Trump and Harris debate the debates

When former President Donald Trump chose Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) as his running mate, Vice President Kamala Harris was quick to challenge Vance to a debate.

In her congratulatory voicemail, Harris urged Vance to accept a debate on CBS News on either July 23 (since passed) or Aug. 13.

“Vice President Harris is prepared to debate J.D. Vance,” Biden campaign spokesman T.J. Ducklo told reporters during the Republican convention on the day the pick was announced. “We have accepted the proposal from CBS News — I think as folks are aware — to participate in that debate, and we feel very good.”

Nobody expects Harris to debate Vance on Aug. 13. That gauntlet was thrown down by the then Biden-Harris campaign trying to project normalcy amid a Democratic revolt. The race has since changed and Harris is now the Democratic presidential nominee. For her, it’s a debate with Trump or bust.

The Trump campaign believes the same logic applies to the presidential debates: The race has changed, and what they agreed to do when President Joe Biden was on top of the ticket is null and void. Now new terms need to be agreed to with the new Democratic nominee.

Harris believes that she inherited the Biden debate terms, much as she inherited his delegates and campaign funds. She is mocking Trump for abandoning his “anytime, anyplace” stance on debating, adopted when Biden was still the presumptive nominee. 

But while scoring points against Trump’s bravado, Harris noticeably isn’t adopting it: She seems no more interested in debating Trump on Fox News than he is in debating her on ABC News.

This is the sort of jockeying that many expected to take place when Biden publicly challenged Trump to a debate — “Well, make my day, pal” — on terms that seemed quite favorable to the Democrats’ then standard-bearer. No Fox News, no conservative moderators, no live audiences, no interruptions, no late fall debates at all.

Instead, Trump quickly accepted Biden’s terms. The former president bet that simply getting up on stage with Biden would set up a contrast favorable to him. Trump was right, so much so that the June 27 encounter knocked Biden out of the race.

This time, the ground rules matter more. Therefore, the Trump campaign would like another shot at a debate on Fox, which the Democrats have always rejected no matter whether Biden or Harris was at the top of the ticket.

Trump has always debated based on what serves his political interests. He skipped the Republican primary debates this year to avoid giving his opponents any oxygen. It worked. While former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley used the debates to pull ahead of the rest of the field, she never got particularly close to beating Trump.

In 2015 and 2016, Trump used the GOP debates to upstage a large field of more established politicians. He made their relative polish and experience look like inauthenticity, and none matched his charisma or star power. 

Trump’s debates against Hillary Clinton in 2016 were unconventional and uneven. But he scored some points against the Democratic nominee and his performances were good enough to survive the Access Hollywood scandal and ultimately win the White House.

The record against Biden was even more mixed. Trump came in too hot against Biden in their first debate in 2020, skipped the next scheduled debate because it was going to be held virtually after his COVID-19 infection, and then settled down a little the second time he debated Biden. Four years later, Trump scored the most lopsided win in the history of presidential debates.

That may have been a pyrrhic victory, since Trump now faces a much more competitive race with Biden gone. (Though the hostile press coverage of his attempts to renegotiate the debate terms with Harris suggests he probably couldn’t have turned Biden down.) The politics of a Trump-Harris debate are unclear.

Democrats would like the debate to resemble Trump’s appearance at the National Association of Black Journalists convention: a contentious event where the Republican nominee fights with the moderators and rants angrily about whether Harris is black. If Trump avoids this spectacle, Democrats can portray him as weak. This isn’t low-polling Chris Christie calling Trump “Donald Duck.”

But Republicans would also like to get Harris in an unscripted setting and have her answer tough questions about her rapidly shifting policy positions. And while she is a much more disciplined communicator than Trump, a lot of the fodder for anti-Harris ads has come from her past debates.

The June 27 debate blew up Biden’s basement strategy and made it impossible to hide him from the electorate until Election Day. Harris can still run a version of that play in a truncated campaign. Republicans would prefer to avoid that outcome.

There is still a chance Harris and Trump debate. The polls after the Democratic convention may dictate which side is more willing to give on debate terms.

This year has shown that debating can have unpredictable results.