Kamala Harris’s Debate Conundrum

When Kamala Harris walks onto the debate stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia next week, her toughest opponent will not be Donald Trump. After all, she is quite familiar with his type, as the vice president frequently reminds us. No, Harris’s most complicated antagonist will be one that she can’t criticize, question or contradict, one that she must both deflect and defend.

Harris will have to face off against President Biden — his record, his shifting public approval rating and their intertwined legacies — from now until Election Day. Her supporters are eager to watch her “prosecute the case” against Trump in their debate. But when it comes to the Biden years, Harris is both prosecutor and defendant, reformer and institutionalist, contrast and continuity. And that’s a harder sell.

Americans are ready for a “new way forward” and are eager to “turn the page,” Harris told Dana Bash of CNN in an interview last week. But it’s tricky to campaign on a new way when you also represent the old one, to turn to the next page when you helped write the previous chapter.

On debate night Tuesday, Harris’s sharpest contrast with Biden will be simple but fleeting; all it will take is showing up. Assuming the vice president speaks with even modest eloquence and clarity, calls out Trump’s distortions and doesn’t declare victory over Medicare, she will have skipped over the lowest of bars that Biden set in the June debate against Trump, instantly appearing more presidential than the current president. (Expect copious tales of Democratic strategists texting their joy to campaign reporters.)

In fact, the Harris campaign, usually unstinting in its politeness toward Biden, has already let slip a subtle dig. When the Harris and Trump camps sparred over whether the candidates’ debate microphones should remain on or be muted depending on whose turn it was to speak (as they were in the Biden-Trump debate), a Harris campaign spokesperson made the case for live mics. The vice president “is ready to deal with Trump’s constant lies and interruptions in real time,” he said. The unfortunate implication: Biden was not similarly ready.

Merely surpassing Biden’s debate performance may not suffice, however. On policy matters, Harris has been compelled to cherry-pick parts of the Biden administration’s record, while still striving to appear independent. For example, when Bash asked the vice president whether “Bidenomics” had succeeded, Harris praised some of the administration’s specific policies — like capping what older adults pay for prescription drugs and extending the child tax credit — while stopping well short of endorsing the term that Biden had embraced for his economic program.