Vice President Kamala Harris’s strong debate performance has sent her campaign surging into the final weeks of the race with newfound confidence, sharper ideas about how to persuade the country that former President Donald J. Trump is unfit for office, and a host of questions about what comes next.
The Tuesday clash had long stood out as the final tent-pole moment for Ms. Harris on the campaign calendar, with the vice-presidential candidates set to face off on Oct. 1. Now, her team is fully open to a second debate with Mr. Trump, though he appears noncommittal.
While Ms. Harris’s top aides are thrilled with her debate showing and Mr. Trump’s inability to push consistent and coherent attacks, they are looking to tweak their strategy only around the edges. The next steps, close advisers say, are ramping up her visibility on the campaign trail, including retail politicking in communities, increased press appearances, and putting herself in front of as many voters as possible in battleground states. Aides believe that at its heart, the race is unchanged.
But Ms. Harris remains a key part of an unpopular incumbent administration in a nation where many voters say they want a decisive change and have expressed unhappiness with President Biden’s leadership.
Her quandary was encapsulated in the debate’s very first question, when Ms. Harris was asked if she thought Americans were better off now than they were four years ago. Instead of giving a direct answer, she talked about her middle-class upbringing and her plans to help working families. It was almost as if she felt it would be unwise either to embrace Mr. Biden too closely or to obviously distance herself from him.
The ultimate challenge for the Harris campaign dating to when it was Mr. Biden’s operation is less about moving Mr. Trump’s numbers — which have barely budged since 2016 — than it is about lifting hers. The bet her team is making is that some key voters who are leery of both candidates will back Ms. Harris if she can disqualify Mr. Trump in their minds.
