Vice President Kamala Harris accepted a second Presidential debate invitation against Donald Trump. CNN offered to host the rematch where critics appeared to give Harris the win against Trump following their first exchange. A University of Alabama professor specializing in Political Public Relations tempers expectations on what debates do for the candidates.
"It’s too late." That was the response from Trump after Harris accepted an invitation from CNN for a rematch where critics reportedly have her the win following the first exchange hosted by ABC-TV. Both candidates appear to be focusing on undecided voters in the final weeks before the election. Harris gave a speech warning about women losing abortion rights in Georgia, where news reports have documented women's deaths in the face of the state's six-week ban. The efforts follow a July assassination attempt on former President Donald Trump at a Pennsylvania rally and after a second apparent attempt last weekend at his golf club in West Palm Beach, Florida.
The city of Tuscaloosa is gearing up for what may be a visit by Trump for Saturday’s Alabama versus Georgia game. Today also marks two weeks since the Presidential debate between the two. Political Science professors at the University of Alabama are still analyzing the results. Josh Bramlett teaches political communication at UA. He says the fact that Harris didn’t get much of a bump in the polls isn’t unusual.
"We see that they often do not move a lot of voters," Bramlett observed. "They are influential with a small amount of undecided voters on attitude change, where you might decide to switch from one candidate to the other. But what we always see is that attitude, reinforcement or crystallization of opinions, is most common."
Harris recalls living in Wisconsin as a child during a rally in that State. Her family lived there when she was growing up and her parents worked at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. She told the crowd of thousands she has Wisconsin "cred" and on a recent visit went by the house where her family lived. Harris attracted a capacity crowd of about 10,000 people at a stadium where Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders drew a similar size in July 2015, which was the largest Sanders rally up to that point. Trump has been to Wisconsin for five rallies this year and during the Republican National Convention, which was held in Milwaukee.
As for a possible rematch debate between the candidates. Josh Bramlett says research shows, the results of this type of a campaign event is to reinforce how voters in each of the main political parties feel about their own candidates for office.
"For instance, in 2012 when Mitt Romney had a really good first debate against Barack Obama, that made a lot of Republican voters who were on the fence about Romney say, 'Yes, I'm going to support him.' And so similarly, we saw this with our early data about Kamala Harris's performance in the recent debate." he said.
Professor Bramlett also took part in Alabama Public Radio’s nationally broadcast coverage of the Republican Presidential debate in Tuscaloosa. You can click below to listen to these stories again.
