What Kamala Harris’s last debate says about her chances against Trump

Vice President Kamala Harris is taking heat for her media blackout on the campaign trail, but her last run for office gives some clues as to what voters can expect when she does take the stage without a script.

Harris debated then-Vice President Mike Pence for 90 minutes in Utah on Oct. 7, 2020, with USA Today’s Susan Page acting as moderator. If that performance is any indicator, GOP nominee former President Donald Trump should prepare for Harris to go on offense on Sept. 10.

Harris hit Pence six times with her signature “I’m speaking” line, a phrase she used most recently to shut down anti-Israel protesters and one that’s sure to feature against Trump if moderators cannot cut the candidates’ microphones.

“I’ve traveled the world; I’ve met with our soldiers in war zones,” Harris said in the early going. “I think Joe [Biden] has asked me to serve with him because he knows that we share a purpose, which is about lifting up the American people.”

Harris has agreed to debate Trump on Sept. 10 on ABC, with Trump pushing for two more debates that would take place on Sept. 4 on Fox and Sept. 25 on NBC.

If the Fox date doesn’t materialize, the ABC debate will be the first for Harris in almost four years. For Trump, it will be the first debate since his June 27 matchup with President Joe Biden that ended up knocking the Democratic candidate out of the race, leading to the rise of Harris.

While much has been made of the various campaign promises Harris made during her Democratic primary debates in 2019, less attention has been paid to her most recent debate performance, which came in late 2020 against Pence.

As with the 2020 presidential debates, viewers today may be surprised at the extent to which COVID-19 dominated the discussion in the vice presidential contest. The Salt Lake City audience was socially distanced and masked, Pence and Harris sat 12 feet apart yet still had two plexiglass dividers placed between them, and more than 15 minutes passed before Page asked her first non-COVID-19 question.

The debate may be best remembered for the fly that nestled on Pence’s head for more than two full minutes late in the proceedings. But elsewhere, it offers a strong clue as to what Trump can expect of Harris next month.

“The American people have witnessed what is the greatest failure of any presidential administration in the history of our country,” Harris said to start things off. “Over 7 million people have contracted this disease. One in five businesses has closed. We’re looking at front-line workers who have been treated like sacrificial workers.”

Harris, like Biden, sought to hang the pandemic around Trump’s neck from the start, saying he “covered it up,” called it a hoax, and should lose the election based on that issue alone.

Pence, now replaced on the GOP ticket by Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), played defense by saying Biden’s pandemic plan didn’t differ much from Trump’s, calling it a form of plagiarism. That conversation will be off the table this time around, though other parts of the evening still look remarkably familiar in 2024.

Harris threw out an “I’m speaking” when Pence pointed out that repealing the Trump tax cuts would raise taxes on the middle class, an issue that is relevant once again in this year’s election cycle.

Kamala Harris responds to Pence’s false claim that Biden will raise taxes “on day one” of his presidency: “I think this is supposed to be a debate based on fact and truth.”

When Pence interrupts, she says, “Mr. Vice President, I’m speaking” #VPdebate https://t.co/78k94KOfNV pic.twitter.com/Ibi4lPeLg7

— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 8, 2020

“On day one, Joe Biden will repeal that tax bill; he’ll get rid of it,” Harris said, while Pence argued over and over that repealing the cuts would raise middle-class taxes. Biden did not repeal the Trump tax cuts upon taking office, though Harris is now saying she will do so if elected.

Pence also pressed Harris on backing the Green New Deal and her 2019 promise to ban fracking, questions she’s facing again four years later.

“Sen. Harris, you’re entitled to your own opinion, but you’re not entitled to your own facts,” Pence charged. “You yourself said on multiple occasions when you were running for president that you would ban fracking.”

Harris pushed back forcefully against the claim.

“Joe Biden will not raise taxes on anyone who makes less than $400,000 a year,” Harris said. “He has been very clear about that. Joe Biden will not end fracking, he has been very clear about that. Joe Biden is the one who, during the great recession, was responsible for the Recovery Act that brought America back.”

Harris dodged on the issue of the Green New Deal, which she co-sponsored during her time in the Senate. The phrase “Green New Deal” came up 15 times in the debate. It was uttered 11 times by Pence, four times by Page, and zero times by Harris.

For those looking for word salads, Harris served up few, if any, during her matchup with Pence. She did offer an expressive debating style, with lots of eyebrow raising, head shaking, pointing, smiling, and laughing. She looked directly into the camera to help drive some of her points home to the audience.

Harris did offer strong support for climate change policies generally, saying the Trump administration doesn’t “believe in science” and calling climate change an “existential threat to us as human beings.” Harris claimed the Trump administration’s vision “has been to go backward instead of forward,” a preview of her 2024 campaign mantra that “we are not going back.”

Some of Harris’s statements have not aged well, such as her admonition that Trump’s China tariffs cost the United States 300,000 manufacturing jobs. Once in office, Biden kept most of those tariffs in place and even raised some earlier this year. On foreign policy, she promised that Biden would “hold Russia to account,” but Russian President Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine just a year after Biden took office.

Other statements sound like something Harris could have said in her 2024 stump speeches.

“The issues before us couldn’t be more serious. There’s the issue of choice, and I will always fight for a woman’s right to make a decision about her own body,” Harris said on the hot-button topic of abortion. “It should be her decision, and not that of Donald Trump.”

Overall, Harris was feisty on that October night and seemed prepared for the charges Pence flung her way, meaning Trump may be in for a tough battle when he sees her on the debate stage.

“I will not sit here and be lectured by the vice president on what it means to enforce the laws of our country,” she said when Pence accused her of being soft on crime. “I am the only one on this stage who has personally prosecuted everything from child sexual assault to homicide.”