran for California attorney general. Her opponent was asked about his plans to accept his public pension while still being paid a salary for a current public post.

“I earned it,” Republican Steve Cooley said of the so-called “double-dipping” practice.

Harris looked on silently, with a slightly amused look as Cooley explained himself. When moderators recognized her, she said just seven words – “Go for it, Steve. You earned it!” — in a serious tone but with a look that communicated her sarcasm. The exchange landed in her television ads within days.

“Kamala Harris is quite effective at nonverbal communication and knowing when not to speak,” Jamieson said.

The professor said Harris often will shake her head and, with other looks, telegraph her disapproval while her opponent is speaking. Then she smiles before retorting, or attacking, in a conversational tone.

“She defuses some of the argument that Trump makes that she is ‘a nasty woman,’ that she’s engaging in egregiously unfair behavior, because her nonverbal presentation is actually undercutting that line of attack,” Jamieson said.

Meeting a new challenge with Trump

For all of Harris’ debate experience, Tuesday is still a new and massive stage. Democrats who ordinarily tear into Trump instead appeared on Sunday’s news shows to make clear that Harris faced a big task ahead.

“It will take almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate,” said Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, yet another of Harris’ 2020 opponents, on CNN. “It’s no ordinary proposition, not because Donald Trump is a master of explaining policy ideas and how they’re going to make people better off. It’s because he’s a master of taking any form or format that is on television and turning it into a show that is all about him.”

Castro noted that Trump is “a nasty and crafty stage presence” who makes preparation difficult. And with ABC keeping the candidates’ microphones off when they are not speaking, Harris may not find it as easy to produce another viral moment that hinges on viewers having seen or heard Trump at his most outlandish.

“The best thing she can do,” Castro said, “is not get distracted by his antics.”