WASHINGTON (AP) — Kamala Harris and Donald Trump will meet in person for the first time Tuesday night for perhaps their only debate, a opportunity under high pressure Unpleasant show their very different views for the country after a tumultuous campaign summer.

The event, at 9 p.m. Eastern in Philadelphia, will offer Americans their most detailed look at a campaign that has changed dramatically since the last debate in June. President Joe Biden has quickly curved of the race after his disastrous performanceTrump survived an attempted murder and bothedges their running companions chose.

Harris wants to show that she can make the Democratic case against Trump better than Biden can. Trump, in turn, is trying to paint the vice president as an out-of-touch liberal as he tries to win over voters skeptical of his return to the White House.

Trump, 78, has had trouble adjusting to Harris59, who is the first woman, Black person and person of South Asian descent to serve as vice president. The former Republican president has at times resorted to invoking racial and gender stereotypes, frustrating allies who want Trump to focus instead on policy differences with Harris.

The vice president, in turn, will attempt to take some credit for the Biden administration’s accomplishments, while also addressing its downfalls and explaining why it has moved away from its more liberal positions in the past.

The debate will expose Harris, who has had just one formal interview in the past six weeks, to a rare moment of sustained questioning.

“If she does well, it’ll be a nice surprise for Democrats and they’ll cheer,” said Ari Fleischer, a Republican communications strategist and former press secretary to President George W. Bush. “If she flops, like Joe Biden did, it could really blow this race wide open. So the stakes are even higher.”

Tim Hogan, who led Sen. Amy Klobuchar’s debate preparations during the 2020 Democratic presidential primary, said Harris, a former California attorney general, would bring “the instincts of a prosecutor to the debate stage.”

“That’s a really strong asset in that environment, having someone who knows how to throw a punch and how to translate it,” Hogan said.

The first early ballots in the presidential race will go out a few hours after the debate, hosted by ABC News. Mail-in ballots will begin to be sent out in Alabama on Wednesday.

Trump wants to sue Harris for being too liberal

Trump and his campaign have been highlighting the far-left positions she took during her failed 2020 presidential bid. He has been joined in his informal debate prep sessions by Tulsi Gabbard, the former Democratic congresswoman and presidential candidate who tore Harris to pieces during their primary election debates.

Harris has attempted to defend her shifts from liberal goals to more moderate positions on fracking, expanding Medicare for All and mandatory gun buybacks — and even her retreat from her position that plastic straws should be banned — as pragmatism, to insist that her “values ​​remain the same.” Her campaign published a page on its website Monday listing its positions on key issues.

The former president has argued that a Harris presidency would threaten the country’s security, stressing that Biden tapped her to address the influx of migrants, while the Republican has renewed dark warnings about immigration and those in the country illegally, which have been central to his campaign. He has sought to portray a Harris presidency as a continuation of Biden’s still-unpopular administration, particularly his economic record, as voters continue to feel the sting of inflation even as it has cooled in recent months.

Trump’s team emphasizes that his tone will not change with a female opponent.

“President Trump is going to be himself,” senior adviser Jason Miller told reporters during a call Monday.

Gabbard, who was also present at the call, added that Trump “respects women and doesn’t feel the need to be condescending or talk to women any differently than he would a man.”

His advisers suggest that Harris tends to express herself in a “word salad” of meaningless phrases, prompting Trump to say last week that his debate strategy was to “let her talk.”

The former president frequently engages in rambling remarks that veer away from his policy points. He frequently makes false claims about the last election, attacks a long list of enemies and opponents working against him, praises foreign strongmen and comments on race, such as his false claim in July that Harris recently “happened to be black.”

Harris wants to argue that Trump is unfair.

stable and unsuitable

The vice president, who has been the Biden administration’s most outspoken pro-abortion advocate after the Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, is expected to focus on Trump’s inconsistencies on women’s reproductive care, including announcing that he will vote on a statewide referendum this fall to protect Florida’s six-week abortion ban.

Harris also wanted to portray himself as someone who could play a more stable role in leading the country and protecting alliances, with war still raging in Ukraine more than two years after the Russian invasion, and Israel’s war with Hamas in Gaza continuing with no end in sight.

She will likely warn that Trump poses a threat to democracy, with his efforts in 2020 to overturn his presidential election loss and his angry supporters inciting an attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, over comments he made just last week. Trump has again issued a retaliatory message on social media, threatening that if he wins, he will “lock up those engaged in unconscionable conduct,” including lawyers, political operatives, donors, voters and election officials.

Harris has spent much of the past five days preparing for the debate in Pennsylvania, where she participated in hours of mock sessions with a Trump stand-in. Before the debate, she told radio host Rickey Smiley that she was brainstorming how to respond if Trump lies.

“There’s no bottom to how low he can go,” she said.

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Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux, AP Polling Editor in Washington, and Associated Press journalists Thomas Beaumont in Las Vegas, Bill Barrow in Atlanta and Josh Boak in Pittsburgh contributed to this report.