What Are They Trying To Accomplish?

The big story yesterday was Microphone dispute threatens September presidential debate:

The Trump campaign is stirring up speculation that the September 10 presidential debate on ABC will not occur. Former President Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, raised concerns over a microphone rule dispute with the Harris campaign.

The Trump campaign has called for microphones to be muted except during a candidate's turn to speak, as was the rule during Trump's CNN debate with President Joe Biden, CNN reported[.]

. . . Vice President Kamala Harris's campaign has requested unmuted microphones during the entire debate.

"We have told ABC and other networks seeking to host a possible October debate that we believe both candidates' mics should be live throughout the full broadcast," Brian Fallon, spokesman for the Democratic nominee, said in a statement.

"Our understanding is that Trump's handlers prefer the muted microphone because they don't think their candidate can act presidential for 90 minutes on his own," Fallon added. "We suspect Trump's team has not even told their boss about this dispute because it would be too embarrassing to admit they don't think he can handle himself against Vice President Harris without the benefit of a mute button."

Or something like that. There are other versiona of the story:

“Enough with the games. We accepted the ABC debate under the exact same terms as the CNN debate. The Harris camp, after having already agreed to the CNN rules, asked for a seated debate, with notes, and opening statements. We said no changes to the agreed upon rules,” said Jason Miller, senior adviser to President Trump.

. . . “This seems to be a pattern for the Harris campaign. They won’t allow Harris to do interviews, they won’t allow her to do press conferences, and now they want to give her a cheat-sheet for the debate. My guess is that they’re looking for a way to get out of any debate with President Trump,” he concluded.

According to Politico,

It’s clear the veep’s team is hoping to get Trump to lose his cool on mic.

“She’s more than happy to have exchanges with him if he tries to interrupt her,” one person familiar with the negotiations tells Playbook. “And given how shook he seems by her, he’s very prone to having intemperate outbursts and . . . I think the campaign would want viewers to hear [that].”

And any request for a seated debate with opening statements just never happened:

As for Miller’s assertion that Harris wanted a seated debate with notes, Fallon pushed back vigorously. “All three parties (Trump, Harris and ABC) have agreed to standing and no notes, and we never sought otherwise,” he said. Another source familiar with the negotiations laughed when we asked if Harris ever asked to be seated, saying it wasn’t true.

Later in the day, Trump himself said he didn't care:

“We agreed to the same rules, I don’t know, doesn’t matter to me, I’d rather have it probably on, but the agreement was that it would be the same as it was last time,” Trump said when asked by a reporter if he wanted the microphones muted during the debate when the candidate is not speaking.

. . . A top Harris spokesman said Monday that the campaign considered the mic issue “resolved” after Trump’s comments.

Trump “doesn’t care – doesn’t matter to him whether or not the mics are hot, and frankly, that he would prefer if they were hot. So I think this issue is resolved,” Harris campaign communications director Michael Tyler said during an appearance on MSNBC.

So why did the Harris campaign spend a whole day on this, which only focused attention on Harris's perceived weakness in debate? Look at the allegation they made via Politico -- they want an open mic because "he’s very prone to having intemperate outbursts.” But mic hot or mic mute, Trump scores points. Think back to his second debate with Hillary, open mic:

“It’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country,” Mrs. Clinton observed.

“Because,” Mr. Trump replied “you’d be in jail.”

Then go to the June 27 debate with Biden, muted mic:

“I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence. I don’t think he knows what he said either,” Trump said when he began his response to Biden’s comments.

Those remarks probably helped drive Trump's 2016 victory and pushed Pelosi to force Biden from the 2024 race. Intemperate outbursts indeed.

Trump is quick enough that he can take advantage of nearly any set of circumstances, and banking on any sort of likelihood that he'll embarrass himself with an outburst is seriously to underestimate him. He can score points either way, he knows it -- and likely Harris's handlers know it just as well. That's why I'm wondering why this whole exchange took place.

My theory is that the Harris campaign did in fact float the possibility of changing the debate rules, but once the story got out, they realized what a bad look this would be, since it would be a clear tell that the campaign had no confidence in Harris's ability to perform in the debate. So they quickly put out a version that omitted the business of opening statements and seated and concentrated on the open mic, which Trump himswlf saw as a trivial issue, and that gave them an excuse to drop the whole matter.

What this shows is the Harris campaign's extreme sensitivity to the problem of her potential gaffes in unscripted circumstances. Thus they're very cautiously teasing that maybe she'll sit for an interview soon:

[T]he vice president is packing her campaign schedule this week, starting with a bus tour in southern Georgia. She'll also sit for her first interview as a presidential candidate and ramp up preparations for her Sept. 10 debate against Trump.

But Harris's X account links only to the story linked above at Axios, which has little to say other than the Georgia bus tour on how she'll ramp up activities -- and tellingly, there's still nothing on what sort of an interview she'll be doing.

With only 70 more days until Election Day, VP @KamalaHarris is ramping up her campaign with bus tours and policy.

Read more here 👇https://t.co/noBpYrvPHG

— Madam President (@MadamPOTUS2024) August 27, 2024

Even the Axios link suggests the campaign is pretty much at a loss for strategy:

She has rolled out a few policy proposals to help first-time homeowners, the working class and others, but her senior advisers are tempering expectations that she'll put forward fully fleshed-out policy ideas before Election Day.

Their reasoning: There's not enough time.

Harris' late entry into the race has forced her team to set priorities, and Harris is calculating that her best move to counter Trump is to emphasize lofty ideals such as strength, decency, the rule of law and individual freedom.

In other words, as of now, the whole campaign is something of a Hail Mary play. The thing to keep in mind is that the Democrat establishment never had a serious Plan B when Hillary lost the 2016 election. The choice to back Biden in 2020 was forced on them when it looked like Sanders, a clear loser in the general elecion, was going to win the nomination -- but they seem then to have deliberately ignored the likelihood that Biden would be unable to campaign in 2024, and they procrastinated until the Harris candidacy was forced on them at the last minute. Now there's not enough time, as Axios acknowledges.

The problem continues to be that they've had no serious plan since 2016, and they're still winging it.