Vice President Kamala Harris will participate in the most important political debate of her career on Tuesday evening, but she has a very mixed record on the stage.
Harris participated in multiple presidential debates with a gaggle of aspirational Democrats during her failed 2020 presidential campaign, as she struggled to break free of the pack and go viral.
Tuesday’s debate with Harris marks Trump’s seventh general election debate since 2016, while this is Harris’ first with a Republican presidential candidate.
Political strategists who have prepared Republican candidates spoke to the DailyMail about her strengths and weaknesses in debates.
Harris is very good about preparing, rehearsing, and deploying prepared lines, even though her attempts to go viral do not always come off with a hit.
Democratic vice presidential nominee Senator Kamala Harris (L) and US Vice President Mike Pence (R) during the vice presidential debate
‘She’s going to have any number of lines prepared,’ Republican strategist Kevin Spillane, who was an advisor to Harris’ rival Steve Cooley in the 2010 California Attorney General’s race.
Spillane warned that candidates deploying prepared lines risked coming off as phony and calculated. Harris’ weakness, he said, was her reluctance to dive into the details of public policy.
‘She’s not someone who is really interested in policy, she is more interested in power,’ he said.
Marc Short, a political advisor to former Vice President Mike Pence agreed that Harris was good at deploying rehearsed debate lines and attacks.
‘I think she is good at sort of setting up and trying to capture that viral moment,’ Short said to DailyMail.com
He described Harris’ famous ‘I’m speaking’ episode as a moment clearly prepared by the Harris campaign to create a ‘man slaying moment’ against Pence.
Short said that any male Republican would have difficulties while debating a black woman Democrat.
‘In today’s media world I think it is a challenge, frankly to be debating a minority female,’ he said.
But Short said Harris came up short in her debate with Pence when it came to policy details. When Pence focused on her and Biden’s radical left record, he said, Harris struggled to explain her approach.
‘We came away feeling like afterwards, we sort of thought she would’ve been better prepared,’ he recalled.
Short recalled that it was unfortunate the media focused the majority of their debate commentary on a fly that landed on Pence’s head and remained on his white hair for more than two minutes because he believed the vice president had scored a few points against Harris.
’That’s too bad. I actually thought it was a substantive debate’ he said.
Harris tends to get tangled up in policy details, typically avoiding it entirely as her descriptions frequently spiral into word salads.
Trump, himself, has pointed to Harris’ sometimes spiral arguments as un-presidential.
‘She speaks in rhyme, it’s weird, the way she talks,’ he said in an interview in 2023. ‘It’s weird, the whole thing is weird, this is not a president of the United States.’
Spillane said Harris’ biggest weakness was her laugh, describing it as a revelation to the audience that she was not prepared.
‘My theory on that ridiculous laugh of hers, that drives so many people crazy is that she is inauthentic and she knows it and tries to be more likable and more human,’ he said.
Here are some of Harris’ best and worst debate moments throughout her career:
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard famously called out Harris for campaigning as a ‘progressive prosecutor,’ despite having a less than impressive record on progressive issues
Tulsi Gabbard’s attack on her record that devastated her 2020 presidential run
Rep. Tulsi Gabbard famously called out Harris for campaigning as a ‘progressive prosecutor,’ despite having a less than impressive record on progressive issues.
‘I want to bring the conversation back to the broken criminal justice system that is disproportionately negatively impacting black and brown people all across this country today. Now Senator Harris says she’s proud of her record as a prosecutor and that she’ll be a prosecutor president,’ she said. ‘But I’m deeply concerned about this record. There are too many examples to cite.’
Gabbard attacked Harris for putting over 1,500 people in jail for marijuana violations but laughing about it when she was asked if she ever smoked marijuana. She also attacked Harris for blocking evidence in a case over freeing an ‘innocent’ man from death row and keeping prisoners in prison longer to serve as cheap labor for California and backed cash bail reforms.
The debate audience exploded with applause but Harris could only respond weakly, decrying ‘fancy speeches’ while she was actually ‘doing the work’ of criminal justice.
After the debate, Harris shrugged off the attack, suggesting she was only catching heat because of her political success.
‘This is going to sound immodest, but I’m obviously a top-tier candidate,’ she said. ‘And so, I did expect that I would be on the stage and take hits tonight, because there are a lot of people who are trying to make the stage for the next debate.’
Kamala Harris on the Democratic primary debate stage in Westerville, Ohio, in 2019
Stopping the food fight
At the beginning of the debate, Harris interrupted a squabbling group of her colleagues by trying to play a peacemaker on the stage.
‘Hey guys, you know what?’ she asked. ‘America does not want to witness a food fight. They want to know how we are going to put food on their table.’
The line was applauded by the Democratic audience and even Biden applauded her while the rest of her opponents reacted stoically to the obviously rehearsed line.
But Harris was not completely opposed to personal attacks as she revealed that same night she had something bigger planned.
