Kamala Harris has again challenged Republican rival Donald Trump to face her for a second debate before the November presidential election. Speaking to supporters in New York, she said her opponent “seems to be looking for an excuse” to avoid a second confrontation.
On Saturday, the vice president and Democratic nominee said she had accepted an invitation from CNN to debate the former president, but Trump said it was “too late.”
In her remarks at a fundraiser in New York, Harris doubled down on her criticism of Trump on the issue, saying, “I think we need to have another debate.”
“I accepted an invitation to a debate in October that my opponent seems to be looking for an excuse to avoid, when he should be doing just that,” she added. “He should be doing it because I feel very strongly that we owe it to the American people, to the voters, to meet again before Election Day.”
The issue of high-stakes U.S. presidential debates has been hanging in the balance since Joe Biden withdrew from the race after a disastrous performance in June. The sole scheduled debate between Trump and Harris, earlier this month, was widely seen as a way out for Harris and a serious blow to Trump.
But it didn’t move the polls as much as Harris’ campaign had hoped, and her campaign still has the task of introducing her to American voters. Last week, Harris went on Oprah to smooth the introduction.
This week, Harris will unveil a raft of new economic policies. Polls show her steadily gaining confidence on the key issue of the economy, which often favors Trump and the Republican Party.
On Sunday, Harris returned to the main themes of the message Democrats want to emphasize: the threat to democracy they say a second Trump term represents and the tipping point on which the race still hangs, according to polls.
“This is a man who said he would be a dictator on day one … imagine Donald Trump with no guardrails,” Harris said in New York. “This is as close a race as it can be. This is a race with a margin of error … and I’m in it and we’re in it as the underdog.”
Harris called Trump an “unserious man” but said the consequences of his return to the White House were “very serious.”
Head-to-head polls show Harris with a small but solid lead over Trump, though the picture is more mixed in the crucial swing states that will decide the race for the White House. That’s the reverse of the situation when Biden was in the race, where Trump had a solid lead over the US president.
