Republicans keep missing opportunities. Trump needs to go after Harris on policy.

After a few weeks of back and forth, former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris have agreed to at least one debate in September . This will be the first time the two presidential nominees have had the opportunity to go head-to-head in front of American voters.

Debates are the perfect chance for candidates to differentiate themselves from their opponents on policy, but Republicans should not be waiting until then to do so and have missed the opportunity to show Americans that conservative policies are better for the country.

Instead, Trump is still talking about President Joe Biden, and his campaign is slipping behind in the polls because of it.

Kamala Harris is vulnerable on policy while she establishes her campaign

Harris is still taking the reins of the failing Biden campaign infrastructure, and her being thrust into the race rather suddenly should have left little opportunity for her to build. She's had to walk a careful line of differentiating herself from the failed Biden presidency while not disparaging her own role in the process.

Meanwhile, aside from reversing a few of her past radical stances , Harris’ campaign has amounted to calling Trump “weird,” which, while true, is not going to carry her campaign very far. It's something even progressives have begun to point out .

Trump and Harris want division: Harris choosing Walz for VP made one thing clear: Neither she nor Trump wants unity

While Harris has had a resurgence in the polls under her current pacing, she and her advisers must know that isn’t going to last. Expectations were extremely low when Harris took over the Democratic presidential campaign, and while she has exceeded them, her momentum has little to do with her own efforts and everything to do with Trump and voter dissatisfaction with Biden.

Her own past extreme views on fracking to extract oil and gas from rock, on the border and on policing could all come back to haunt her. Harris has gotten ahead and walked back some of these stances. But if you are backpedaling, you are ceding ground, and the Trump campaign would be wise to capitalize.

They haven't so far.

Trump and Republicans are missing opportunities to establish their policy priorities – if they have any

While the Trump campaign has made a point of highlighting Harris' past record , forcing her to publicly change certain stances over the past couple of weeks, they aren’t doing enough.

Republicans would be wise to hit Harris hard on policy right now. Instead, Trump is spending time continuing to talk about Biden, as he did for much of his Thursday press conference,  rather than the new threat that is right in front of him. He's focusing on insults more than he is on solutions, which has been a staple of his movement.

His MAGA successor, Republican vice presidential nominee JD Vance, is even more lost at sea. To little surprise, the Ohio senator is taking aim at the news media and Democrats. Vance has his own opportunities to attack his Democratic adversary, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, on his progressive policies.

Trump feuds with Kemp: Trump is back to attacking Republicans. You know, the people he needs to win in November.

While more personal attacks, such as those against Walz’s stolen valor allegations , are helpful to some degree, hitting the Democratic vice presidential nominee on policy should be a winning battle due to his progressive past.

But it is clear that this Republican ticket is not about policy; it's about the MAGA movement.

While Biden dug Democrats a deep hole, Americans still need to trust that Trump can run the country, something they clearly did not trust him to do in the 2020 election. I certainly still don't personally, and one reason why is his lack of commitment to concrete policy proposals.

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Winning the policy battle could quell some voter concerns about Trump and may allow Americans to put their personal feelings about the man aside.

I'm certain that Trump has policy in mind, and Thursday's rapid-fire section of his news conference showed he does have concrete stances on certain issues. However, much of what he has shared preserves action from his previous administration, such as renewing his tax cuts .

The GOP needs to hit Democrats harder on their progressive politics and force them to say what they really stand for. The policy fight is one that Trump could win if he only stayed disciplined on that message.

Thursday's news conference only confirmed this: Trump is at his best when clearly discussing what he seeks to accomplish, not rambling on about Biden and the Democrats.

Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Republicans keep missing opportunities. Trump needs to go after Harris on policy.