Kamala Harris won the debate — and it wasn’t close The vice president was controlled and effective where Trump was angry, defensive and rambling Charles Lipson
https://thespectator.com/politics/kamala-harris-won-debate-philadelphia-2024/
If Kamala Harris is elected president — and that’s a big “if” since the race is still tight — she won it on the debate stage in Philadelphia Tuesday night. True, her answers were often vague, but they were also inspirational and forward-looking. She avoided the “word salads” that have so often marred her (rare) comments without a teleprompter. She was clear and articulate throughout.
Harris showed the skill of a professional politician as she avoided being pinned down on her most extreme policy pronouncements from 2019-2020, often denying she ever made them. Trump could have pressed her on those but seldom did.
Harris effectively stressed her winning position on “women’s right to choose” and damned Trump for his position. (She misstated his views on in-vitro fertilization, but he rebutted her on that.) She also underscored her support for Obamacare, a smart position nationally, and tied it to John McCain’s vote, a smart position in the swing-state of Arizona.
Most important of all, Harris displayed the control, sureness and coherence voters demand of their president and commander-in-chief. Demonstrating her ability to occupy the Oval Office was job number one in the debate — and Kamala Harris accomplished it.
Donald Trump, by contrast, hurt himself time and again. He was constantly angry and defensive, qualities that engage his rallies but alienate all Democrats and many Independents, especially women. On the plus side, he repeatedly emphasized his main points on immigration, crime and endless wars — all winning issues for him. He made a strong case that he would encourage fracking, a vital issue in Pennsylvania, and that a Harris administration would kill it. (She denied it.)
But all too often Trump’s points were obscured by his hyperbole, fulminations and digressions.
That’s how he managed to submerge was should have been a central argument, “Are you better off now than you were four years ago?” That vital point got lost in the weeds. His weeds. In fact, Harris managed to flip the meaning of that phrase, saying it was all part of her opponent’s “backward-looking campaign.”
Trump’s strongest moment came at the beginning of his closing statement. To paraphrase, “If you’ve got all these great ideas, Vice President Harris, why haven’t you done them in the three and a half years you and Biden have held office?” Great point. But instead of emphasizing it, Trump let that winning argument trail away. He should have nailed it down by giving specific data on immigration and then repeating his question. He should have done the same thing with inflation, real income and rebuilding the military to deter enemies. Buttress the points with some data and then repeat the damaging question. He didn’t. He simply returned to his fulminations and exaggerations, which Harris had already labeled a tired, old act.
If Harris’s principal theme was that another Trump presidency would be backward-looking, the former president gave her plenty to work with. Asked about whether he won the 2020 election, he should have said, “I have some views about that, but, like voters all across America, what I really want to focus on is the upcoming election. I want to explain why I would make America more prosperous and peaceful and why my opponent would not.” Instead, Trump decided to relitigate 2020. He was preaching to the choir, alienating undecided voters and indulging his own sense of victimization and righteous indignation. It is not a winning debate strategy.
How did the moderators do? Not well, though many viewers (and all Harris supporters) will disagree. They certainly asked a series of vital questions and should get credit for that. But they also did something they never should have done: they intervened repeatedly to correct one of the candidates. Go ahead, guess which one. All the interventions were against Trump. David Muir and Linsey Davis did it some five or seven times, depending on how one counts their intrusions. They said nothing critical of Harris. That bias matches the results of a study by the Media Research Center’s study, which reports ABC News coverage of Harris has been 100 percent positive since she replaced Biden. Their coverage of Trump has been 93 percent negative.
Even if you are a Harris fan and say that Trump lied and Harris didn’t, it is not the job of the moderators to intervene and rebut one candidate. During the debate, that’s the job of the other candidate. After the debate, it’s the job of other journalists and the opposing campaign.
But biased moderators weren’t Trump’s biggest problem. Neither was Harris’s smooth, commanding performance. Trump’s biggest problem was himself. His answers were angry, defensive, rambling and undisciplined. He spoke like he was addressing a rally of the faithful, not millions of voters unsure who to vote for or whether to vote at all.
Trump’s reckless performance will be costly. He blew his best opportunity of the campaign and will have to work hard to recover. Kamala Harris did exactly the opposite and will surely build on the momentum. She seized the opportunity in Philadelphia, won the debate easily and increased her chances of capturing the biggest prize of all.
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