Kamala Harris’ joyful campaign will Tuesday be hit by the blunt force of reality — a debate with Donald Trump — the most menacing political foe of modern times.

The vice president transformed the 2024 election after President Joe Biden’s abject debate showing against Trump on CNN in June led him to end his reelection bid. She restored several swing states to the electoral battlefield and has had Democrats dreaming of a stunning turnabout in a race most thought they were well on the way to losing.

Yet her success in unifying her party, branding herself as a fresh voice of generational change and closing into a dead heat with Trump in polling has so far not cemented a reliable path to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Indeed, if the election were on Tuesday, the ex-president, who has already defied an assassination attempt and scores of criminal charges, could still win.

Kamala Harris’ joyful campaign will Tuesday be hit by the blunt force of reality — a debate with Donald Trump — the most menacing political foe of modern times.

The vice president transformed the 2024 election after President Joe Biden’s abject debate showing against Trump on CNN in June led him to end his reelection bid. She restored several swing states to the electoral battlefield and has had Democrats dreaming of a stunning turnabout in a race most thought they were well on the way to losing.

Yet her success in unifying her party, branding herself as a fresh voice of generational change and closing into a dead heat with Trump in polling has so far not cemented a reliable path to the 270 electoral votes needed to win the presidency. Indeed, if the election were on Tuesday, the ex-president, who has already defied an assassination attempt and scores of criminal charges, could still win.

A review of her most memorable moments on the debate stage and the dais offer clues to how she’ll take on Trump.

Harris generally excels at making clear and direct points using a professional and controlled tone, even when the underlying substance is dubious. She also tends to home in on narrow but evocative points that can resonate with the audience. Often, she manages to disarm her interlocutors and make them visibly — sometimes admittedly — nervous about responding to her.

The big question, of course, is how effective these particular skills will prove to be against Trump, particularly given the agreed-upon debate rules, which will give Harris much less leeway to tangle directly with her adversary. She will also have to adapt her style to deal with a man whose style — rambling and often incoherent — is almost diametrically opposed to her own.

The vice president will have to play defense as well as offense when she faces off against Donald Trump. Her main job is to reach those undecided voters who need to learn more about her before lending their support. But she also needs to deflect the incoming that Trump will surely provide. A night where she accomplishes these three tasks will be a win.

1. Explain her evolution.
2. Hit the kitchen-table pain points.
   Trumps crackpot ideas for how to “fix” the economy—deporting millions of low-paid migrant workers, slapping monster tariffs on huge swaths of U.S. imports—remain forever in the shadows. But these ideas, if implemented, would jack up prices on consumer goods in America tremendously.

   Harris should beat Trump about the head and neck with this, and do so at length. And she should spotlight her own policies aimed at reining in prices—ideally leaning less into the silly grocery-store price-gouging lines and more into her promising pledge to juice new housing construction.

3. Win on democracy

In a significant call for action, The Millennium Project, in collaboration with the World Futures Studies Federation (WFSF) and the World Academy of Art and Science (WAAS), sent an open letter to the incoming President of the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), His Excellency Mr. Philémon Yang, on September 9. The letter addresses the urgent need for governance in the rapidly evolving fields of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its upcoming Artificial General Intelligence (AGI).

Current efforts in governing the field focus on addressing the proliferation of Artificial Narrow Intelligence (ANI) technologies, which are widespread today. However, there is often insufficient attention to the distinction between ANI and its potential evolutions into AGI and Artificial Superintelligence (ASI), as outlined in the scenarios included in the “Work/Tech 2050” study by The Millennium Project, and to the development of global governance models for the transition to AGI, which is the subject of an ongoing study by the same organization.

Signed by 230 political, business, and academic leaders from around the globe, the letter expresses growing concerns about the safety and governance of the transition to AGI, a form of AI expected to emerge within the next decade. Unlike current AI systems—referred to as ANI, which excel in specific tasks—AGI would possess the ability to learn and perform a wide range of cognitive tasks, eventually surpassing human intelligence.

At 9 pm eastern tonight, Donald Trump and Kamala Harris will meet, in person, for the first time — amazing! — when they take the stage in Philadelphia.

I will be live-chatting — via the Substack app — with paid subscribers during the debate. If you aren’t a paying subscriber yet, make today the day!

Right after the debate, my friend Gabe Fleisher and I will be doing a live chat on Substack — with our first impressions of what we just saw. You can RSVP for that chat here.

In the meantime, I wanted to provide you a little food for thought. And it goes like this: The debate is likely to be decided more by, well, vibes than any specific policy position.

But, at root, it’s VERY important to remember that these debates are performances. They are watched by tens of millions of people on TV. And the candidate who better grasps that reality usually wins