Harris bests Trump in debate, but there’s no guarantee it will shape the election

(CNN) — Donald Trump beat Kamala Harris in a virtual coin toss before their presidential debate – but that’s about all he won.

From the opening moments Tuesday night, when the vice president strode over to Trump’s podium and all but forced him to shake her hand, she dictated the terms of their critical clash exactly eight weeks before Election Day.

From Harris’ point of view, the night could hardly have gone better.

She came across as energetic and brimmed with a positive future vision. Trump glowered and ranted and blasted America as a failing nation and seemed off his game. The vice president, who has sometimes struggled in spontaneous situations, delivered the most imposing performance of her political career. Trump, who had gone into the debate predicting he’d prove boxing champ Mike Tyson’s maxim that “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the mouth,” was himself stunned by multiple jabs and landed few in return.

At a time when nearly a third of voters suggested in one recent poll that they wanted to know more about Harris, the vice president’s performance seemed more likely to expand her coalition. Trump, meanwhile, didn’t make much effort to change perceptions about his dystopian intentions among the key swing state voters who will decide the election. He struggled to let go both of his own first term and often seemed to wish he was still debating his erstwhile rival, President Joe Biden

Debate victories don’t always translate into election wins

It often takes days or weeks for a presidential debate to percolate deep into the electorate and for enduring impressions to settle. Candidates who triumph on the debate stage don’t always win the election. Both Trump in 2016 and President George W. Bush in 2004 were judged to have lost debates but went on to win the White House.

And while Democrats were euphoric after Harris’ performance, partisans often judge a debate based on their own political preferences. Even if he loses ground after the debate, Trump has long had the advantage on the top two issues in the election – the economy and immigration. With many voters still awaiting the benefits of the post-pandemic economic rebound, it’s not certain that any debate will be a decisive factor in their vote. And Trump’s dark messages on immigration and crime might be hyperbolic, but they’ve proved to be potent in the past. There’s also always the chance that shock events at home or abroad in the next two months could tip the balance.

While it’s too early to say whether Harris’ strong performance will translate into new momentum, her campaign will be optimistic that she’s improved her chances among, perhaps, 200,000 movable voters who will decide the next election in a handful of states.

Harris laid the trap. Trump kept falling into it

Harris wasted no time checking off her goals Tuesday night.

She directly addressed viewers at home, promising to alleviate the burdens of working Americans struggling with high grocery and housing prices. She goaded Trump over his crowd sizes and called him weak. And, amazingly, he walked into the trap every single time, with angry outbursts that fueled her claims that he’s unfit for a new term and that the country has a fleeting chance to move on from his bitter chaos. Her deep preparation paid off as she avoided campaign-threatening errors.

Most fundamentally, Harris validated the decision of Democrats to ditch Biden as their nominee, performing the forensic dismantling of Trump’s character, policies and legacy that was beyond the president in his disastrous June debate that ended his reelection campaign.

Taylor Swift, whose megastar endorsement the Trump team erroneously claimed last month via the use of AI, apparently thought so too, declaring as soon as the debate ended, “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election.”

When Trump got agitated, Harris didn’t respond in kind but laughed and several times rested her chin on her hand. The second time she did this, it seemed contrived, but the gesture could become an iconic emblem of the debate on social media.

When she tweaked Trump on his obsession with rallies, he unaccountably gave her a pass on one of her most vulnerable issues – the southern border. “First, let me respond as to the rallies,” Trump said. “People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”

It was a classic example of how Harris repeatedly used perceived flaws in Trump’s character to give him the space to undermine his own debate performance.

The ex-president’s inability to resist the bait constantly dangled in front of him meant that the most fearsome political performer of modern times spent the evening being more self-destructive than destructive to his opponent. This was never clearer than when he repeated a racist slander about Haitian immigrants eating pets – that even his vice presidential nominee, JD Vance, acknowledged Tuesday might not be true. Harris, after seeing her opponent confirm her accusations about his extremism, just shook her head.

After refusing to be drawn into Trump’s attempts to make the election a referendum on her race and gender, the vice president offered a far more direct repudiation of her opponent Tuesday. She raised his past demands for the execution of the Central Park Five and his lies about President Barack Obama’s birthplace, as she painted him as a force of division who sought to exploit America’s deepest historic wounds for his own gain. “I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone, who wants to be president, who has consistently, over the course of his career, attempted to use race to divide the American people,” she said.

Harris’ performance was not perfect. She dodged answering her very first question – the classic consideration of whether voters are better off now than they were four years ago. She also did not directly say whether she regretted the deaths of 13 American service personnel killed in 2021 in the chaotic US withdrawal from Afghanistan whose deaths have become a centerpiece of the Trump campaign. But even her evasions showed how she’s become a more effective political performer as she pivoted into her talking points and Trump was unable to effectively cross-examine her.

Trump did not make his own best case

Trump’s inability to focus on a consistent attack against Harris or put aside her transparent efforts to distract him confirmed the fears of many Republicans disappointed in his failure so far to effectively deal with his new opponent.

Ironically, Trump suffered from the same deficit that plagued Biden in their debate in June– he couldn’t pin his opponent down and was unable to voice a strong blueprint for the future.

Trump often fell down right-wing rabbit holes, making analogies that only regular viewers of conservative media would understand. And at times, it seemed that the ex-president turned up for a debate, but his rhetoric was more akin to one of his wild rallies. In defense of his first term and global leadership, he cited Hungarian strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban, adding weight to Harris’ claim that he worships foreign autocrats. In support of his false claims, he said he was backed up by Fox News opinion hosts – in a way that may have pleased his core voters but also suggested that his life in the conservative fishbowl has eroded his ability to speak to more moderate voters.

Trump’s team had fought for microphones to be turned off when candidates weren’t speaking – apparently to frustrate the vice president’s desire to fact check the former president in real time and limit his temptation to interrupt her. But in the event, the restrictions hurt Trump. He was forced to stand mute while Harris delivered the kind of dressing down an ex-president never receives in public.

One way of judging a debate is to turn the sound on the television down and watch the body language of the candidates. On Tuesday night, Trump smoldered and contorted the muscles around his mouth as his face looked like thunder. Harris delivered her punches with a knowing smile and looked directly into the eyes of viewers at home.

The former president’s greatest failure was that he failed to probe Harris’ greatest weakness. She’s often strong in scripted situations but has struggled when thrown onto the defensive when taken by surprise. Trump created far too few of those moments to discomfort his rival. It took him until his closing statement to deliver his strongest possible line – that Harris, as a vital part of an administration for more than three years, hadn’t done any of the things she now says she’d do.

He also wobbled on an issue that is proving disastrous to his standing among female voters in polls – abortion. Trump both sought credit for building the Supreme Court’s conservative majority that overturned the nationwide constitutional right to an abortion and falsely claimed that most Americans had always wanted the issue returned to the states. This opened the way for Harris to deliver a searing line: “It’s insulting to the women of America.”

The former president’s strongest moments came right at the end of the debate when he lambasted Harris and Biden over the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He raised the specter of nuclear escalation on the part of Russia and presented himself as the only thing between the United States and World War III. His vows to end the conflict may be closer to sentiment in the heartland than Biden’s promises to stand with Kyiv for as long as it takes. But Harris was probably correct in saying that Trump’s plan can only be achieved by concluding a peace that favors President Vladimir Putin.

And even during his clashes with Harris over the war in Ukraine, Trump appeared to be pining for an election campaign that was far more enjoyable for him than the one’s he’s now waging.

“You’re not running against Joe Biden, you’re running against me,” the vice president told him, in a statement that helps explain Trump’s disorientation, and may yet define the entire election.

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