Tuesday’s discussion was quite familiar in many ways. Like our politics for the past nine years, all the debate revolved around one person: Donald Trump.
By any conventional measure any political veteran of any political stripe will admit, no one would swear Trump had a good night. He broke all the basic pre-debate advice any candidate would receive. Don’t take the bait, don’t focus on yourself, don’t be superficial, remember to talk about your opponent and his plans, talk about your strengths and avoid your weaknesses.
Trump was just a poor negotiator on Tuesday, and he allowed himself to be seen and portrayed more official more than his opponent. Sure, he’s always been a poor debater, but his ability to be a force of nature has helped him overcome what would turn a more ordinary politician off course.
Leading up to Trump’s final statement, he effectively tried to tie Vice President Kamala Harris to President Joe Biden’s administration. But this isn’t the first time Trump’s performance has been deemed potentially disqualifying by any conventional measure — only about half the country has continued to get behind him. Many see him as their voice against D.C. and the elite, and many of those voters have learned to compartmentalize his lack of personal appeal by trying to focus on the things they like during his tenure.
But if you tune into this discussion to learn more about Harris and what he will do as president, I feel like you’re in for a treat. Not only did Trump fail to directly link Harris to the Biden years, but the questions. And Harris certainly took every opportunity to deflect many of the questions directed at him or the Biden-Harris administration back at Trump.
His strategy was pretty clear: Avoid specifics about Biden’s record and his role, avoid his shift in position between running for president in 2019 and running for president today, and turn every question and every answer into a dig or a dig at Trump. .
And it worked. How do we know? Because Trump was chasing every shiny object he offered.
The exchange about his political rallies became as clear as any. Trump could not contain himself.
Instead of turning the question around and putting Harris on the defensive on a specific issue that is his strength (immigration), he felt the need to explain the crowd sizes at his rallies. And these moments gave him an easy answer to say that when he wanted to focus on the voters, he was focusing on himself.
It’s a stark contrast to the first general election debate, in which both Biden and Trump spent agonizing minutes discussing their golfing skills and refocusing on voters.
This time, Harris exemplified Debating 101 — focus on tone and constituents, not yourself when possible — and he did it well. He got Trump to talk to the rally crowd about his various legal issues and his legacy. It was pretty amazing how Harris provoked Trump into a self-directed defensive reaction.
But Trump has endured terrible debate performances before; Before Biden’s flameout in June, Trump had never been seen as the “winner” of any general election debate in a post-debate poll. During Tuesday’s debate, it was fascinating to be on the final part of the fact-checking on Harris by the Trump campaign, because what was said in the fact-checking was never said by Trump on stage — an inadvertent reminder to reporters of what Trump consistently doesn’t do on stage. .
Despite all that, there was another central question in the debate: Would Harris do enough to win over anti-Trump Republicans and independents, as well as Trump-skeptic moderates?
We learned a lot from him about what he would be like no given a chance to discuss how he would govern and how he would not conduct himself, but in more detail, he often offered a sentence or two about the few economic plans he had released and then moved on to something about Trump’s record.
He was strongest when he focused on Trump and weakest when trying to sell his own proposition. Will this be enough? It was enough for Biden to run against Trump in 2020, so Trump lost. It was a mistake for Hillary Clinton to enter the race over Trump in 2016, as it turns out voters made that choice for her.
Harris was lucky that Trump was inflexible. Ask the first question whether voters are better off economically today than they were four years ago. He never addressed it, and Trump never claimed it. He responded to her attack on tariffs, letting her dictate the course of the conversation based on her record, and at times giving the impression that she was the incumbent. And Harris benefited from it, because the moderators didn’t always follow him when he didn’t answer his questions directly.
If there’s one issue on which Harris has made her position clear and contrasts most clearly with Trump, it’s abortion. His rhetorical ploy of calling various state laws “Trump’s abortion bans” struck me as a potential brand that could further offend Trump in his treatment of women. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the gender gap widen after this debate.
It’s also worth noting that Biden could never have made the abortion argument as convincingly as Harris did Tuesday night. That was perhaps the biggest difference between Biden and Harris as debaters.
Important questions for the next eight weeks
Before starting the debate, I mentioned the following questions. Many of these questions will not be fully answered until we see the reaction survey over the next week. But they will be key to understanding where the election is headed after Tuesday’s clash.
Who are these candidates aimed at? (Apparently, Harris was targeting a jaded, disaffected middle. Will his numbers improve with these voters?)
How did he handle personal attacks? (Reaction footage of Trump speaking certainly gave us a clue as to what he was thinking.)
When the voters feel that the country is on the wrong track, who will be accepted as the current president? (Obviously, Trump seemed to be the main character in the debate. Does that mean voters will treat him like the current president?)
Did Harris break up with Biden at all? (He seemed paralyzed by how to deal with Biden — never throwing him under the bus, never defending him or embracing him. How will voters react?)
Did he convince moderates that Harris would have a progressive influence on his presidency? (It’s in the eye of the beholder. Let’s see how voters react in future polls).
Has Trump convincingly answered the question of what he will do differently as president this time? (He never talked about what he would do differently as president, and again denied that he lost in 2020.)
Both presidential administrations are unpopular. How did they deal with it? (Still, Trump hasn’t acknowledged any failures in his administration other than the people he’s fired, and Harris hasn’t embraced the Biden-Harris record much.)
How did voters digest the age gap on camera — an aspect of the campaign that has dramatically changed since Biden dropped out, with Trump facing a new split-screen comparison? (Again, this is a question we can better answer when we hear from the public.)
Ultimately, what we don’t know is how divided the electorate is in this election. Will most voters simply hear what they want to hear from their candidate and listen to any conflicting information? This is what we saw in both 2016 and 2020, and it may mean that the debate has little impact.
And will these candidates meet again? This means Trump won’t go to a new debate after Harris has already accepted. It’s a reminder that he knows his team isn’t having a good night.
That being said, I think we’re going to have another argument. Because eventually, both candidates may decide they need one more shot at convincing themselves they’re the best candidate.