Debate Offers Both Harris And Trump Perhaps Last, Best Chance To Define Harris

PITTSBURGH ― Ninety minutes Tuesday night may well offer newly anointed but still relatively little-known Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris her last and best chance to define herself for voters, even as Donald Trump tries to do it for her.

The vice president has managed to consolidate most of her party’s voting coalition in the seven weeks since President Joe Biden abruptly ended his reelection campaign and threw his support behind her. But her failure to lock down some groups, such as young Black men and Latinos, has left her campaign in a precarious position against the coup-attempting former president with less than two months left until Election Day.

“The challenge for both, in a sense, is to define Harris, as Trump is well-known,” said David Axelrod, the Democratic consultant who helped Barack Obama win the White House in 2008.

Trump, who has been convicted of 34 felony counts, has spent the duration of her presidential candidacy attacking Harris as a “Marxist” and “communist” who holds extreme views on cultural issues. Harris has emphasized her résumé as a prosecutor and California’s elected attorney general in her attempt to portray herself as a pragmatic centrist.

Recent polling shows that, despite both of their efforts, a significant percentage of Americans say they don’t really know much about her. A recent New York Times survey found that 28% of likely voters say they need to know more about Harris, while only 9% say the same about Trump.

One Republican consultant who has worked on multiple presidential campaigns, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he cannot think of a higher-stakes confrontation in the history of modern presidential races.

“I’m not sure I have enough wine handy tomorrow to