On Saturday, Kamala Harris accepted an invitation from CNN to another debate with Donald Trump on October 23 and promptly challenged Trump to accept the invitation as well.
“Vice President Harris is ready for another opportunity to share a stage with Donald Trump,” campaign manager Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement. “Donald Trump should have no problem agreeing to this debate.”
The real question is, why Harris even wants another debate. Let's not forget that Trump had initially called for three debates, all on different networks — including Fox News — and he agreed to all of them. But Harris refused to face him in a Fox News debate, likely because she couldn't count on the moderators to bail her out. And boy, did she need the moderators to help her out in the ABC News debate.
The media narrative right now is that Harris is getting a bounce from the last debate, and she's now leading nationally and in battlegrounds. There are plenty of polls that say the opposite, but this is the message we're getting right now.
I've said plenty of times that Trump didn't do well in the debate and immediately after the ABC News debate called for another one.
"When a prizefighter loses a fight, the first words out of his mouth are, 'I WANT A REMATCH,'" Trump wrote in a post on Truth Social.
He had a solid point. You've probably noticed that since the debate, Kamala's campaign strategy has had a dramatic change. She's done a couple of unscripted interviews, which her campaign had been avoiding like the plague before. These appearances haven't exactly gone well. So it's strange the campagin wants another debate.
The reason is like that despite polls showing that voters feel Kamala won the debate, Trump's performance and answers resonated more with swayable voters. A Reuters focus group of undecided voters showed six out of 10 leaning toward Trump after the debate, while only three favored Harris.
Harris faced criticism for being vague on important issues like the economy and high living costs, which are key concerns for voters. Four of the six voters who moved toward Trump felt that Harris offered little that distinguished her from Biden, whom they blame for rising costs.
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And she still avoids details like the plague. During her livestream event with Oprah, a young couple struggling to make ends meet asked Kamala how she would lower the cost of living and she gave a longwinded non-answer that appeared to leave the couple speechless.
In another Fox News focus group, independent voters showed surprising alignment with Republicans on issues like immigration, indicating that Trump resonated more than expected. Independents and Republicans were both looking for clear answers, and Harris failed to provide the concrete policies they were seeking. These reactions also showed that Trump may have connected with undecided voters more effectively than I initially thought.
Kamala's push for a second debate with Trump suggests that her campaign may be more worried about her position than it’s letting on. It appears that it sees a second face-off as a crucial chance to score a win and regain momentum, especially after failing to make the impact it hoped for in the first debate. This move likely reflects an urgent need to shift the narrative and re-energize her campaign in the weeks of the election.
