One way or another, tonight’s Harris-Trump debate is going to be a humdinger.

Because Harris really and truly needs to put her cards face-up on the kitchen table…frankly, honestly, no word-salad answers…and if she equivocates or tap-dances she’ll be in trouble.

And there can be no mincing words about the obvious fact that Donald J. Trump is a totalitarian, foam-at-the-mouth animal.

N.Y. Times reporters Reid J. Epstein and Jonathan Swan: “With no other debates scheduled between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump, the face-off figures to be one of the highest-stakes 90 minutes in American politics in generations.”

Hollywood Elsewhere will begin the bingle-bangle sometime around 9 pm eastern.

Here’s the thing: There’s a lesson in the fact that Hubert Humphrey‘s 1968 candidacy never caught on until he separated himself from LBJ’s Vietnam War policies. The lesson is this: A vice-president looking to succeed a sitting president has no choice but to man up and say “I am my own person with my own vision, and not a carbon copy or a ‘me too” version of the president.”

In order to persuade heavy-lidded, low-information, couch-slumping, fence-sitting voters to trust or at least take a chance on a Kamala Harris presidency, the sitting vice-president needs to at least partially throw droolin’ Joe Biden under the bus. She needs to admit what everyone knows, which is that a vice-president is primarily obliged to back up the president, but her own Presidency, moving forward, will be first and foremost about fufilling her own goals and policies.

“Did Harry Truman model his presidency on the legislative goals and governmental philosophy of Franklin Roosevelt?,” Harris could rhetorically ask. “Yes and no, but within a very short period he set his own course. Did Lyndon Johnson model his presidency on what John F. Kennedy attempted to do? Intially, yes, but Johnson very quickly and aggressively formulated his own domestic agenda — civil rights legislation, war on poverty, Medicare — as well as his own self-destructive instincts about the Vietnam War.

“For better or ill, every vice-president-turned-president has gone his own way and charted his own path.”

N.Y. Times columnist Thomas L. Freidman has said it best — “23 Words Harris Needs to Say to Win“:

“’Joe and I got a lot of things right, but we got some things wrong, too — and here is what I have learned.’

“For my money, uttering those 23 words, or something like them, is the key for Kamala Harris to win Tuesday’s debate against Donald Trump, and the election.

“Utter them, and she will hugely improve her chances to win more of the undecided voters in this tight race. Fail to utter them or continue to disguise her policy shifts with the incoherent statement she used in the CNN interview — that while her positions might have changed on fracking and immigration, ‘my values have not changed’ — and she will struggle.

“Madam V.P., if you say your positions have changed but your values haven’t, what does that even mean? And what should we expect from your presidency — your values or your actions? Our latest poll shows too many voters still don’t know.

“It’s okay to say: ‘President Biden and I inherited a cruel Trump border policy that included separating parents from their children. Maybe, out of an excess of compassion, we rolled it back too far. But we learned from it — we learned that only comprehensive, bipartisan immigration reform can give us the solution we need, controlling illegal immigration — while continuing to be a beacon for legal immigration.

“So our administration sat down with one of the most conservative Republicans in the Senate, James Lankford of Oklahoma, and hammered out a bipartisan immigration bill that would have done just that. And what did Trump do? He ordered Republicans to kill it, so he could keep exploiting immigration as a wedge issue. And you’re asking me if I’ve flip-flopped?”

“Trump Steps Up Threats to Imprison Those He Sees as Foes,” by N.Y. Times staffers Charlie Savage, Maggie Haberman, Jonathan Swan and Michael Gold (9.9.24):

“Donald J. Trump has long used strongman-style threats to prosecute people he vilifies as a campaign tactic, dating back to encouraging his 2016 rallygoers to chant ‘lock her up’ about Hillary Clinton. And during his term as president, he repeatedly pressed the Justice Department to open investigations into his political adversaries.

“But as November nears, the former president has escalated his vows to use the raw power of the state to impose and maintain control and to intimidate and punish anyone he perceives as working against him.

“After Democrats replaced President Biden with Vice President Kamala Harris as their 2024 nominee — and Mr. Trump’s lead in the polls eroded — Mr. Trump’s targets expanded.

“He has been laying the groundwork to claim that there was large-scale voter fraud if he loses, a familiar tactic from his 2016 and 2020 playbooks, but this time coupled with threats of prosecution. Those who may face criminal scrutiny for purported efforts at election fraud, Mr. Trump has declared, will include election workers, a tech giant, political operatives, lawyers and donors working for his opponent.

“Over the past month, he has shared a post calling for former President Barack Obama to be subject to “military tribunals” and reposted fake images of well-known Democrats clad in prison garb. He has threatened the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg with a life sentence for helping state and local governments fund elections in 2020. He stoked fears of voter intimidation by urging police officers to ‘watch for the voter fraud’ at polling places because some voters may be ‘afraid of that badge,’ and warned that people deemed to have “cheated” in this election “will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.”

“’WHEN I WIN, those people that CHEATED will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the Law, which will include long term prison sentences so that this Depravity of Justice does not happen again,’ Mr. Trump wrote on his website Truth Social on Saturday.

“He added: ‘Those involved in unscrupulous behavior will be sought out, caught, and prosecuted at levels, unfortunately, never seen before in our Country.'”