When Kamala Harris walks onto the debate stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia on Tuesday (Wednesday, AEST), her toughest opponent will not be Donald Trump. After all, she is quite familiar with his type, as the vice-president frequently reminds us. No, Harris’ most complicated antagonist will be one who she can’t criticise, question or contradict, one that she must both deflect and defend.

Harris will have to face off against President Joe Biden — his record, his shifting public approval rating and their intertwined legacies — from now until election day. Her supporters are eager to watch her “prosecute the case” against Trump in their debate. But when it comes to the Biden years, Harris is both prosecutor and defendant, reformer and institutionalist, contrast and continuity. And that’s a harder sell.

Vice-president Kamala Harris and President Joe Biden at a campaign event in Pittsburgh on Monday.Credit: AP

Americans are ready for a “new way forward” and are eager to “turn the page,” Harris told Dana Bash of CNN in an interview last week. But it’s tricky to campaign on a new way when you also represent the old one, to turn to the next page when you helped write the previous chapter.

On debate night, Harris’ sharpest contrast with Biden will be simple but fleeting; all it will take is showing up. Assuming the vice-president speaks with even modest eloquence and clarity, calls out Trump’s distortions and doesn’t declare victory over Medicare, she will have skipped over the lowest of bars that Biden set in the June debate against Trump, instantly appearing more presidential than the current president.

In fact, the Harris campaign, usually unstinting in its politeness toward Biden, has already let slip a subtle dig. When the Harris and Trump camps sparred over whether the candidates’ debate microphones should remain on or be muted depending on whose turn it was to speak (as they were in the Biden-Trump debate), a Harris campaign spokesperson made the case for live mics. The vice-president “is ready to deal with Trump’s........

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