Kamala's Panicking About The Debate Rules, And It's Her Own Fault

This week, the Harris campaign finally agreed to the debate rules after weeks of desperately trying to get them changed so they can be more favorable for her. Things haven't exactly been going well for her on this issue. As we've previously reported, Kamala's debate prep hasn't been going great, and things really went sideways for her when the campaign was forced to accept the debate rules.

You certainly know already that the key issue was whether there would be live microphones throughout the debate. After telling Trump they wouldn't renegotiate the terms of the debates previously agreed upon with the Biden campaign, the Harris campaign decided they wanted live mics so Kamala could have another "I'm speaking" moment and play the weak woman victim card.

Apparently the campaign's entire debate strategy hinged on there being live microphones, and now that there won't be (assuming ABC News doesn't change the rules mid-debate), the Harris campaign is scrambling to change their entire debate strategy.

"Kamala Harris had planned to object, fact-check and directly question Donald Trump while he was speaking during their debate next week," reports Politico. "But now, with rules just finalized to mute the candidates when their opponent speaks, campaign officials said Harris advisers are scrambling to rewrite their playbook."

Harris and her team — holed up in Pittsburgh for a multi-day debate camp — wanted unmuted microphones so that the vice president could lean on her prosecutorial background, confronting the former president in the same way she laced into some of Trump’s Supreme Court nominees and Cabinet members during Senate hearings.
Instead, four Harris campaign officials argued that she will be “handcuffed” by the rules, which were negotiated by President Joe Biden’s team earlier this summer.
“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.”

According to Politico, some Democrats are privately brushing off the Harris campaign's concerns as typical political maneuvering and managing expectations ahead of Tuesday's Philadelphia debate. However, others point out that the rule change and her limited exposure to national general election debates and interviews since becoming the party's nominee could, indeed, impact her debate performance.

“She could get thrown off by [the muted mics], so putting [their frustration] about the mics out there, they’re preparing for that possibility,” one national Democratic strategist told Politico. “Or they’ve also got a set piece ready to go, where Harris could turn to the camera and say, ‘For those who can’t hear it, Donald Trump is trying to yell over me. How many of you have been in a meeting where you get talked over?’”

Even as the Harris campaign looks to reorient their candidate to debate rules agreed to when Biden was the nominee, there’s ongoing frustration among some of her aides that the vice president is inheriting them, according to one person familiar with the Harris team’s thinking. That’s because they view her as a stronger debater than Biden, whose debacle on stage in June ultimately led to his withdrawal from the race.
“It was a bad set of rules for someone who needed to be protected, who never should’ve been on the debate stage,” the national Democratic strategist added. “And now they’re stuck with it.”

The funny thing about this is that it was the Harris campaign that refused to renegotiate debate terms at first, holding Trump to the agreement made with the Biden campaign because they didn't want to get roped into a debate hosted by Fox News.

Personally, I'm still waiting for her to back out of the debate.