Debate Anxiety: Democrats Privately Worry Kamala Harris Will Choke

By Wendell Husebø

Democrats privately fear that Vice President Kamala Harris’s debate performance will not meet the party’s expectations after weeks of media hype.

• The debate will be the first time many viewers see Harris as the party’s nominee. Harris hid from the media and only sat for one interview. Former President Donald Trump, meanwhile, conducted many interviews and is the most experienced debater in the “modern age,” according to CNN.

  “People are extremely anxious about her performance,” Ray Zaccaro, a Democrat strategist and former Senate aide, told the Hill, noting the showdown could be “catastrophic or monumental … There’s a sense of real caution about expectations on her performance.”

  “Based on the current polling, it is somewhat surprising that she’s not doing better in the polls. This is a make-or-break moment for Harris,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a candidate with more weight on a given moment than this candidate will have at the debate Tuesday.”

  Harris will likely try to use the debate to cast herself as an agent of change, even though she has been in power for 3.5 years. Under the Biden-Harris administration, costs soared about 20 percent across the board, migrant crime spiked, illegal immigrants invaded the southern border, Russia invaded Ukraine, and 13 U.S. troops died during the Afghan withdrawal.

  Polling suggests voters are not pleased with the direction of the nation and believe Harris is not the person to bring change. Only about 26 percent of Americans believe the nation is headed in the right direction, according to the RealClearPolitics average.

  Sixty-one percent of likely voters believe the next president should represent a major change from the Biden-Harris administration, while only 25 percent said Harris represented that change, a Times/Siena College found Sunday. A majority said Trump represented the change.

  “The stakes are high at this debate,” Morgan Jackson, a Democrat strategist based in Raleigh, said. “I think Harris has a real opportunity to introduce herself to voters and to prosecute the case against Donald Trump.”

  “The debate is a big deal, it’s a very big deal,” he added.

  A Democrat senator told the Hill that fear of a Harris flop is making the whole party nervous. “If you’re a conscious, informed Democrat, you’re nervous. How could you not be?” the senator asked.

  “I’m nervous,” the lawmaker admitted. “She’s not tested. I think she is going to be as well-prepared as anyone could possibly be and they’ll go over every foreseeable [debate] scenario.”

  Other Democrat strategists believe the party is anxious because early voting in some states starts soon. If Harris chokes Tuesday, voters will cast their ballot with that in mind.

  “She has to get past this debate. It shouldn’t matter as much as it’s going to matter, but it does,” said one strategist. “If she gets by and does well, then from there, 10, 15 days later, early voting starts in some of these states and you’re off to the races.”

  “We have a problem with white working-class voters, and Trump performs really well with those folks,” the Democrat said.

  Trump will have the opportunity to exploit Harris’s weaknesses: She cannot campaign on policies to fix crime, inflation, and border security without undermining the Biden-Harris administration’s policies, but she must tout the administration’s policies to validate her record and candidacy.

  CNN’s Dana Bash exposed Harris’s conundrum during her first and only pre-taped interview.

  Harris owned the Biden-Harris administration’s economic record while she simultaneously blamed Trump for it. The contradiction was stark, producing an outcome that forced her to tout her administration’s policies to validate her candidacy, all while she undermined her record and her candidacy.

  Tuesday’s 90-minute debate will air at 9:00 p.m. Eastern on ABC News.

  More on the debate rules is here.