Kamala Harris is about to walk a tightrope, in front of the entire country. In tomorrow night's debate with Donald Trump, she's got to achieve two basic but somewhat contradictory goals: appear presidential and in control, but also rattle Trump and get under his skin. Both will be important, but she's really got to achieve both simultaneously, hence the tightrope metaphor.

Harris, unlike Trump, still has to introduce herself to a large portion of the electorate. In a recent poll, 28 percent of voters said they still wanted to learn more about who Harris is before making up their minds about who to vote for. This is not true for Trump -- everybody already knows who he is. Whether you love him or hate him, Trump is a known quantity. Harris still isn't, in many people's minds. So for many, she'll be making a first impression at the debate.

So first she's got to clear the hurdle of "appearing presidential" tomorrow night. People have to be able to look at her, listen to what she has to say, and then be able to realistically picture her in the Oval Office leading the country. She's got to show her intelligence and grasp of issues, she's got to be cool in the face of adversity, and she's got to appear in command of the situation. This is the traditional test of any presidential candidate during a debate, and it is a hurdle Harris could pretty easily manage to clear in a normal debate with a normal opponent. Her public speaking style has improved markedly over the past four years, and the experience of being vice president has given her some gravitas she didn't possess in her 2020 primary run for president. For those of us who have been paying attention to the race, Harris has already been quite impressive in this regard. But many people have not been paying close attention, so tomorrow night will be the first time they see Harris clear this bar.

As mentioned, this all would be a lot easier with a normal opponent. If verbally jousting over competing policy ideas was going to be the main substance of the debate, Harris would be able to hold her own and appear in command of the facts and resolute in the face of opposition. But Donald Trump is not a normal opponent, of course.

Which brings up the second goal for Harris. The main reason she wanted his microphone to be live throughout the night was that audience-response data from Trump's debates is pretty consistent -- the more he speaks, the less viewers like him. Especially when he's interrupting his opponent or the moderators with his bluster. Although Team Harris lost this fight with ABC (the host of tomorrow's debate), they have reportedly "agreed to keep both microphones on during any heated back-and-forth," which should be adequate enough to remind the nation just how off-putting Trump can be in these situations.

Harris is going to have to needle Trump, whether subtly or blatantly. The more he flies off the handle and rants and raves, the better Harris will look in comparison. Fortunately for her, this is pretty pathetically easy to do, since Trump's skin is so thin on so many subjects it's what the military would call a "target-rich environment."

But because she is a woman, Harris has to walk another tightrope that a male candidate wouldn't. A male debate opponent could get away with a lot more provocative needling of Trump and no one would give it a second thought -- they'd mostly think he was strong and forceful (something usually seen as a positive in a president). Harris, however, has to not appear to be an "angry woman" or too disrespectful, since there are a whole lot of voters who have at least a tinge of misogyny in how they view any woman politician. So Harris wouldn't be able to get away with the same sort of frontal attack a man would -- which is admittedly monstrously unfair, but also unfortunately true.

Kamala Harris is quite capable of sticking a few verbal knives into people she is debating. She has long experience as a prosecutor, raking witnesses over the coals in courtrooms. She also has plenty of experience as a senator, doing the same thing to witnesses in a committee hearing. And she's proven that she can do the same thing in debates previously (her most successful jab was actually at Joe Biden in the 2020 Democratic primary debates, over school busing). So it's really not a question of whether she can get under Trump's skin, but instead what is the best way for her to do so.

The challenge is to accomplish both of Harris's goals at the same time. Can she forcefully counter Trump while still appearing presidential? That would truly be the best of both worlds at once. She's got to appear to be strong and able to tangle with an adversary, but at the same time not come off as too unlikeable. Which, again, leads us back to the tightrope metaphor.

What people's perception of tomorrow night's debate may come down to is which candidate more successfully "baits" the other. For Harris, this will likely mean brushing off Trump's personal insults without getting down into the mud with him. It will also mean not attempting to fully fact-check the firehose of lies coming out of his mouth (because she could wind up using all her time to do so, leaving her with little or no time to make her own points).

My advice to Harris would be to start off her very first response to Trump by saying something like: "You know, I counted six separate lies in what you just said, but instead of countering each one of them with solid facts, I will be posting all my fact-checks later, on my website -- I invite viewers to check it out tomorrow to see how many lies Donald Trump tells tonight." And then for each successive answer, just look down at her notes and begin with: "I counted five more lies in that answer, but I want to talk about what I would do instead..." and move on to her own talking points. This would likely enrage Trump for two reasons: (1) she would be refusing to play his game on his playing field, and (2) she would be ridiculing him constantly, which he doesn't respond to very well (to put it mildly).

Of course, she is going to have to push back on at least some of Trump's laughably-untrue statements. But she should pick and choose which ones to spar with him over, which will allow her to control the dialogue more than him. And she's got to bait him in various other ways as well, which I am fully confident she will be able to do (in any number of ways).

Trump, of course, is fundamentally incapable of not "taking the bait." He's going to react to being insulted. He's going to react to being called on his lies. He's going to react simply because he can not stand seeing a strong and powerful woman contradict him (much less a strong and powerful minority woman). So the chances are pretty good that he'll wind up saying something incredibly offensive at some point during the night (I would actually put my money on: "...at several points during the night," personally).

To date, nobody has really dominated Trump during a debate. Oh sure, they've "won" debates against him and they've exposed several weaknesses in him, but not once has anyone truly knocked him off his playground-insult game to the point where it is painfully obvious to all that he is just flailing around in desperation. A few have managed to do this briefly while debating Trump, but Harris has the chance to do it throughout the entire night. Her joy-based campaign is something completely new -- something Trump has never really faced before. And all bullies hate to be laughed at.

If Harris can walk the tightrope of appearing upbeat, positive, and in command of the situation while at the same time exposing all of Trump's weaknesses, then tomorrow night's debate could be even more consequential than the last debate Trump had, with Joe Biden. That would be an astounding achievement for Harris, but it is certainly well within her grasp.

-- Chris Weigant

Follow Chris on Twitter: @ChrisWeigant