A debate is scheduled to take place later today, Tuesday, September 10, 2024 between Vice President Kamala Harris and Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump.

Harris and Trump will meet for the first time when they take the stage for the presidential debate on Tuesday night at 9pm.

David Muir, 50, and Linsey Davis, 46 are the moderators of the debate.

Tuesday’s event, hosted by the ABC network, will take place under the same rules that governed the Trump-Biden debate, with candidates’ microphones being muted when it is their opponent’s turn to speak.

Harris’s campaign argued for mics to be kept live throughout – hoping to goad the former president into the undisciplined and unsavoury interruptions that have marred his previous performances.

While Trump was ready to agree, his entourage – determined to keep him focused and on-message – insisted on keeping the original rules.

The former President has been preparing for the debate with, among others, Tulsi Gabbard, a former Democratic member of Congress-turned Trump supporter who ran for the party’s presidential nomination in 2020 and memorably tangled with Harris in a primary debate.

Harris, for her part, goes into the event having been prepared by aides who have aped Trump’s often vicious and insulting debating technique – especially towards women – and bolstered by her experience from a previous career as a courtroom prosecutor.

She is also buoyed by being up against an adversary who was recently convicted of 34 felony charges.

According to Steven Fein, a specialist in presidential debates and professor of psychology at Williams College in Massachusetts, it is Trump’s difficulty in coming to terms with Biden’s departure from the race that could decide the contours of the debate.

“I think, maybe the most interesting and potentially explosive element of it is the fact that he clearly was very upset that Biden dropped out and has been replaced by Harris,” said Fein, who suggested the debate had greater potential for mind games and psychological drama than any he had previously studied.

“It’s going to be a mighty task for him to control his tendencies. Whenever he’s baited … by a woman, he’s usually been very nasty. And a woman of colour is just like the nightmare scenario.

“There’s going to have to be some give and take in a way that there didn’t have to be in the first debate, when he didn’t have to say much but just let Biden flail. So the potential for all kinds of drama is great.”
Steven Fein

Debate To Show Who Some Voters Choose

Of all voters polled in a latest survey, a third say that the debate in Philadelphia on Tuesday will help determine who they will cast their ballot for in November.

amala Harris is losing support among independent voters with just eight weeks until the 2024 election.

Donald Trump leads the vice president in this demographic 49 percent to 46 percent, according to a new PBS News/NPR/Marist poll released the day of their first debate.

The Tuesday results among independents show a 7-point dip for Harris from August, which was her first full month in the presidential race.

It’s likely that third party candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. suspending his campaign last month helped with Trump’s uptick in support among independent voters.

In 2020, President Joe Biden won independent voters by 15 points.

‘Those are two important groups that are likely to be the ones who the campaigns are going to be targeting very heavily throughout the campaign,’ said Cook Political Report Editor-in-Chief Amy Walter, referencing independent and Lantino voters.