Winner, Kamala Harris. Throughout Tuesday’s debate, the vice president looked poised, qualified and presidential — and that’s without comparing herself to the clearly frustrated former president with whom she shared a stage.
Harris baited Donald Trump repeatedly, and mostly easily. She needled and poked him on crowd size, his rallies, his racist and easily debunked lies about Haitian immigrants and his flip-flops on abortion.
In the process, she exposed both moments of incompetence and the reality that her opponent is concerningly easy to manipulate. If she can do that in front of the entire country — and, indeed, people around the world — it’s not a stretch to imagine how he might get rolled by the world’s autocrats and dictators.
She pushed hard to lay out her policy highlights and pushed back on Trump’s various anti-immigrant rants and obfuscations. She humanized issues like abortion and spoke clearly and calmly about the ongoing war in Ukraine, the American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the need for a cease-fire in Gaza.
Harris’ performance, with its forceful eloquence and emotional resonance, spotlighted the stark difference between the candidates. And it also contrasted dramatically with the first presidential debate, just a few months ago in June, when Trump was able to overpower a seemingly tired and confused President Joe Biden.
A loss
Donald Trump. Let’s put it this way: When you find yourself onstage ranting about people “eating” dogs and cats, you’re not winning this debate. That’s a literal quote, by the way: “They’re eating the pets of the people that live there!” As moderator David Muir noted, there is no evidence that any migrants are eating pets. Obviously. But that didn’t stop Trump.
Even in today’s “unconventional” political environment, the man insisting that migrants are eating domesticated animals in middle America isn’t winning over those key undecided voters.