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Donald Trump and Kamala Harris go face-to face in debate (AP)
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Kamala Harris has a history as a strong debater, and it served her well at a big moment, as she got off to a quick start and steamrolled Donald Trump in Tuesday night's presidential debate in Philadelphia. The result was so one-sided that a TIME magazine r4porter said, "It didn't feel like much of a fair fight.
How did Harris manage to take control early and keep it for almost the entire evening. David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad provide an analytical piece at The New York Times Morning newsletter. It gives the impression that Trump should have spent more time on rigorous preparation because Harris was ready, and she essentially jabbed and attacked Trump's fragile ego enough that he wound up beating himself. Here is how Jim Geraghty, of the iconic conservative magazine National Review, put it under the headline "Trump’s Biggest Problem at the Debate . . . Was Trump":
This morning, a whole lot of people in right-world want to argue that
last night’s debate didn’t go as well as it should have for Donald
Trump, because the moderators were unfair in their questioning and
challenging of Trump’s assertions while giving Kamala Harris a pass. Eh,
the biggest problem for Trump last night was Trump.
I find myself genuinely curious to see if the poll numbers shift at
all in the coming weeks. On paper, Kamala Harris’s campaign got exactly
what it wanted. She appeared poised, calm, cool, collected — the
experienced prosecutor. Trump was a teapot boiling over — fuming,
scowling, and shouting through most of the night.
So — again on paper — Trump was terrible, and you would think his
poll numbers, nationwide and in the swing states, would nosedive. But
what we saw Tuesday night wasn’t all that different from the same Trump
we’ve seen year after year. And remember when Trump’s conviction was
supposed to be a game-changer? The numbers barely budged.
Trump isn’t neck-and-neck in this race because Americans are charmed
by his personality. He’s neck-and-neck in this race because of the
national exhaustion with the Biden administration status quo, and
frustration with inflation and the high cost of living, an insecure
southern border, and a sense of growing chaos overseas. So, yes, in
theory, this should have been a Harris knockout blow. But if this sort
of contrast works, and one sort of performance is so much better than
the other . . . why is Trump still so close to reaching 270 or more electoral votes?
Buckle up. This is a long one.
The ‘Illegal Aliens Are Eating Our Pets’ Debate
Yes, you can make fair gripes about ABC News moderators David Muir
and Linsey Davis. Harris’s favorite topic, abortion, came up early when
the audience was most tuned-in. But in the end, it was Trump’s job to go
up there and make the best case for his election that he possibly could
with the time he had — and instead he turned in a temper tantrum of a
performance, taking the bait that Harris laid out every single time. . . .
There were some tough questions in there for Harris on the state of
the economy, on flip-flopping, and on Afghanistan. And every Republican
presidential candidate should expect tougher questions the moment he
steps on a debate stage. We’ve lived through Gwen Ifill moderating a
debate with then-senator Obama, after signing a deal to write a book about him. We’ve lived through CNN’s Candy Crowley incorrectly “correcting” Mitt Romney. We’ve lived through George Stephanopoulos asking about a nonexistent Republican intent to ban birth control.
If Trump is giving a nomination-acceptance speech,
he’ll ramble about the Green Bay Packers, how much money Kid Rock
makes, and the time he saw Hulk Hogan “lift a 350-pound man over his
shoulders and then bench press him two rows into the audience,” and
nickname CBS News’ morning show “Deface the Nation.”
There were some tough questions for Harris -- on the state of
the economy, on flip-flopping, and on Afghanistan. And every Republican
presidential candidate should expect tougher questions the moment he
steps on a debate stage. We’ve lived through Gwen Ifill moderating a
debate with then-senator Obama, after signing a deal to write a book about him. We’ve lived through CNN’s Candy Crowley incorrectly “correcting” Mitt Romney. We’ve lived through George Stephanopoulos asking about a nonexistent Republican intent to ban birth control.
No, in the end, the problem is that every single time, Donald Trump
talks about what he wants to talk about — whether or not it’s in his
interest, whether or not it’s in his party’s interest, and whether or
not it is what the moment requires.
If he’s up on stage for what is likely his only debate against his
current opponent, he’ll say that he doesn’t get enough credit for urging
the crowd on January 6 to be “peaceful and patriotic,” that he regrets
nothing he said or did that day, and that those who have been prosecuted
for crimes committed on January 6 “have been treated so badly,” and
he’ll cite Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham as reporters who verify his
version of events, and he’ll quote Hungary’s Viktor Orbán as evidence
that he’s respected on the world stage. He’ll insist the 2020 election
was stolen: “I’ll show you Georgia and I’ll show you Wisconsin and I’ll
show you Pennsylvania and I’ll show you — we have so many facts and
statistics.”
And he’ll contend that Americans’ pets in Springfield, Ohio are being eaten by migrants.
“A lot of towns don’t want to talk about it because they’re so
embarrassed by it. In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people
that came in.
