Kamala Harris and Donald Trump are veering sharply in how they gear up for Tuesday’s presidential debate, setting up a showdown that reflects not just two separate visions for the country but two politicians who approach big moments very differently.

The vice president is cloistered in a historic hotel in downtown Pittsburgh where she can focus on honing crisp two-minute answers, per the debate’s rules. She’s been working with aides since Thursday and chose a venue that allows the Democratic nominee the option of mingling with swing-state voters.

Trump, the Republican nominee, publicly dismisses the value of studying for the debate. The former president is choosing instead to fill his days with campaign-related events on the premise that he’ll know what he needs to do once he steps on the debate stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

“You can go in with all the strategy you want but you have to sort of feel it out as the debate’s taking place,” he said during a town hall with Fox News host Sean Hannity.

Trump then quoted former boxing great Mike Tyson, who said, “Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

  • ikidd@lemmy.world
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    4 months ago

    For a lot of people, him stepping down wasn’t on the table because of Genocide Joe, it was because he wasn’t going to win the election against Trump no matter how much his supporters hoped.

    But of course, on Lemmy, the Dump Joe camp was all painted by the same brush as naysayers that didn’t understand that he was the only shining light that could save the election. That was proven wrong in several ways in the days since (though who knows what happens yet), but I would hope in retrospect that the people that were shitting on the many other people that wanted a change have figured out that they were plainly wrong.

    • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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      4 months ago

      I doubt the veracity of everything you just said. You essentially repeated what the previous poster said that I disagreed with, and as far as I know the polling showed Biden and trump relatively equal despite Biden’s poor performance at the debate.

      Again, nobody saw Biden as a savior (edit: as in someone who can effect great change to the country, he was a decent president who was saving us from trump), he was simply the only available choice thanks to the way politics work in the US. Until he stepped down, anyway. We are now left with the de facto “choice” of Harris, who, like Biden, is who we are stuck with. I don’t doubt her being a better candidate at all.

      • Oxymoron@lemmy.world
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        4 months ago

        Exactly this! There weren’t Joe Biden fanatics about! There were people looking at the polling and hedging their bets on Biden. It’s easy to say we were wrong in hindsight. But we weren’t really wrong at the time.

        No one knew how popular or unpopular Harris would turn out to be (although up until that point she was certainly UNPOPULAR).

        • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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          3 months ago

          Don’t know why you’re downvoted. That’s pretty much it. I don’t know if Lemmy has the memory of a gnat or is just being hypocritical, but after Biden’s debate performance there were some calls here for him to step down and probably just as many “wait and see, he’s still better that trump” replies. Nobody was fanatical, more than a few pointed out his accomplishments as ameliorating factors, but nobody was really happy about it. Also, people looked around for other candidates who the wished were in the running, from Buttegieg to several others. Lemmy all but ignored Harris, or at least offered soft criticism of some of the negative aspects of her time as a prosecutor and how she’s essentially a centrist with left leaning social stances. She wasn’t popular at all here.