The Daily is a 100% reader-supported newsletter; if you enjoy our work, please consider becoming a subscriber.Let’s not forget that after the Biden Trump debate, voters told the media they were really turned off by Trump’s lies and behavior. But the media decided, as I knew they would, that Biden had lost the debate even though he tried to discuss policy, which they now claim is why VP Kamala Harris needs to do more interviews with *them* rather than the local radio shows and CNN interview she and Walz have been doing.But it’s been just two months since the last debate, which reshaped the entire political landscape. It’s September of an election year, and many voters don’t know much about Vice President Kamala Harris. Trump has been in 6 presidential general election debates, while Harris has been in none. The stakes are exceptionally high. Donna Brazile said the Harris-Trump debate in Philadelphia “is probably the most consequential debate in American history.”The VP  has surged in public and private polling but still needs to define herself and her “new way forward” agenda to the American voters, specifically swing voters and those who don’t pay much attention to politics, before Trump can during the NBC News presidential debate. For this reason, I don’t think we should expect Harris to do a full knockout punch of Donald Trump like I’m sure many would love to watch, but more of an appeal to voters on the margins. Many of those voters don’t even watch debates or conventions but rather judge them based on short social media clips, so Harris has to do enough to be a force and go viral but not aggressively focus on Trump in a negative way.Trump is the most annoying character in politics. He knows how to steal the limelight with whining and negativity. It’s time to pivot, which is what Harris does.The truth is, as I told the BBC, at this late stage, this will be more of a vibe election (wanna keep that democratic republic and your freedoms, want competent governance?)  than a deep policy election - though I’m not sure we ever actually have policy elections since the advent of the television. So her voters need to understand Harris’ principles and priorities, not a deep dive into her white papers.To that end, Harris, who is known for her dedication to preparation and has had briefing-book cram sessions while on the campaign trail in her short 7-week candidacy, had a multi-day debate camp including 90-minute mock debates at the Omni William Penn Hotel in Pittsburgh with Philippe Reines playing Trump with Karen Dunn, a Democratic lawyer and Harris’ former domestic policy adviser this past weekend, while ex-president Donald trump has done  “more work preparing for the 2024 debates than he ever did in 2016 and 2020” according to the NYT.Trump, who wanted to run away from this debate, and his team spent all of that time behind the scenes negotiating the debate set-up while Trump outwardly attacked the debate as unfair to him. Trump didn’t want the mics unmuted: “Mr. Trump has privately told associates, ‘I’m not going to let her do to me what she did to Mike.’ He was happy to let his advisers negotiate the muting of microphones when the candidates are not talking.” The Harris team had been preparing for those moments, which have been a viral successes, wanted to confront Trump like she did Jeff Sessions and Brett Kavanaugh as a senator. But she’s also managed to use this whole muted mic debate to paint Trump as someone whose team doesn’t trust him because he’s so out of control, someone who has to be handled carefully because he’s a child. She can do this with a simple glance to the camera and a raised eyebrow, along with her behavior serving as a direct foil to Trump’s low brow, lie-festing.I’m expecting to see threads of this throughout the debate from Harris, coupled with a dismissiveness of Trump’s behavior if he acts up like he often does. as she said in a 2016 senate campaign debate, “So, there’s a clear difference between the candidates in this race.”One of Harris’ popular lines from her rallies has been, “If you’ve got something to say, say it to my face!”  She also says, “I took on perpetrators of all kinds; I know Donald Trump’s type!”  Both of these are things she can say that might get Trump upset enough to show his true personality, which would be a loss for him. The Daily is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.Harris has hurdles to overcome in this debate, like making sure voters know more about her and what she stands for. So she needs to be making a case to those people, not just cutting Trump down to size when he tries to bully her like he does all candidates he’s debated, which her base will want to see. The VP’s speech on the closing night of the DNC made her case for the rule of law and America remaining a democracy can be built by her mentioning that former VP Dick Cheney and former Rep. Liz Cheney have endorsed her along with a host of former Trump officials who are concerned about the national security threat he poses. But she’s got a specific way of depriving Trump of oxygen that I see her deploying, which accomplishes both: It’s the prosecutor dealing with a child with a dismissive smile and moving on to the meat of things: Depriving Trump of oxygen for his bigotry, bullying, and misogyny while letting people see him trying it.  