The Harris v. Trump debate is already looming as another historic pivot point in an extraordinary campaign

(CNN) — President Joe Biden had banked on June’s presidential debate turning around a race that was slipping away from him.

Now, Donald Trump may be laying a similar bet after reversing himself by agreeing to debate on ABC next month as his new Democratic opponent enjoys surging momentum.

Trump clearly doesn’t believe he’ll suffer the kind of debacle that ended Biden’s campaign, but his decision — and call for another two debates on NBC and Fox, which Vice President Kamala Harris has not agreed to — tells an emerging truth about the election.

After a barnstorming week for Harris and her new running mate, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz, Trump suddenly looks like old news — a crushing new experience for an ex-president who prides himself on driving the narrative.

A huge test for both candidates

The build-up to the debate on September 10, assuming it goes ahead, will be intense, and the truncated nature of the new campaign means it could create another historic pivot point on the dwindling road to the White House.

Already, Trump is playing his idiosyncratic expectations game of denigrating the skills of his opponent, who could be the first Black woman and South Asian president. At a news conference at his Mar-a-Lago resort Thursday, he compared Harris unfavorably with Biden, who he’d long argued lacked the mental acuity to serve. “She’s actually not as smart as he is. I don’t think he’s very smart either, by the way. I’m not a big fan of his brain,” Trump said.

The clash also looms as an extreme test for Harris. The vice president has a mixed record in debates — she performed strongly in such events early in her failed 2020 presidential campaign. But at others, she struggled. And her most unflattering moments in office have come when she’s been asked to explain her positions or answer tough questions in major interviews.

But as she grows in confidence as the Democratic nominee, Harris is a more accomplished politician than she was four years ago — and supporters are keen to see her leverage her skills as a former prosecutor to skewer the four-times indicted former president.

Harris jabbed Trump over his change of heart over the ABC debate and said she was happy to have a conversation about a second, later encounter. “I’m glad that he’s finally agreed to a debate on September 10. I’m looking forward to it, and I hope he shows up,” she told reporters before boarding Air Force Two in Detroit.

Trump is grappling for traction in a transformed race

After Harris turned the campaign upside down in less than three weeks, Trump showed in his news conference that he’s still grappling for an effective response.

The ex-president appears to be grieving the contest against 81-year-old Biden and in denial about the early success of the energetic new Democratic ticket. Asked why he wasn’t doing more to campaign and to counter the rollicking rollout of the Harris campaign, Trump argued, “I’m leading by a lot and I’m letting their convention go through.” He insisted he hadn’t “recalibrated strategy at all” as he made the same arguments that the US is swamped by open borders and immigrant crime.

But there’s a growing feeling his campaign needs such a reboot. Harris has erased the ex-president’s previous advantage over Biden with the race now neck-and-neck in the latest CNN Poll of Polls. A new Marquette Law School poll released Thursday morning found Harris leading 52% to Trump’s 48% among registered voters nationally.

Trump’s problem is not that there are not solid arguments against Harris and her new running mate: Millions of Americans are hurting over high prices and are stalked by economic insecurity. The world is an increasingly dangerous place as American enemies team up to challenge Washington’s power. And Harris is intimately linked to everything the unpopular Biden administration did in these areas. The new Democratic team hasn’t offered concrete policies to tackle such issues, and the vice president is yet to submit to detailed questions from reporters or do a major television interview. And many Republicans and right-leaning independents are receptive to Trump’s arguments over the southern border crisis even if arrivals of undocumented migrants have eased since Biden tightened enforcement earlier this year.

But Trump isn’t making many of these points effectively as he stews over his personal grievances. His characteristically off-the-rails news conference at one point digressed into him comparing his and Martin Luther King Jr.’s crowd sizes.

And the former president also seems to be laying a predicate to challenge another election if he loses — untruthfully insisting on Thursday that the Democratic Party’s switch of nominees was unconstitutional. “We have a constitution. It’s a very important document, and we live by it,” Trump said, apparently oblivious to the irony of such comments coming from a former president who tried to steal the 2020 election and has threatened the fabric of US democracy.

In a statement, the Harris campaign tried to spin Trump’s ramblings as proof that he’s losing at a time when it is seeking to brand Trump and his running mate, Sen. JD Vance, as “weird.”

“Donald Trump took a break from taking a break to put on some pants and host a press conference public meltdown,” the campaign said in a statement that included the strike-thru. “He hasn’t campaigned all week. He isn’t going to a single swing state this week. But he sure is mad Kamala Harris and Tim Walz are getting big crowds across the battlegrounds.”

The return of American carnage

Trump’s strategy on Thursday was familiar. He reinserted himself into a news cycle he was losing with a dark, dystopian message. This is “the most dangerous period of time I’ve ever seen for our country,” he said, and he predicted a Great Depression and World War III if he’s not elected.

His return to the politics of fear and his dark, American carnage narratives presented a contrast with the lightness and joy that has erupted in huge Democratic rallies this week after Harris named her running mate and they set off on a joint journey through the swing states that will decide November’s election.

Despite renewed recession fears, unemployment is currently at 4.3% and economic growth is solid. No credible economist is predicting a return to the 25% unemployment of the 1930s. And while American power is being challenged by dictatorial leaders in Russia, China and North Korea, and wars are raging in the Middle East and Ukraine, there’s no sign that a third global conflagration is imminent.

The atmospherics of the 2024 campaign have shifted at remarkable speed. Three weeks ago on Thursday, Republican delegates left their convention in Milwaukee buoyant over Trump’s chances, with many predicting a landslide election win after his defiant response to an assassination attempt supercharged his campaign.

Now, Trump seems stuck in a moment of political paralysis. But he’s unlikely to remain that way. His entire political career, and his 2024 campaign especially, has been a case study in seizing upon almost existential threats and using them to political advantage. This is a former president, after all, who leveraged a mugshot taken in a Georgia jail to build a primary campaign that crushed his rivals on the premise that he was being victimized for political gain.

Harris’ achievement so far has been to restore the election to a tight race in a polarized nation.

But despite her adoring crowds this week, the vice president remains untested in the fierce heat of a national presidential election. And the route for Democrats to 270 electoral votes still looks challenging even if there are signs that the vice president may be putting some battlegrounds back in play.

Trump’s aides insisted on Thursday that Harris’ early bounce was expected.

“They’re celebrating getting back voters they should have had to begin with,” one official told reporters. “They know, as we do, that the fundamentals of the race have not changed.” The official added: “When you ask voters whether they’d rather return to the Trump economy, or stay with the Biden economy, we win that two to one.”

This is why many Republicans believe their version of reality will soon reassert itself.

“The honeymoon period’s going to end,” Trump insisted on Thursday.

But the former president is showing few signs he knows how to make that happen.

The-CNN-Wire
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