I feel obligated to note at the top that you can win a debate and lose the election. Donald Trump isn’t a momentary candidate. He has a big national political following that has remained loyal over almost a decade. Nothing happened tonight that is going to shake the confidence of his supporters. But with that said, this debate was an absolute rout. Harris had a minute or two of nerves in her opening statement. But from the very first exchange she maintained the initiative, kept Trump on the defensive the entire time and simply dominated him. I don’t see any way to contest that basic verdict.
She set a tone at the very start when she walked right into his space to shake his hand and made him almost pull back into himself in response. She was in charge and never stopped being in charge.
Harris also managed what neither Joe Biden nor Hillary Clinton nor any of the 2016 Republicans managed to do which is successfully bait Donald Trump and get under his skin. Within a few minutes Trump was visibly angry and not in a way that empowered him but in a way that made him lose focus, go down rabbit holes and generally go off onto damaging tangents. Spittle anger, not righteous anger, shall we say.
The debate basically ended after the extended exchange on abortion rights. Trump’s answers were meandering, defensive and absurd, topped off by a completely needless decision to throw JD Vance under the bus. Harris I think hit every point her campaign or probably any abortion rights advocate could have wished for. She didn’t stop with definitive promises to defend abortion rights. She went into an extended discussion of the human impact of what she branded “Trump abortion bans.” Again and again, through the debate she found ways to hit points her campaign would have prepped her to be ready for. It’s like what are all the possible policy or attack points we might conceivably want to make? Kamala was practically emptying the cupboard. I’m going to hit every damn one! It was amazing. Trump actually managed to lose the exchange over the withdrawal from Afghanistan. How was that even possible? He managed to repeat the grotesque conspiracy theory about feral immigrants hunting down the cats and dogs of flag waving Americans and eating them for breakfast.
It’s not clear to me the degree to which Harris led Trump into relitigating Jan 6th, blaming Nancy Pelosi for planning the attack, hyping Vladimir Putin or diving head first into a dozen other story lines that people hate about him or whether he just went to all those damaging places on his own because he was angry and reverting to form. It’s an interesting question on debating merits. But it doesn’t matter: he went to all those places with the same angry spittle-flecked tone. By the second half of the debate, with Trump punch-drunk and staggering, Harris was beginning to shift every question to her basic themes: national unity, turning the page on the Trump era, Trump’s lies.
As you can see I think Kamala Harris did quite well and Trump did about as bad a job as he could have. It’s fun to reminisce. But I won’t belabor the point. As I said above, we’re still going to have a close election. But what Harris had to do in this debate was show she could handle Donald Trump, even dominate him if possible and do so in a way that was steady and forceful. She did that. And that puts her on a path toward sealing the deal with that small fraction of voters who will determine the outcome of the election. Not a done deal but she took the critical first step. She also managed a bonus, which wasn’t absolutely necessary, which was to set Trump off, rambling, incoherent and angry. He was practically yelling by the end of the debate. She baited him into acting out the role of her foil. As I’ve often said in other contexts, more important than any of the details is likely the imagery of dominance.
She came, she saw, she conquered. But tomorrow is another day. And there’s still two hard fought months to go.
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