Harris’ past debates: A prosecutor’s style with narrative flair but risks in a matchup with Trump

ATLANTA– From her early campaigns in California to her time as President Joe Biden’s running buddyKamala Harris has developed an aggressive but calibrated approach to debates.

She tries to weave jokes into details that form a larger story. 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 for turning debates back in her favor: She says she likes to answer a question while she gathers her thoughts to explain an evolving position or defend an earlier one.

Tuesday’s presidential debate will test the vice president’s skills in an unprecedented way. Haris stands opposite former president Donald Trumpwho will take part in his seventh general election debate since 2016, in an event that will be watched by tens of millions of viewers, as will Early voting begins in November elections throughout the country.

People who have run with Harris and groomed her rivals say she brings some advantages, but they also warn that Trump can be a challenging and unpredictable opponent who swings between policy criticism, personal attacks and lies or conspiracy theories.

“She can rise to the moment,” said Marc Short, who led Republican Vice President Mike Pence’s debate preparation for Harris in the fall of 2020. “She’s shown that in a variety of settings. I wouldn’t underestimate that in any way.”

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

“Some candidates are too busy trying to be catchy, trying to go viral,” Castro said. “She’s found a really good balance.”

A former Harris aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss her approach, said the vice president treats the proceedings as a jury trial or questioning a judicial nominee on Capitol Hill when she was a senator. The idea, the former aide said, has always been to win the debate on the merits while allowing more casual or fragmented viewers to retain the key points.

“She understands that debates are about the individual interactions themselves, but also about a broader strategy to provide 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 professor of political communication at the University of Pennsylvania, said Harris makes deductive arguments but weaves them into a broader story, much as she would talk to a jury.

“She makes a statement and then she follows up with fact, fact, fact,” she said.

Jamieson pointed to the 2020 vice presidential debate, in which Harris criticized Trump’s handling of the COVID-19 pandemic and the economy, and to her most memorable primary debate of 2019, when she took Biden to task for his discussions of race and institutional racism. She intertwined her criticism of Biden’s record with her own life as a young, biracial college student in the early era of school integration.

“That little girl, that was me,” Harris said in a widely heard comment that underscored her story of court-ordered busing that helped nonwhite students attend integrated schools.

“Most people who are good at the deductive argument are not good at wrapping it up in an effective story,” Jamieson said. “She’s good at both.”

Castro said Harris has a good sense of when to strike, a quality he attributed to her trial experience. In 2019, when several Democratic candidates were talking over each other, Harris sat back before moderators acknowledged her.

“Hey guys, you know what? America doesn’t want to have 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 largely civil, substantive debate. But she faced criticism that she painted Pence as a run-in 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 point: “If you don’t mind my finishing, we can have a conversation.”

Debates have at times put Harris on the defensive.

In the 2020 primaries, Tulsi Gabbard, who supported Trump this year, crushed Harris about how aggressively she, as a prosecutor, prosecuted nonviolent drug offenders.

That fall, Pence made Harris struggle at times 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 might pursue as president.

Short, one of Pence’s top advisers, noted that Republicans and the media have raised questions about the more liberal positions Harris took during her 2020 primary campaign, particularly on fracking, universal health care, 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 turned to policy,” Short said.

One of Harris’s first debate triumphs came in 2010 when she ran for California Attorney General. Her opponent was asked about his plans to accept his public retirement while still receiving a salary for his current public office.

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

Harris watched silently, looking mildly amused, as Cooley explained herself. When moderators recognized her, she said only seven words—“Go for it, Steve. You earned it!”—in a serious tone but with a look that conveyed her sarcasm. The exchange ended up in her television ads within days.

“Kamala Harris is very effective in nonverbal communication and knows when not to speak,” Jamieson said.

The professor said Harris often shakes her head and gives other looks of disapproval while her opponent is speaking, then smiles before responding or attacking in a conversational tone.

“She undermines part of Trump’s argument that she is ‘a nasty woman’ and that she is guilty of outrageously dishonest behavior, because her nonverbal presentation actually undermines that attack,” Jamieson said.

Despite all of Harris’ debate experience, Tuesday is still a new and big stage. Democrats who normally take Trump to task instead took to the news shows Sunday to make clear that Harris had a big task ahead of her.

“It’s going to take almost superhuman focus and discipline to deal with Donald Trump in a debate,” Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg, another of Harris’ 2020 opponents, said on CNN. “It’s not a run-of-the-mill proposal, not because Donald Trump is a master at laying out policy ideas and how they’re going to make people better off. It’s because he’s a master at taking whatever form or format is on television and turning it into a show that’s all about him.”

Castro noted that Trump is “an annoying and sly stage presence” that makes it difficult to prepare. And since ABC mutes candidates’ microphones when they’re not speaking, Harris may not find it easy to create another viral moment that relies on viewers seeing or hearing Trump at his most bizarre.

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