Kamala Harris is scared of debating Trump, as she should be

For over a month, former President Donald Trump has unsuccessfully tried to get the newly coronated Kamala Harris to agree to the traditional three presidential debates historically scheduled between the Republican and Democratic nominees. But the vice president, who has answered fewer than 15 questions and sat for zero interviews since President Joe Biden endorsed her to replace him at the top of the ticket 36 days ago, refused three of Trump's offers, agreeing only to one debate on Sept. 10 and another between the running mates, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH) and Gov. Tim Walz (D-MN), on Oct. 1.

Now, Harris's campaign is shifting the goalposts once again. Although Harris convinced Trump to agree to the ABC News debate without committing to the other two proposed presidential debates under the initial terms of Trump's agreement with the current president, Harris suddenly wants to renegotiate the predetermined rules that governed both the career-ending debate for Biden on CNN and the one on ABC next month. After five weeks of hemming and hawing from Harris, an objective observer can only come to one conclusion: Harris is terrified of debating Trump, and she should be.

Trump is the only presidential candidate in the nation's history to nuke his competitor's entire political career successfully with a debate performance, and while the relatively youthful Harris doesn't have the same vulnerabilities related to her imminent health and cognitive function as the 81-year-old Biden, Harris is not acting like a winning candidate ready to take on her competitor, just as she's not acting like a candidate ready to field softballs from the press. If Harris doesn't have faith in her ability to sit down with Fox News's Bret Baier and Martha MacCallum, let alone with Rachel Maddow, why should we assume she can handle Trump? Even her mouthpieces make it seem like she's ready to abandon ABC.

"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 of the Harris campaign told Politico. "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. 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."

Recall that Harris spent weeks dodging Trump's debate offers and then cajoling him into agreeing to the ABC debate he had previously committed to against Biden by claiming the campaign — that is, the Democratic campaign, the apparatus that apparently doesn't require a specific candidate at the top as long as it has the party machine behind it — had already made an agreement with the Trump campaign.

Now, two weeks after the Harris campaign explicated that "the debate about debates is over," it is pretending the Biden campaign and the Harris campaign are discrete entities and that, actually, the rules Biden negotiated and that Harris long ago agreed to need to be reworked, not coincidentally after Harris has had ample time to try, and likely fail, in debate prep. One can only assume with both the rude tone of her equivocation and the unprofessional insult of a functional bait and switch that Harris is either printing a million shirts boasting that tired "I'm speaking" slogan she peddled during her 2020 debate against Mike Pence, or she's hoping Trump walks away from the table entirely out of sheer frustration with the never-ending Calvinball.

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And frankly, she's doing this because she is a paper tiger, and she damn well knows it. She became a vice president solely by the accident of Biden needing the only black woman in the Senate as his running mate to secure the primary-ending endorsement of Rep. Jim Clyburn (D-SC) in 2020, and she became a presidential nominee because the party was too terrified to hold an open primary that would run the risk of Democrats leapfrogging with the first woman, black American, and Asian American to occupy the vice presidency.

It is only because Trump succeeded so fully in revealing what the press and the party concealed for so long, Biden's staggering mental collapse, that Harris is the replacement candidate running a below-replacement level campaign. She cannot possibly defend the record-shattering influx of illegal immigration or 20% increase in prices during her tenure, let alone her prior support for banning fracking and private health insurance. It's why the entire Democratic National Convention relied on "joy" and "vibes," and it's why she's running away from the only forum that will ever hold her feet to the fire before Election Day.