In many ways, Tuesday’s debate was quite familiar. Just like our politics for the last nine years, the entire debate revolved around one person: Donald Trump.
By any conventional measure that any political veteran of any political stripe would accept, not a one would say under oath that Trump had a good night. He violated all the basic advice that any candidate would be getting before a debate. Don’t take the bait, don’t focus on yourself, don’t be superficial, don’t forget to talk about your opponent and her plans, and don’t forget to talk about your strengths and avoid your weaknesses.
Trump was just a poor debater Tuesday, and he allowed himself to be seen and portrayed more as an incumbent than his opponent. Of course, he has always been a poor debater, but his ability to be a force of nature has helped him overcome that which would normally derail a more conventional politician.
It wasn’t until Trump’s closing statement that he tried to effectively pin Vice President Kamala Harris to President Joe Biden’s administration. But this isn’t the first time Trump’s performance would have been viewed as potentially disqualifying by any conventional measure — only to have nearly half the country continue to have his back. Many see him as their voice against D.C. and the elites, and many of those voters have learned to compartmentalize his lack of personal appeal by trying to focus on the things they did like from his one term in office.
But if you tuned into this debate to learn more about Harris and what she would do as president, I have a feeling you came away wanting. Not only did Trump fail to connect Harris more directly with the Biden years, but so did the questions. And Harris certainly took advantage of every opportunity to turn many of the questions directed at her or the Biden-Harris administration back on Trump.
Her strategy was pretty clear: dodge specifics about Biden’s record and her role in it, dodge the position changes she has made between running for president in 2019 and running for president today and turn any question and every answer into a dig or a goad at Trump.
And it worked. How do we know? Because Trump chased every shiny object she offered up.
The exchange over his political rallies was as telling as any. Trump couldn’t help himself.
Instead of trying to turn a question around and put Harris on the defensive on a specific issue that’s a strength of his (immigration), he felt the need to explain his crowd sizes at his rallies. And those moments allowed her the easy retort of saying he was focused on himself, while she wanted to focus on the voters.
It’s a marked contrast to the first general election debate, in which both Biden and Trump spent agonizing minutes unable to tear themselves away from discussing their golfing prowess and refocus on voters.
This time, Harris exemplified Debating 101 — whenever possible, focus on tone and on the voters, not yourself, and she did a good job of that. She got Trump to talk about his various legal issues and his inheritance in addition to those rally crowds. It was quite stunning how easy it was for Harris to goad Trump into a meandering defensive response that felt focused on himself.
But Trump has weathered terrible debate performances before; before Biden’s flameout in June, Trump had never been seen in post-debate polling as the “winner” of any general election debate. It was fascinating to be on the receiving end of Trump campaign fact-checks about Harris during Tuesday’s debate, because what was said in the fact-checks was never uttered onstage by Trump — inadvertent reminders to reporters about what Trump didn’t coherently do onstage.
Despite all of that, there was another major question hanging over this debate: Would Harris do enough to lure anti-Trump Republicans and independents, as well as Trump-skeptical moderates, to her side?
We learned a lot from her about how she would not govern and how she would not behave, but given the chance to discuss more details, she often gave a sentence or two on the handful of economic plans she has released and then pivot to something about Trump’s record.
She was strongest when she was focused on Trump, and she was weakest when she was trying to sell her own proposals. Will that be enough? It was enough for Biden to make the race about Trump in 2020, which is why Trump lost. It was a mistake for Hillary Clinton to make the race about Trump in 2016, because, it turned out, the voters had made this election about her, instead.
Harris was lucky Trump wasn’t nimble. Take the very first question about whether voters are better off economically today than they were four years ago. She never really addressed it — and Trump never made her own that. He ended up responding to her attack on tariffs, letting her define the flow of the conversation based on his record and creating the impression at times that he was the incumbent. And Harris also benefited because the moderators didn’t always follow up with her when she didn’t answer their questions directly.
If there was one issue about which Harris did make her position clear and created the clearest contrast with Trump, it was abortion. Her rhetorical trick of calling the various state laws “Trump abortion bans” struck me as a potential branding that could hurt Trump even more with women. I wouldn’t be surprised to see the gender gap grow even more after this debate.
It’s also worth noting that Biden could never have made the abortion argument as convincingly as Harris did Tuesday night. It was perhaps the greatest difference between Biden and Harris as debaters.
The questions that matter for the next eight weeks
For what it’s worth, I jotted down the following questions before the start of the debate. Many of these questions won’t be fully answered until we see a round of reaction polling over the next week. But they will be key to understanding where the election is going after Tuesday’s clash.
Whom are these candidates targeting? (It appears Harris was targeting the exhausted, disaffected middle. Will her numbers improve with these voters?)
How did she handle the personal attacks? (The reaction shots while Trump was talking certainly gave us some clue about what she was thinking.)
Who will be viewed as the incumbent, when voters feel like the country is on the wrong track? (Clearly, Trump appeared to be the main character of the debate. Does that mean voters will treat him as the incumbent?)
Did Harris separate from Biden at all? (She seemed to be paralyzed over how to deal with Biden — never throwing him under the bus but not defending or embracing him, either. How will voters react to that?)
Did she reassure moderates about progressive influence on a Harris presidency? (This one is in the eye of the beholder. Let’s see how voters respond in the coming polls.)
Did Trump answer the question of what he’d do differently as president this time in a way that was believable? (He never talked once about what he would do differently as president, and he denied, again, that he even lost in 2020.)
Both presidential administrations are unpopular. How did they deal with that? (Again, Trump didn’t acknowledge any failures in his administration other than the people he fired, and Harris didn’t seem to hug the Biden-Harris record very much.)
How did voters digest the age difference on camera — a facet of the campaign that has changed dramatically since Biden dropped out, with Trump confronted with a new comparison in the split screen? (Again, this is a question we can answer better once we hear from the public.)
Ultimately, what we don’t know is how fragmented voters are in this election. Will most voters simply hear what they wanted to hear from their preferred candidate and tune out any conflicting information? It’s what we saw in both 2016 and 2020, and it could mean the debate has very little impact.
And will these candidates meet again? It’s telling that Trump wouldn’t commit to a new debate after Harris accepted one already. It’s a reminder that his team knows it didn’t have a good night.
That having been said, my guess is we will have one more debate. Because ultimately, both candidates may decide they need one more shot at convincing fence-sitters they are the best candidate.