What a difference two-and-a-half months make.

It was just late June when Donald Trump and Joe Biden faced off in the first presidential debate of the season. As it turns out, thanks to his disastrous performance, it was Biden’s last presidential debate ever.

Tomorrow is the second presidential debate, but it might as well be the first. Kamala Harris will be making her debate debut as a presidential candidate. She and Trump have never faced off before. Indeed, the two have never even met because Trump skipped the 2021 inauguration festivities after his failed coup attempt.

Debates are all about expectations and spin. The expectation for the June debate was that Biden would show Trump up for the blowhard he is, which is why the Biden campaign pushed for a debate so early in the election cycle. We all know how that worked out.

However, it’s hard to imagine that Harris isn’t in a much better position going into the debate than Trump is. For one thing, Trump can’t stop himself from vomiting his inner dialogue, which rightly disgusts a lot of voters. He digresses, he rambles, he struggles to put a coherent thought together. Biden’s poor performance was the spectacle at the last debate. This time out Trump won’t have that foil.

At the same time, Harris is used to arguing her case. After all, she was a prosecutor, where her job was to convince a jury. She knows how to lay out her argument and draw people into it. She knows that this time the voting public is her jury, and she will argue accordingly.

  • finley
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    4 months ago

    there are - astonishingly - a lot of undecided voters - especially those who would otherwise not have voted at all - as well as a lot of people i’m calling “Maybe-Not-Trumpers” who aren’t gonna vote for Kamala, but just might be pushed into staying home rather than voting for Trump after finally being pushed too far by him and his politics. from polling i’ve seen over the last couple of weeks, these two groups makes up enough (esp in the surprise in-play swing states of FL and PA) that it could make a real difference for Kamala.

    esp in FL and other states where cannabis and abortion are on the ballot (again, like FL), there’s expected to be huge turnout from the left that could even swing the state. i’m not getting my hopes too high, but FL could go blue for the first time in 20 years this election, from top to bottom, president to senate to state house, even in some significant local elections. Desantis fucking blew it here for the GOP, and two decades of failures have changed a lot of voters’ positions here.