Biden had angered black voters for the way he talked about working with segregationist Democrats in the good old days. Harris saw the opening and attacked
That little girl was me
Harris had tried to play a peacemaker earlier in the debate, but she had something special planned for Vice President Joe Biden.
Biden had angered black voters for the way he talked about working with segregationist Democrats in the good old days. Harris saw the opening and attacked.
‘I do not believe you are a racist,’ she began—before effectively accusing him of being a racist. ‘It was actually hurtful to hear you talk about the reputations of two United States senators who built their reputations and career on the segregation of race in this country,’ she said, turning to Biden during the debate.
But her attack went further.
‘It was not only that, but you also worked with them to oppose busing. There was a little girl in California who was part of the second class to integrate her public schools. She was bused to school every day,’ she continued. Pausing for dramatic effect, Harris added, ‘That little girl was me.’
This was not the first time that Harris deployed the story of being a little girl getting bused to school. She also deployed the story during the Senate hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.
Harris famously raised her hand together with Sen. Bernie Sanders, but Harris realized afterwards that she made a big mistake
Medicare for All vs private health care
In June 2019, Harris continued her puzzling mixup on her position on Medicare for all and whether it would affect private health care.
NBC’s Lester Holt asked Harris and several other candidates a question about their plans to enact ‘Medicare for All.’
‘Many people watching at home have health insurance through their employer. Who here would abolish their health insurance in favor of a government-run plan?’ Holt asked.
Harris famously raised her hand together with Sen. Bernie Sanders, but Harris realized afterwards that she made a big mistake.
The next morning she tried to clarify in an interview during an interview with Morning Joe, claiming she misunderstood the question.
Harris had made this mistake before in the campaign and supporters of her policy began wondering if she even knew the details of what she was supporting.
Elizabeth Warren waves off Kamala Harris debate stunt to ban Trump on Twitter
As Harris struggled to breathe life into her struggling presidential campaign, she deployed a debate strategy to demonstrate her leadership by getting her fellow Democrats to join her to call on the social media platform Twitter and ban Trump for the platform.
‘I urge you to join me,’ she said to Warren. ‘Here we have Donald Trump, who has 65 million Twitter followers, and is using that platform as the president of the United States to openly intimidate witnesses, to threaten witnesses, to obstruct justice, and he and his account should be taken down.’
Warren ignored Harris but Harris persisted, interrupting the Massachusetts senator.
‘Join me,’ Harris said again.
‘No,’ Warren responded flatly, waving her off.
‘No?’ Harris replied, feigning incredulity. ‘You can’t say you’re for corporate responsibility if it doesn’t apply to everyone,’ she added.
Warren did not even respond to Harris, brushing off her attempt to get her on the record on the issue.
Painting a picture of Trump as the Wizard of Oz
ABC News host George Stephanopoulous asked Harris a question about Trump’s record on trade policy, but she had a different idea prepared. She criticized Trump for ‘trade policy by tweet’ but pivoted to an attempt to paint Trump as the Wizard of Oz behind the curtain.
‘You know, he reminds me of that guy in The Wizard of Oz, you know, when you pull back the curtain, it’s a really small dude…’ she said, pausing for effect.
‘OK, I’m not even going to take the bait,’ Stephanopoulos replied, himself only five feet, five inches tall.
‘Oh, George. It wasn’t about you!’ Harris protesting, bursting into laughter at the awkward moment she had created.
Stephanopoulos moved on.
Dude’s gotta go
In Jun 2019, Harris also tried to go viral with a rehearsed line against Donald Trump in the hopes she could break out as a candidate with ‘real talk’
This is a crisis of Donald Trump’s making. And it is on a long list of crises of Donald Trump’s making. And that’s why dude’s gotta go. And when I am commander-in-chief, we will stop this madness.
After the debate, the campaign whipped up a T-shirt with the ‘Dude gotta go’ slogan. It did not take off.
I’m speaking
As a senator, Harris successfully leveraged her career in the Senate to go viral by challenging Trump officials in congressional hearings. Anytime she was interrupted, she made it clear she did not appreciate it, and accused the white male Republican senators of acting racist and sexist if they tried to maintain order in the hearing.
She shifted that tactic to the vice presidential debate, preparing a few lines for Vice President Mike Pence if he ever tried to talk over her or lecture her about her record.
During a conversation about the administration’s coronviarus response, debate moderator Susan page tried to move on to another topic but Harris was not finished.
‘No, I – Susan, I – This is important,’ Harris protested.
‘Susan, I have to weigh in here,’ Pence began, but Harris shut him down.
‘Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking,’ she replied.
‘I have to weigh in,’
‘I’m speaking,’ Harris repeated.
Page relented, ‘You have 15 more seconds and then we’ll give the vice president a chance to respond.’
Harris also expressed a level of outrage after Pence tried to criticize her for her attacks on law enforcement.
‘I will not sit here and be lectured by the Vice President on what it means to enforce the laws of our country,’ she replied, reminding him of her record in law enforcement.