Geraghty appears to see Trump as an unserious candidate, who took an unserious approach to last night's debate -- and it cost him, and his party. As for analysis of the debate itself, let's' turn back to The New York Times, where David Leonhardt and Ian Prasad write:
Debating
has long been a Kamala Harris strength. It resembles courtroom
argument, a core part of her career as a prosecutor. A debate helped her
win her first statewide race in California, 14 years ago. In her only
vice-presidential debate four years ago with Mike Pence, polls showed
that she won.
And she certainly seemed to win last night’s debate with Donald Trump.
She
was calm and forceful and repeatedly baited Trump into looking angry.
As Trump told lies — about Obamacare, inflation, crime, immigrants eating household pets
and more — she smiled, shook her head and then called him on the lies.
She often looked directly at him or the camera; he seemed unwilling to
look at her and looked mostly at the moderators.
During
the debate, prediction markets shifted a few points toward Harris. Many
political analysts, including conservatives, also judged Harris to be
the winner — two-and-a-half months after many of those same analysts
said Trump had trounced President Biden in their debate:
- “Y’all,
this is not going well for Trump. Don’t get mad at me for saying so,”
Erick Erickson, the conservative commentator, wrote on social media. He
also accusing the moderators of being biased against Trump — a common Republican argument last night. (The Times’s media correspondent analyzed the moderators’ performance.)
- “I
think she’s winning this. She comes across as normal, clear, and
strong. Trump can’t land a blow — he is blustering and unfocused,” Rod
Dreher, the Christian conservative, wrote.
- “Trump looked old tonight,” Chris Wallace, the longtime Fox News host who now works for CNN, said.
- At
least one person who isn’t a political analyst also seemed influenced
by the night. “Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight,” Taylor Swift wrote on social media afterward. “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”
Will it matter?
There are a couple of important caveats.
First,
Harris didn’t have a perfect night. She often ignored the questions
from ABC’s moderators — like the opening question about whether
Americans are better off than four years ago, as well as questions about
her changed positions on fracking and other subjects. She recited her talking points instead.
She made a few false or misleading statements
(though many fewer than Trump), including about the unemployment rate
when he left office. She described her policies in ways that weren’t
always easy to understand. In Trump’s closing statement, he parried her
many promises by pointing out that she has been vice president for
three-and-a-half years and asked, “Why hasn’t she done it?”
Second,
it is uncertain how much Harris’s strong overall performance will
matter. “Hillary Clinton also won the debates against Donald Trump,”
Julia Ioffe of Puck News noted. The same prediction markets that shifted
toward Harris last night continue to show the election as a tossup. The
debate’s impact will become more evident as new polls emerge in coming
days. But Harris’s campaign seemed very pleased with how last night
went.
More on tactics
- Body language spoke loudly.
The debate began with a handshake (Harris walked over and introduced
herself to Trump, as they had never met in person). Later, she used her
expressions to signal her distaste.
- Many of Harris’s answers seemed aimed at Trump’s ego.
She mocked his rallies as boring, and said that world leaders laughed
at him and that he was “fired by 81 million people.” Trump at times
appeared scattered and shouted into his microphone.
- Trump spoke longer than Harris did overall, but Harris spent more time attacking Trump, as these charts show.
- Harris’s campaign immediately challenged Trump to a second debate. Trump said he’d “have to think about it.”
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More on issues
- Abortion:
Trump defended the overturning of Roe v. Wade and declined to say
whether he would veto a national abortion ban. Harris deftly attacked
Trump’s stance, but she declined to say whether she supported
restrictions on abortion in the third trimester. (The Times’s Jonathan
Swan noted, “Trump has made clear to advisers that he believes the
abortion issue alone could cost him the election.”)
- Threats to democracy:
Trump refused to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election and falsely
claimed he had “nothing to do with” the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, blaming
Nancy Pelosi.
- Immigration: Trump repeatedly pivoted to discuss immigration,
where polls favor him. Harris countered that Trump pushed Republicans
to kill a bipartisan border-security bill, saying he “would prefer to
run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
- Ukraine:
Trump wouldn’t say whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war with
Russia. Harris said that Vladimir Putin would be “sitting in Kyiv” if
Trump were president.
- Health care:
Asked if he had a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, which he has
promised for years, Trump said he had “concepts of a plan.”
- Biden’s record: Harris largely deflected Trump’s efforts to link her to Biden, calling herself “a new generation of leadership.” But she defended Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and much of his administration’s work.
- Here are the night’s best, worst and most surprising lines and six takeaways.
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Commentary
- The political consultant Frank Luntz praised the debate moderators,
ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis, for “covering a wider range of
topics than most debates. Perhaps it was because they knew this might be
the only debate of this election cycle.”
- ABC News was the “biggest loser” of the night and the moderators “embarrassed themselves” by only fact-checking Trump, Liz Peek wrote at Fox News.
- “Trump
has done nothing to capitalize on the fact that one-third of voters
nationally (more in the swing states) feel like they don’t know enough
about Harris. He is not defining her. He’s taking her bait,” National
Review’s Noah Rothman wrote.
- Late night hosts joked about the debate. “Harris got under his skin like she was stuffing in butter and rosemary. It was beautiful,” Stephen Colbert said.
