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As I write this (Tuesday) the American electorate and news media are preparing for the one and only debate tonight between President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. As usual the press is hyping this as a "do or die" event for the candidates. My sense is that unless one of them completely blows it, in the way that Biden did, there'll be no major victor. Each side will say they won and we will be right back where we started. If you're for Trump, you'll be for Trump and if you're for Harris you'll be for Harris.
One thing is sure, this will not be a debate of policy, this is going to be a personality showdown. Of course the 90 or so minutes should focus on Trump achievements and policy decisions versus the Kamala/Biden record and policy decisions, but it won't. Even if Trump attempts to make the case, she can't go there. She has to change the subject because her time in the White House has been, depending on who you believe, either as an equal partner in failed decisions and bad policy, or she did nothing but giggle her way through four years. Neither of those are flattering accomplishments.
In the end, the biased leftist press will bend itself into a pretzel to paint Kamala the clear winner, which is why Donald Trump has to do more than simply hold his own. He has to score points and shoot holes in every one of her arguments. He must not make it about himself, he has to make it about her and her core beliefs and actual record.
She will pull out all the stops, repeating the falsehoods and innuendo that the Democrats have used against him since 2015. She will make it about his age, saying (now that Biden is out of it) he is the oldest man to run for president in our country's history. She will pull out the abortion card, the woman card, the race card and attempt to use them against his white man privilege. She will say she is about the future; he is about the past, which is code for "he is white and male, I am black and female."
President Trump cannot allow himself to fall into this trap, he must deflect and always go back to her far-left political agenda and her failed time in public office. He must tie the last four years to her and remind the audience of what she said when she first ran for president in 2020, how she embraced a socialistic big government agenda.
She will go negative, try to get his goat and cause him to snap back. She knows he's a fighter and his inkling will be to punch back. But if he does, that would be a big mistake for him because he will look like a male bully picking on a poor minority woman. On the other hand, if he doesn't respond to her accusations it will look like he is acknowledging them as being true. It's a delicate tightrope for him to walk.
Kamala has been in debate preparation for more than a week. She will be coming out tonight with well-rehearsed, memorized statements and prearranged retorts. The best thing President Trump can do is get her to go off script. If he can throw out something which will cause her to ad-lib, to speak extemporaneously, she might just go into one of her word salad answers. But don't rely too much on that, you have to know that her handlers have cautioned her against it.
President Trump has the advantage of solid achievements in his first term as president, she and Biden do not. That is what must be stressed tonight, the ultimate difference between the two presidencies and who has done the best job for America and Americans. If President Trump stays on course with this message, he will win the debate and the election.
But, as I said, I'm writing my column before the debate tonight, so by the time you read this it will be all over. No matter how the debate turned out I'm still hopeful that in these last few weeks before people vote, the truth seeps out in a major way on who Kamala really is and what she really believes. If that happens, she loses the election. The majority of people in our country still do not want the U.S. to be fundamentally changed into a Marxist one-party state government.
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