How the presidential debate stage played to Harris’ strengths
Plus: What makes the new Harris campaign ad with former Trump officials so devastating
Hello, in this issue we’ll look at…
How the presidential debate stage played to Harris’ strengths
What makes the new Harris campaign ad with former Trump officials so devastating
Scroll to the end to see: how the Harris campaign is celebrating Taylor Swift’s endorsement 🌟
How the presidential debate stage played to Harris’ strengths
If there’s one word that could be used to describe the debate stage where Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump met on Tuesday, it’s demure.
The dark blue set at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia was designed to look serious and unassuming—a neutral, subdued setting for the candidates competing to become America’s 47th president. It didn’t demand attention because that wasn’t its job; and the setting ultimately played to the strengths of the former prosecutor over the former reality-TV show host.
Rather than an open set with an audience, Harris and Trump debated in a small circular auditorium that’s used for tour group audiovisual presentations. The tight quarters made Harris’ walk across the set to shake Trump’s hand and introduce herself short, and decidedly less awkward. The lack of audience and muted microphones when candidates weren’t talking kept the program on track.
A flash poll of viewers conducted by SSRS research company for CNN found Harris came out ahead. The poll showed 63% of viewers thought Harris won, and viewers’ favorable ratings of her rose from 39% before the debate to 45% after it, while Trump’s favorable rating among viewers remained unchanged at about 39%.
For 32 years, debate-staging decisions were the realm of the nonpartisan Commission on Presidential Debates, which hosted every presidential debate from 1988 to 2020. When it came to sets, the commission tended to play things straight. Unlike network-hosted primary campaign debates, which can be packed with modern, bright, dynamic video screens and commercial breaks, the commission’s debates used staid, patriotic staging.
Beginning in 1992, the commission displayed an image of a bald eagle holding a banner in its beak that reads, “The Union and the Constitution Forever.” In 2008, it started to use a blue background that showed text from the Declaration of Independence. Design elements remained largely unchanged from election to election, giving commission-sponsored debates a familiar, consistent look. But when Trump and President Joe Biden agreed in May to attend debates hosted by news outlets instead of by the Commission on Presidential Debates, that put the onus on networks to design a stage of their own.