According to a report from NBC News, the Harris-Walz campaign is still negotiating the rules for the September 10 debate with Donald Trump. Yes, you read that right—negotiating, even though Trump has already agreed to the terms. One of the key issues? Whether or not the candidates’ microphones should be muted when it’s not their turn to speak. If that doesn’t scream “we’re looking for a way out,” I don’t know what does. Less than a week before the debate and they’re still bickering over the basics? That’s both sad and extremely telling about how confident—or rather, unconfident—they are.
It’s not hard to figure out why Harris’s team is dragging their feet. Word on the street is that her debate prep is going about as well as you’d expect. According to a report from NOTUS, she’s planning to enter what can only be described as “debate boot camp” starting Thursday. They’re holing up in Pennsylvania, the state where the debate will take place, to get her locked in for the big night. The goal? Tune out the outside world and try to fix Harris’s notorious debate issues—mainly, her tendency to get rusty and obsess over pointless details.
Leading the charge in this crash course are Karen Dunn, a well-known D.C. lawyer who helped Harris out during her 2020 disaster of a debate, and Rohini Kosoglu, Harris’s long-time policy aide. It’s basically a reunion of Harris’s usual gang, including heavyweights like Minyon Moore, Brian Nelson, her brother-in-law Tony West, and her chief of staff, Sheila Nix. Not to mention campaign co-chair Cedric Richmond and California strategist Sean Clegg. All hands are on deck to make sure Harris at least has her talking points memorized. You know, because that’s apparently the best we can hope for.
The plan, of course, is to run mock debates, making sure Harris doesn’t get completely trampled when she faces Trump. But here’s the kicker: even the strategy sessions aren’t going so smoothly. Two sources familiar with the process admitted that things have gone off the rails more than once because Harris gets bogged down in the minutiae. Instead of focusing on the big picture, she zeroes in on trivial details and derails the entire session. Honestly, it’s no wonder her team is scrambling for any kind of last-minute rule changes.
At the end of the day, this last-minute scramble is just another chapter in the ongoing saga of Harris’s struggles as a candidate. She’s clearly rattled, and with Trump already on the offensive, it’s becoming more obvious by the day that she’s trying to avoid a real face-off. If you’re still negotiating microphone rules a week before a debate, you’re not exactly projecting strength. But hey, maybe obsessing over every little detail will save her—though I wouldn’t count on it.
