For obvious reasons, the pre-game coverage of Tuesday night’s showdown between Vice President Kamala Harris and convicted felon former President Trump has reached a saturation point, almost to the level where you’d think it was the election itself. In some ways it might as well be the election itself given the potential impact. That by now it’s rote to point out that the last debate was so significant that it led to a change of candidate for the Dems does not make it any less true.
The reporting ahead of it hasn’t been terribly interesting however. Above you see Trump claiming it’s going to be rigged because that’s what he always does as a fallback option, and per usual it’s a weak premise from asshole propagandist John Solomon. The “scoopy” stuff isn’t all that electrifying either: We’ve got Axios picking up that Trump’s campaign manager Chris LaCivita told the House GOP to expect a “fine” performance from the Orange God Emperor. That could mean “meh” but we don’t know because the report didn’t elaborate further. “I think – I pray – he can be disciplined,” said Republican strategist Trish McLaughlin to Politico in a story printed Saturday. The Guardian on Monday reported that Team Orange know everything rides on whether they get “happy Trump” or “angry Trump.” Their August 29th story from inside Mar-a-Lago was better. A Trump minion told the New York Times that they’re worried that if Donald tries to stay on his best behavior then he could overdo it and come across as “low energy.” In the same piece Donald also told his minions “I’m not going to let her do to me what she did to Mike,” as in Mike Pence. The fat bastard also came pretty close to dropping out, but “concluded that the downsides of skipping the debate – especially the appearance of weakness – outweighed his concerns about attending.” CNN reports Trump is going to zero in on “flip-flopping,” with one sycophant saying “We want to keep him steered toward hitting her record, that she is just as responsible for the Biden administration’s failed policies as Biden is.”
The Harris campaign on the other hand is prepared for the possibility Trump will just outright call her a “bitch” in the debate, per NBC. A weekend piece by New York Magazine says “The debate, say Democrats close to Harris, is simply not the venue for just pumping up her partisans or trying to fulfill a liberal fantasy of so aggressively confronting Trump that his own supporters have second thoughts about voting for him. Instead, Harris’s team believes it needs to be about finding moments to educate and convert the voters on the margins.” The same NYT says Harris, determined to avoid Hillary’s mistakes, thinks it’s a waste of time to tell people Trump’s a racist and misogynist.
The analyses and expectations management are by and large just as boring as ESPN on the morning of the Super Bowl. There’s Frau Ingraham telling her fans that Harris is going to lie to them about Trump so they should be angry now ahead of time. “How Kamala Harris Can Beat Trump in the Debate” leads at Slate. “Democrats desperately need this debate to go well. Can Harris deliver and beat Trump?” is the top op-ed at USA Today. And so on and so forth. One we do want to recommend is from The Bulwark publisher/Republican Never-Trumper focus group expert Sarah Longwell, who writes that Tuesday is “Harris’s best opportunity to give voters like these a sense of who she is and what kind of president she will be. Which is why she should focus on clearly articulating her policy priorities and not letting Trump turn the debate into a circus. People already know why they don’t like Trump. They need to figure out why they like Harris. BUT HERE’S THE GOOD NEWS for Harris: The more voters see of her, the more they seem to like her. And it’s always been the reverse for Trump. Voters who have taken the time to give the VP a real look have liked what they’ve seen,” in between a bunch of quotes from her focus group participants.
One piece we didn’t like, but still found fucking hilarious, was printed on Thursday by the political news site we so dearly love to hate. Some MAGA D-lister “media expert” named Steve Krakauer cranked out “4 possible outcomes of the Trump vs Harris debate,” and Jesus Christ, lol, we’ve been trying to get to a summary of this stupid article for a few days now and here goes:
“1. A Harris meltdown could shake up the race one last time“: Yeah, this asshole writes that “If that happens, don’t completely rule out the possibility that Harris could find herself off the ticket in short order…” and – shocker – he thinks Michelle Obama will step in and become the nominee.
“2. Lose-lose is a slight win for Harris“: “If Harris fails, but Trump also performs poorly – perhaps returning to his worst instincts and habits – then Harris likely walks away from the debate with a slight edge heading into November. Her surrogates – her buddies in the Acela media – would immediately jump into overdrive, and the entire post-debate conversation would turn to the ‘lies’ and ‘danger’ of Trump,” Krakauer writes as if Trump fanboys won’t be declaring victory too.
“3. Win-win gives Trump a November edge“: “If Harris hits her talking points, and ABC’s hosts don’t force her off of them, she could easily walk away with a ‘win’ declaration from the left and the press. But if Trump performs like he did in June, that will overshadow Harris’s performance in the eyes of voters who matter.” Holy freaking shit… Honestly there’s gotta be a supercut out there of Trump-only in the June debate. There is no universe in which someone who would watch only that would think “this person is of sound mind.” Like we wrote, we’re going to try to be circumspect ahead of this because we didn’t properly manage expectations ahead of Biden v Trump in June (we’re far from alone on that) but put it this way: The Kamala Harris that showed up to the debate with Pence in 2020 would have absolutely laid waste to the Trump that showed up to CNN’s debate.
“4. Harris thrives, Trump falters – then get ready for chaos“: We actually have to reprint this in full.
James Carville gave some advice to Harris in the New York Times this week, including how to “goad” Trump into devolving into “personal attacks.” It’s certainly a path we could see, and if Harris follows the playbook her campaign and advisors lay out for her, and Trump flails through petty tantrums, it’s clearly good for the Harris campaign.
But if that happens, and Trump ultimately knows he lost — look out. He’s not going to go down without a fight, and we’ll have ample time for significant wild circumstances to shake up the race. Sept. 10 is still more than two weeks before the first presidential debate took place in 2016 or 2020. We’ve got time for a September surprise before we even reach October surprise range.
In that sense, the only scenario where the debate doesn’t matter much at all might just be if Trump loses big. That would bring about even more insanity to blunt the potential debate fallout.
Holy fuck, lol. What the actual hell does this guy think is going to happen if Trump implodes? How in God’s name does Trump responding to a collapse by acting even more batshit upend the race? And, most importantly, what kind of shrooms do you need to eat to write and print something like that?
On a final note our prediction is this: There will be a debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and convicted felon former President Trump in Philadelphia on Tuesday night, moderated by ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis. We don’t know how the outcome will be. There may not be anything like an “outcome” in which both sides largely agree that one of them won and the other lost.