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It is the stuff that #Resistance dreams are made of: Kamala Harris, the prosecutor, will take the stage next Tuesday in Philadelphia opposite Donald Trump, the felon, and brutally expose him as a racist and sexist imposter who has lied to the American people since his famous escalator ride nine years ago.

But that is not the main goal that she or her preparation team see for the debate – not at all.

At mock debates in Pittsburgh, planning meetings in Washington and study sessions between public events on the campaign trail, the vice president and her aides have focused their attention on portraying her as the representative of a new political era, to the benefit of curious voters who still want to know more about her – and who could make the difference in November.

The debate, say Democrats close to Harris, is simply not the place to galvanize her partisans or fulfill a liberal fantasy of confronting Trump so aggressively that his own supporters will reconsider voting for him. Instead, Harris’ team believes it must be about finding moments to educate and convert voters on the fringes of society. And for a candidate whose rallies carry signs reading “A NEW WAY FORWARD” and whose audiences repeatedly chant “We are not going back,” that means primarily focusing on her own vision for the future and contrasting it with Trump’s. “She’s not as well known as Donald Trump,” says a senior Democrat who once worked for Joe Biden and is now close to leaders of Harris’ campaign. “It’s an opportunity to define yourself, which is exciting because who gets that opportunity in September of an election year?” What she left unsaid: that the debate is also so risky for Harris because Trump has the chance to define her, too.

Harris is assuming, in part, that voters already know Trump’s character and have strong opinions about him that aren’t worth reinforcing in the brief but extremely valuable speaking time Harris has on the campaign trail. (It’s not like she can contribute new information that could change those opinions.) And since debate rules about muted microphones mean she’s unlikely to have many clear discussions with him, many on her team think she shouldn’t try too hard to create moments like the viral ones where she questioned Jeff Sessions and Brett Kavanaugh for senator.

That’s not to say Harris is unlikely to criticize Trump, but that criticism will likely be more political than personal. Charges against his record as president and some of the more unpopular elements of Project 2025, such as abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, are likely to play a major role in her argument for her candidacy. This is the tactic her campaign has largely followed in its paid advertising, even if some of its social media activity also attacked Trump for his incoherence and, indirectly, his age. Just last week, Democratic research group Blueprint tested messaging and found that pro-Harris forces would be wiser to rely on ads that include contrast and positive statements about Harris rather than negative ones about Trump—voters are twice as likely to be swayed by the former than the latter, which are only marginally useful. (The absolute worst results in Blueprint’s tests were for purely anti-Trump ads, which were in some cases three times less effective at attracting voters than ads that focused on the opposites in the candidates’ abortion policy proposals.)

“People definitely want him to be called out for his lies and his bullying and for the people of America to actually see – and be reminded again of his lack of character – and I think that’s entertainment made for television. But the seriousness of the issues facing Americans cannot be expressed through showmanship or entertainment, but through engagement and presenting a vision for the future,” says a senior Democrat who has been close to Harris for decades. Harris will turn to the camera and highlight Trump’s antics by modeling restraint rather than by confronting him and being dragged through the mud: “She doesn’t have fools, she’s quick to let a fool be a fool without having to keep up. People know a fool when they see one.”

That attitude owes in part to Harris’s past experience. She has proven to be a vicious fighter at times in debates, using prepared attacks to great effect and fanfare in her attorney general races and her 2019 presidential campaign, even as her jab at Biden drew mixed reviews. Some allies have compared the upcoming debate to her 2016 Senate race, when her opponent, Loretta Sanchez, dabbed onstage and Harris turned to the camera and said calmly, eyebrows raised, “So there’s a clear difference between the candidates in this race.” But Harris has also stumbled at times in debates when she’s been embarrassed, such as in 2019 when she got into a slugfest with Tulsi Gabbard (who now advises Trump).

What worries Harris’ closest confidants most is her reaction when Trump gets personal, which they all expect. Most have advised her or her advisers not to get involved. “She needs to stay on the offensive even if Trump decides to hide,” says Donna Brazile, a Harris confidant and former chair of the Democratic National Committee. “The vice president can stand up and steer the conversation back to the questions without following Trump into the trenches.”

They hope that such a reaction will lead to the implicit argument underlying Harris’ entire campaign: that she wants to leave the Trump era behind her entirely.

As much as they hope that will be clear to the live audience, they are also conscious of how their moments at the microphone will come across in the social media clips that will be crucial to shaping voters’ moods in the debate in the days after next Tuesday. Those clips helped undo Biden — many of them that were widely shared were basically lowlight videos of him looking ancient — and they hope that videos of Harris continuing to make arguments like those she made at her convention, including that of being a forceful leader on the international stage, can paint a clearer picture of her to voters who aren’t paying close attention but might come across debate content in their social media feeds. Rich Thau, who leads focus groups among key voter segments, convened nine Hispanic voters in swing states in late August who said they rejected both candidates. Eight hadn’t seen Harris’ convention speech and none had seen Tim Walz’s. “The people who are disproportionately likely to determine the outcome of the election are the ones who are paying the least attention,” he says. And among that group, Trump was most frequently cited as the candidate driving change, not Harris. As for her campaign message, which she is using to try to refocus the campaign, Thau says, “a lot of it hasn’t sunk in yet.”

Harris and her staff have been bombarded with a barrage of suggestions for other lines of argument from well-meaning Democrats who are increasingly concerned about Harris’s narrow lead in the polls. Some simply want her to lay out more policy details, repeating a popular media narrative of the past two weeks. (In private conversations, people close to Harris responded to his suggestion by reminding her that her main job now is to win an election, and most voters need to understand her values ​​and priorities, not her white papers.) Others wondered whether she should put more effort into courting and promoting the Republicans she now supports, such as Liz Cheney, Geoff Duncan and John McCain’s son Jimmy. Meanwhile, some Democratic donors have grown increasingly unhappy with the campaign’s economic message after Republicans portrayed part of her capital gains tax proposal as confiscatory. For this audience, Harris’ main goal should be to explain more precisely what she means by the desire to build an “economy of opportunity,” as she often says.

Aware of all the competing strategies and wary of Harris’s occasional tendency to seek a wide range of opinions on major issues, a handful of longtime strategists and allies have urged Harris and her campaign team to limit the number of people she speaks to directly in the days leading up to the debate. Now, the group actually surrounding Harris has been deliberately limited to her most senior campaign advisers and a handful of staffers who worked with her on policy issues in various offices, such as her former chief of staff, Rohini Kosoglu, and current policy adviser, Brian Nelson. (Philippe Reines, a longtime Hillary Clinton aide, has played Trump in the debate practice sessions, reprising his role from 2016.) Even some old friends have not spoken to her and are watching the debate from afar, hearing only second- and third-hand accounts of how her preparations are going.

It is also often the group that has done the most to ensure that the overall democratic infrastructure attempts to shape public expectations – a classic campaign priority in the days leading up to a debate.

That included reminding reporters and cable viewers that Trump has participated in six presidential debates, while Harris has participated in none. (This point is sometimes made in response to the ridiculous notion that occasionally circulates from those close to Trump that he simply doesn’t prepare for debates.) And it also meant insisting that the Harris Organization does not expect major changes in the polls as a result of the debate.

Of course, expectations are limited. There are some basic facts about the wildest debate anyone can remember that simply can’t be ignored — not when one of the two candidates is still trying to define how Americans think of them. Two months after the last debate reshaped all of politics, Brazile has looked at the last eight weeks of the campaign season and concluded that next Tuesday is unique. The showdown in Philadelphia, she says, “is probably the most consequential debate in American history.”