September 10, 2024

Tonight, Tonight, Tonight: Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump meet for the first time in person in Philadelphia this evening to “discuss the issues”. I put that in quotes because it’s much more likely that: Trump will be looking to paint Harris as the most Machiavellian communistic person on the planet — while also calling her completely incompetent, and Harris will probably be trying to goad Trump into uttering rambling, incoherent word-goulash — or when he is coherent, making “weird” statements denigrating women. The fun begins at 9:00 PM, Eastern tonight, and will be available to watch live in a lot of places (including here).

Rules of the Road: The debate, hosted by ABC News and moderated by David Muir and Linsey Davis, will be aired from the National Constitution Center. There will be no live audience and no opening statements. The moderators will have control of the mics, and will have the mic turned off for a candidate who is not being directly addressed. The rules also stipulate that the candidates may not ask questions of each other. It will run for 90 minutes and feature two commercial breaks. For each question, a candidate will have two minutes to respond, followed by two minutes for a rebuttal from their opponent, and an additional minute for follow-ups and clarifications. A coin flip determined the order of their closing statements (which again will be two minutes each), and their positioning on the stage. Trump won the coin flip and chose to offer the final closing statement, while Harris is reportedly happy with being able to choose to stand to the left of Trump (screen-right). Why is this good for her? In television terms, it’s the visual position of power. Think of most talk shows: where does the host almost invariably sit and speak from? The right. Speaking of positioning, another rule states that the candidates must remain behind their lecterns for the duration of the debate. Also, they may not take any prewritten notes or props along with them and — despite suggestions to the contrary by Trump — neither have been given advance notice of specific topics or questions.

Why Should I Worry? Of course, that’s along the lines of the most frequently asked question that I get in regards to debates like this. A lot of folks say that the debates don’t matter to anything, and while I understand the sentiment, let’s look at what happened after the last debate — the fallout from a disastrous performance caused the presumptive Democratic nominee, incumbent President Joe Biden, to drop out of the race, while the man who sailed through his own party’s national convention with an air of inevitability, now faces a completely overturned apple cart of a campaign. According to an NPR poll released today, 70% of Americans are planning on watching tonight’s debate, with 30% of people claiming that it will help them decide how to vote. I honestly find that kind of baffling, but I’ll trust their numbers. This is a chance for viral moments to happen; anyone remember Trump looming in the background behind Hillary Clinton as she spoke, or when she called him a puppet of Vladimir Putin, he attempted the rubber/glue defense of, “No, you’re the puppet!” Or the fly on Mike Pence’s hair? Mitt Romney announcing that he had “binders full of women”? Lloyd Bentsen telling Dan Quayle that he was “no Jack Kennedy”? Or even Ronald Reagan telling Jimmy Carter, “There you go again”. Both Harris and Trump have the opportunity to “meme” this election tonight, and good or bad, it could drastically change the direction of this race.