Vice President Kamala Harris isn’t the most impressive woman. She fell out of the 2020 Democratic primaries early with zero delegates. She was foisted on Joe Biden by Congressman Jim Clyburn, who wanted to see a black woman with his political views occupy the vice president’s office. She has accomplished precisely nothing in her three and a half years in that role. She actively walked away from her assignment to take care of the border invasion without doing anything to arrest the influx of illegals.

All that is true, but she is now the Democratic candidate for president against Donald Trump. This confers authority and a certain (unearned) gravitas upon her, despite her now infamous giggles. Whatever Republicans think of her, Democrats will be taking her seriously. Most will vote for her, simply because she is the nominee. 

Given who Trump is—with all the drama, emotion, allegiance, and detestation that attaches on either side—most Democratic voters who don’t have a specific, overriding policy reason for shifting their vote, will stick with their party’s nominee.  Some—men, mostly—might be persuadable, as are a few percent of centrists. 

A debate with Kamala Harris will be new territory for Trump. Yes, he debated Hillary Clinton. But Clinton, whatever else may be said of her, is a tough, smart woman. And she had a long, dramatic resume of her own. Like Trump, Clinton was a well-known public figure. When Trump went after her aggressively, she pushed back in equal measure. It was an even match. It was not offensive.

If he does that with Kamala, who is not known for her toughness or intelligence, he will look like a bully. He will remind suburban women of men who speak down to them. It won’t help and it could hurt him.

Partly this is because Kamala is a woman of color. The unwritten rules forbid lashing out at DEI candidates. But an overlooked part of the story is that pushing too hard against Harris is also problematic because Harris is a girly girl. Flirty, sometimes petulant, she is never overridingly rational—though she will try this time round as she’s gotten adept at using a teleprompter. The optics for this kind of a debate are just different.

Kamala has already indicated that she will be obnoxious. She told us that she was a prosecutor, and Trump is a felon. She will harp on his Democrat-manufactured label as a “fascist.” She will push all of the Trump derangement stereotypes that her audience accepts.

Kamala is a weak debater. She makes things about herself, and she makes them personal.  But she has a good instinct for that. Her now famous salvo: “I was that little girl,” shouldn’t have been a winning line. She played generational politics against Joe Biden in the primaries in 2020. Then she played the dutiful daughter/generational role as his veep. She was there to be supportive, with a hug. Suburban women voters like this.

She will be emotionally manipulative, especially on the explosive matters of race and sex.

Given these things, Trump needs a new style in coming after Harris. He needs to debate her with a kind of cool, rational logic that is not really his style. He needs to stick to the actual accomplishments of his administration, of which there are many. He needs easily intelligible shorthand for referring to the economic growth he created after Obama’s failed economy; the foreign policy successes he had; and the need for more domestic investment to help with working class jobs. 

Trump needs to emphasize his strength. He is running to get out his vote and maybe attract male Democrats who are unhappy with the party’s weakness. Fight! Fight! Fight! is a good start.

He needs to emphasize how far left Kamala really is, and the list of hard left policies she has supported. Ads should be tough. Vocal tones should be normal.

Trump needs to practice with a younger woman staffer standing in for Harris. She needs to feel comfortable baiting him, so he can learn how to respond without sounding like a bully. It’s unfair, but that’s how it works.

Trump needs shorthand for his goals in education, energy, and the economy. He needs to paint a picture of what inflation has done to people’s daily lives. Everyone will nod along, because we’ve all resented grocery prices for three years.

He already does this with the consequences of an open border and out of control illegal immigration. That’s a direct hit on Kamala herself.

Trump needs to pivot from the inside baseball talk of the rallies, to something cooler and more broadly recognizable, even to those who don’t watch Fox or read Truth Social.  Speeches must be shorter. When Trump debates Kamala he will need economy of language. Speechwriters need to help him reconfigure his explanations.

Trump is a hot media presence. He needs to become a cooler one, while instilling rational fear of Kamala Harris’s hard left views.