Democratic research group Blueprint found that voters are twice as likely to be moved by ads featuring contrast and positive lines about Harris as by negative Trump ads.A gish galloper like Trump deluges their opponent with arguments, then extends and builds on what they’ve established as mistakes of their opponent throughout the debate. Sound familiar? This is part of why President Biden lost a debate to someone who lied almost the entire time. Biden was trying to make serious policy points, but with a weak voice, a stutter, and under exhaustion from illness. Bad faith debaters require seasoned moderators who don’t fall for basically dishonest tactics and a media that doesn’t do so after the fact. That is not what we have in the U.S. right now, as our “both sides” media simply is unwilling or incapable of covering Donald Trump in a factual, informative way.If it’s facts versus feelings, feelings are going to win. So facts matter a lot, especially to the Left, but if a debate is won by feelings, we can see why Trump won against Biden in the first debate.We know the media doesn’t really care about policy because they disregarded Biden’s policy points in favor of Trump’s bombastic thuggery. Inexperienced debate moderators often fall for this kind of nonsense, and maybe our entire media culture has been primed to reward drama more than informative content. But voters need to hear who Harris is. They need to know what she means by, “We’re not going back!”Also, remember, while the media praised Trump after the debate against Biden, voters were turned off by Trump’s lies and hostility. This means Harris can set the parameters for the debate by setting herself up as the credible expert by pointing out Trump’s weakest, most bad-faith argument and dismantling the logic behind it like only a good prosecutor can while taking down his credibility, maybe asking why he is so dishonest, and then pointing out that she knows Trump’s style is to dump a bunch of lies on his opponent and leave them to clean it up, but she wants to use this time productively to reach the American people out of respect for their time and their votes so she’s going to focus on her forward agenda. When he continues, she can do that steely smile she gave Kavanaugh and say, “My opponent won't let go of this one issue when I've brought up a dozen important policies to protect Americans’ freedoms. He's like a broken record, folks, but I believe Americans are tired of Trump-era divisiveness and want to move beyond it.”We can trust that Harris is ready for Trump’s ad hominem, cheap personal attacks — when he stoops to sexism and racism because he will.  The only question is how he will do this, will he become physically aggressive like he was to Clinton, or will he try to reduce Kamala Harris to being a sexualized, pretty face like he already has. Trump has already shown that he doesn’t respect Harris’ intelligence and has fallen for his own party’s false rhetoric about her. He has been seen calling her a “f–ing b***h” in front of his son, showing his contempt for the Vice President, whom I suspect he fears. “In private, he uses misogynistic language to describe her and gossips about her past romantic relationships, including with Willie Brown, the former mayor of San Francisco,” NYT.One way to reply to that if he brings that up is, “You seem to have a lot of problems with women. This is exactly the behavior we can expect from someone who was found liable for sexual assault. This is the man who brags about getting Roe overturned. What kind of power would you give a man like that over your daughter’s body?”There’s also the Elizabeth Warren technique, who took down Michael Bloomberg in 60 seconds during a 2020 primary debate with this: “I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a billionaire who calls women fat broads and horse-faced lesbians. No, I’m not talking about Donald Trump. I’m talking about Mayor Bloomberg.”“I’d like to talk about who we’re running against, a convicted felon with 34 felony counts found guilty by a jury of his peers, to whom he has shown nothing but contempt. He thinks the law doesn’t apply to him because he’s rich, but I believe in law and order, our duty to protect the innocent and hold the guilty accountable.”Hopefully, Trump will be asked about his comments about how he’d implement the mass deportation he keeps mentioning, saying he’d use police and soldiers to deport at least 12 million undocumented people, and it will be bloody.  What do you expect from our media? Do you think they’ll fail the co