The Democrats need to get their own house in order before debates are settled.
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The Democrats need to get their own house in order before debates are settled.
When the former President Donald Trump, the current frontrunner in November’s presidential election, said he would “absolutely” debate Vice President Kamala Harris just 48 hours after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race and mere hours after Harris had the requisite number of pledged delegates to be the nominee, I was disappointed.
Just as the Trump campaign sat back and let Democrats tear each other to pieces for two full weeks—a period which ended with a failed assassination attempt against Trump—I wanted the Trump team to deny the legitimacy of the Harris candidacy until after the Democratic National Convention. Democrats can feign unity and the media can astroturf enthusiasm for Harris’s campaign, but two facts remain fundamentally unchanged. First, with Nancy Pelosi playing Robespierre and the Democratic party the Jacobins they always have been, the Democrats led the incumbent president to the guillotine and took his head in the public square. Second, Harris has yet to receive a single vote to become the Democratic nominee.
Suffice it to say, this is not business as usual. I feared that, by agreeing to debate Harris so quickly, Trump was helping the Democrats move on and pass off the palace coup as nothing more than hardball politics.
It appears Trump and his team have come to see it that way, too. On Thursday, Trump communications director Steven Cheung said in a statement,
Given the continued political chaos surrounding Crooked Joe Biden and the Democrat Party, general election debate details cannot be finalized until Democrats formally decide on their nominee. There is a strong sense by many in the Democrat Party—namely Barack Hussein Obama—that Kamala Harris is a Marxist fraud who cannot beat President Trump, and they are still holding out for someone “better.” Therefore, it would be inappropriate to schedule things with Harris because Democrats very well could still change their minds.
Predictably, Harris and leftists online and in the media had a field day with Trump’s statement. “I have agreed to the previously agreed upon Sept. 10 debate. He agreed to that previously,” Harris claimed. “Now, here he is backpedaling, and I’m ready, and I think the voters deserve to see the split screen that exists in this race on a debate stage, and so I’m ready. Let’s go.”
On MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” Pete Buttigieg claimed, “Tough talk is this guy’s calling card. And now there’s this extraordinary show of weakness.”
“He agreed to this specific debate, on this specific network, on this specific date, and now he’s pulling out. It shows that he’s afraid,” Buttigieg added.
What Mayor Pete fails to mention is that Trump agreed to the debate terms with Biden. Until they meet in Chicago next month, Democrats do not actually have a candidate for president.
It is doubtful that Trump is scared to debate Harris. Lest the people forget, last time Trump was on the debate stage, he ran the incumbent Democratic president out of the race. But Trump hasn’t just beaten Joe Biden. Hillary Clinton was seen as a more talented politician in 2016 than Harris is now, and Trump sent her packing, too.
For the foreseeable future, the Trump campaign’s mission ought to be to delegitimize Harris and her campaign at every turn.
The American people still have zero answers about why Biden actually left the race, nor do they have answers about what Harris’s role was in his departure. It is not Trump’s job to force the question on the debate stage—that should be handled with expediency by Republicans with subpoena powers on Capitol Hill and the few good journalists left—but he will if he must.
Trump shouldn’t budge on having debates until the Harris campaign is treated like a serious presidential campaign. Sure, a Harris rally managed to fill one high school gymnasium, but other campaign hallmarks are shockingly absent. Harris has yet to hold a single press conference in her capacity as vice president or as a candidate for president since Biden’s departure. Nor has she faced a hard-hitting sitdown interview. Her campaign website does not even have a page on her website explaining her positions on the issues.
Don’t worry. We’re told the sitting vice president is currently working out where she stands on the war in Gaza. Maybe we can talk about debates after she’s figured it out.
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