Donald Trump and Kamala Harris go face-to face in debate (AP)
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.”
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
Commentary
- “Everything seemed to unfold on her terms, not his,” The Times Opinion columnist Lydia Polgreen argued. Here’s what otherOpinion writers thought about the debate.
- 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.