Preparation, pitfalls and breaking the fourth wall: Takeaways from a decade of Harris debates

Vice President Kamala Harris has been thinking about Tuesday’s debate against former President Donald Trump for a long time.

“What we need is someone who is going to be on that debate stage with Donald Trump and defeat him by being able to prosecute the case against four more years,” Harris said in July 2019 during a CNN Democratic presidential primary debate. “And let me tell you, we’ve got a long rap sheet,” she added.

When it comes to political debates, Harris herself has over a decade of priors. Tuesday’s ABC News debate will be the first time Harris and Trump come face-to-face, and only the third time she will face a Republican. But the Democrat’s past debate appearances going back to 2010 provide some clues on how she plans to make her case against Trump and for her own candidacy — what techniques and tics she leans on, potential vulnerabilities and other common threads stretching across years of state and national debates.

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She previewed some of her go-to Trump criticisms during the 2020 presidential race, calling the then-president “corrupt” and “unpatriotic,” chiding his “weird” obsession with erasing former President Barack Obama’s accomplishments, and saying that Trump “doesn’t understand what it means to be honest” while looking directly at Trump’s running mate, Mike Pence, during the vice presidential debate.

“I’m speaking,” Harris repeated during that debate as Pence spoke over her.

And she often appears to come prepared with memorable one-liners and scores of statistics to make her case — and to make a moment that might get attention long after the debate finishes.

Harris has been diligently preparing for Tuesday’s debate between campaign stops and her White