"Raving Loon": How Trump Took the Bait and Lost the Debate
Kamala Harris crushed the former president onstage. Could this be the boost she needs?
Judging presidential debates can be difficult for journalists because we’re not the candidates’ target audience. This one was easy.
Over the most important 90-plus minutes of the 2024 campaign, Kamala Harris managed to simultaneously elevate her own stature and shrink Donald Trump’s. The vice president projected Oval Office-level strength, maturity, and new-generation optimism; the former president, his insecurities triggered by her jabs, looked angry, beleaguered, and old.
In my 40 years of covering presidential debates, I've never seen such a lopsided contrast in presidential temperament as the one that flattered Harris Tuesday night. It won't prove as consequential as the faceoff three months ago that knocked the incumbent out of the race, but it made all Democrats except a few Joe Biden die-hards happy that she had replaced the current president on the debate stage.
No one knows how much routing Trump will lift Harris’ prospects in the November election. Polarization in US politics has grown so deeply entrenched that big shifts in voter preferences rarely happen.
But in a race this close, nationally and in the decisive battleground states, small shifts matter a lot. Whatever difference a nationally televised debate can still make, there’s every reason to believe Harris will reap the benefit. As many young voters waver, her post-debate endorsement from Taylor Swift provided an extra boost.
Harris in Command
Of the two candidates, Harris entered the debate with the greater opportunity to improve her position. Nine years after Trump walked onto the political stage, voters’ opinions about him have hardened. They remain soft about her.
Harris set about molding them from the moment she stepped on the stage, striding confidently to Trump’s podium to extend her hand. Her assertiveness, forcing him to react, made her the more commanding presence – an important objective for someone running to become the first woman US president.
Dodging the familiar “are you better off” question about the economy, Harris avowed her commitment to policies supporting the middle-class and small businesses. She skewered Trump’s promised import tariffs as a “national sales tax.”
“Donald Trump has no plan for you,” she told tens of millions watching on television. She placed him on the defensive by invoking the radical Project 2025 plan to enlarge his own power over the executive branch.
And Trump remained on the defensive the entire night. That harmed him in two ways.
He glowered and frowned, refusing to look at her as she talked; Harris fixed her gaze on him, smiling and sometimes chuckling at the most absurd of his answers. She profited from the split-screen visual contrast.
Substantively, her attacks triggered answers from Trump so bitterly extreme as to test the credulity of anyone outside the country’s MAGA minority.
“The country is dying,” he said at one point; at another, he shouted the racist lie disseminated on right-wing social media that immigrant invaders are killing and eating Americans’ household pets. He falsely claimed Democrats want to provide transgender surgery on “illegal aliens in prison,” and let doctors murder babies after birth.
He was by all appearances a raving loon. No wonder she wooed voters by inviting them to watch his rallies.
Harris left him reeling from their extended discussion of abortion – the strongest single issue for Democrats since a Supreme Court stacked with Trump appointees struck down the constitutional right Roe v. Wade had guaranteed for 50 years.
She invoked the plight of incest victims forced to carry their pregnancies to term, and promised to sign Congressional legislation restoring abortion rights. He sputtered about the Supreme Court’s “genius” and states rights. She warned he would sign a national abortion ban; he wouldn't pledge to veto one.
“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. Clearly, he’s having a very difficult time processing that.”
-Kamala Harris
Harris scored again on healthcare, another winning Democratic issue. Having attacked Harris for her spare policy proposals, Trump confessed he still has no plan to replace Obamacare – seven years after trying and failing to repeal it as president.
"I have concepts of a plan," he insisted.
Trump Took the Bait
Multiple times, Harris baited Trump into self-destructive outbursts by poking at his ego and vanity.
She mocked him for boring rally audiences, for becoming an object of ridicule from foreign leaders, for performing so erratically as president that former senior aides now denounce him as a menace.
“I fired them,” Trump shot back into his own foot, having hired them in the first place.
Harris wounded him further with the discussion of criminal justice. It let her highlight her background as a former prosecutor and California attorney general while pointing to his criminal conviction, civil verdicts for business fraud and sexual abuse, and multiple pending felony indictments.
“I’m winning most of them,” the Republican nominee responded limply. “I’ll win the rest on appeal.”
In fact, the debate became a review of Trump’s misconduct more than Harris’ record as part of Biden’s administration. He refused to acknowledge the truth that he lost the 2020 election.
“Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people,” Harris said with a withering look, and “clearly, he’s having a very difficult time processing that.”
He expressed no regret for inciting the deadly Jan. 6 insurrection, for which he has been impeached by the House and indicted by the Justice Department. His justification – “Nobody on the other side was killed" – sounded like a description of civil war.
And Trump again showcased his authoritarian ambitions, declaring, “our elections are bad,” and citing Hungary’s strongman Viktor Orbán as a role model. Continuing the pattern of submission to his benefactor, Vladimir Putin, he refused to join democratic US allies in siding with Ukraine in Russia’s war of aggression.
Harris needed to reassure the relatively small group of undecided voters that she’s an acceptable alternative to her familiar opponent. There's little doubt that she did.
Her measured demeanor passed the proverbial “Commander-in-Chief” test. She placed her energy, hopefulness, and comparative youth alongside the scowling darkness of her 78-year-old opponent. She mostly avoided her past predilection for windy platitudes.
Another development may prove at least as important. With her own words and the ones she elicited from him, Harris used the debate to remind voters of the aberrant behavior they rejected four years ago.
Since 2016, the most consistent majority in US politics has been the majority opposed to Trump and his MAGA movement. Harris’ prospects for activating that majority brightened last night.
Republicans plainly think so, which explains their whining about the ABC News moderators. So does Trump, who sought out journalists afterward to try and persuade them it wasn't that bad.
Missed previous editions of ‘The Stakes’? Check some of them out below, and be sure to subscribe and select my newsletter to get it in your inbox every week.
Harwood erases Palestine from the debate in which Harris repeated ceasefire and Palestinian death platitudes, but defined the Gaza genocide by the October 7 Hamas attack. She repeatedly invoked Israel's "right to defend itself," and promised continued US material support. The Harris campaign writes off genocide protests. This may cost her the election.
Personally I don't think Harris will deviate much from what Biden did. Let's remember it's not the president who dreams up policy. She will be directed in what to think say and do. And the moment she started off with "Israel has a right to defend itself," well, I just tuned out. Same old same old, nothing much changes - just please the donor class and carry on as usual.