Kamala has more to lose in the debate than Trump

The Kamala Harris campaign team apparently based their debate strategy assuming that ABC News would prove as pliable and willing as the rest of the media toward their efforts, expecting that the rules requiring muted mics between answers would be thrown out. They assumed wrong, and now they are reportedly “scrambling” for a new plan, describing Kamala’s position as “handcuffed” by the rules agreed to when Joe Biden was the Democratic candidate:

Trump’s worst moments in the debates are when he gets upset and snaps,” said an aide to Harris in her 2020 presidential campaign, granted anonymity to speak freely. “And they have neutered that.

That the vice president was counting on a rule change as essential for her debate strategy is like expecting a professor to cancel the final exam — which is never a good approach. What we’ve learned about Kamala Harris to this point on the debate stage is that she is easily knocked off her game, even with basic frontal lines of attack. She lost her debate to Mike Pence in 2020, which is why all that anyone remembers about it is that at one point a fly landed on his hair. And the Tulsi Gabbard effect which led to the Harris presidential campaign’s collapse is still very much in her head.

All this sets up a debate where Harris will have to accomplish a lot more than Donald Trump, who really just needs to run it back for a repeat performance from June. Trump has momentum on his side after a polling reset that saw Harris’s post-coup bump disappear, troubling the readers of the New York Times and reframing the storyline around the trajectory of this election from joy to anxiety, Inside Out 2-style.

The Trump team shouldn’t change anything about its approach. Letting the moderators and Kamala go back and forth on key questions about the economy, the border and foreign policy should be the plan, and if the moderators don’t ask those questions, bring them up yourself. Discipline has benefited Trump, and focusing on policy — avoiding the temptation to personally attack Kamala’s personal inauthenticity or her life story — helps define her as the candidate of the past four years and reiterating yourself in the minds of voters as the candidate of change.

This is likely to be the only debate this cycle, and the stakes are extremely high. The last debate was devastating for the administration and the Democratic Party, and this one could be damning as well if Republicans can get the best version of Trump. Expect a massive number of people to tune in. Let’s get ready to rumble.