A lot has changed since President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and was replaced as Democratic nominee by Vice President Kamala Harris.
The latest change: Back when Biden was the presumptive nominee, Democrats did not want to be interrupted by former President Donald Trump during a debate. Now under Harris, they do.
That’s the main takeaway from Monday’s back-and-forth about whether the first presidential debate should be open-mic night.
The original debate ground rules banned interruptions and crosstalk to the point that the networks could turn off the microphone of any candidate who tried to go beyond their allotted speaking time.
This was thought to benefit Biden, who might look insufficiently robust if his opponent persistently talked over him, while taking away a tactic Trump had used to get the better of others in previous debate.
But when Biden and Trump met on June 27, the rules had a different effect. Biden looked weak and out of it without any interruptions, except for a brief back-and-forth CNN allowed about the candidates’ golf skills. Trump turned in a more disciplined performance since he could not ramble or heckle Biden.
While Biden’s underperformance was the main takeaway from the encounter, knocking him out of the presidential race less than a month later, Trump did much better than in 2020, when he interrupted Biden all the time. Trump himself has conceded that in the first Trump-Biden debate four years ago, in particular, he might have come in too hot.
Harris would like to see the return of the Trump we saw in the 2020 debates. She would welcome the interruptions. Four years ago, she chided former Vice President Mike Pence for encroaching on her speaking time during the vice presidential debate. Being able to do that to Trump would be a major PR coup, something that would make it onto T-shirts like Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-MA) “Nevertheless, she persisted” and Hillary Clinton’s “nasty woman.”
It’s worth noting that Harris did not convincingly beat Pence in the vice presidential debate. The most memorable moment of that exchange might have belonged to a fly. Clinton didn’t win the election in the year of a “nasty woman.” Warren’s attempt to weaponize persistence against Senate Republicans in 2017 did not translate into a winning presidential campaign a few years later, though she made it further in the 2020 primaries than Harris did.
Yet in an abbreviated campaign sustained by vibes and positive media coverage, Harris is looking to extend her honeymoon by any means necessary, one news cycle at a time. If Trump treats Harris in a manner that could be construed as sexist or racist, it would play into the Democrats’ hands.
Intemperance is the trait Trump risks showing off each time he debates or speaks in public, much as infirmity was Biden’s.
Harris has nevertheless been at least as particular about debate specifics as Trump. While mocking Trump for abandoning the “any time, any place” debate posture he took with Biden, Harris has been unwilling to do one on Fox News.
What has happened instead is the sort of debate haggling that usually happens between campaigns that was missing after Biden channeled Dirty Harry against Trump is taking place now. Despite being branded a coward whenever he wants to change the original debate agreement with Biden, Trump is arguably less risk averse in this area than Harris.
Trump would like to get back on the offensive, as evidenced by his Arlington National Cemetery event tied to the Biden-Harris administration’s Afghanistan withdrawal. Republicans also want to highlight Harris’s reliance on tightly scripted events since taking over the top of the Democratic ticket.
For her part, Harris would like to sustain the momentum she has enjoyed over the past few weeks. A debate injects some uncertainty into a race Democrats increasingly believe they are winning, but Harris’s camp sees positives to a split screen with Trump that may not have been available to Biden.
CLICK HERE TO READ MORE FROM THE WASHINGTON EXAMINER
The first presidential debate is scheduled to be held by ABC News on Sept. 10.
Until it actually happens, the debate over the debates will continue.
