If you’re anything like me, today will be a mad dash to read and listen to all the takes following last night’s presidential clash between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. While I’m envious of those who can crank out a long form essay in the hours after what is (I’m guessing) probably the only debate between Harris and Trump this cycle, I prefer to hear where the other voices are before jumping in. So, I thought that what I’d do is offer some thoughts on each candidate’s performance last night on ABC.
One overall thought is that the debate wasn’t exactly a clash of “different visions of America”—about as well worn a political cliche as there is—the debate was a confrontation between two different forms of reality and the corresponding ways of action that come with them. On the one hand is Harris (and I think you can put moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis in here as well) appealing to the verifiable. Her recurring use of “let’s be clear” is part of that. She’s asserting that there’s something out there, whether it’s political records or facts and stats, that can be verified and relied on. So, much of her work during the debate was to try to wrench the conversation back to that where she could, likewise, appeal to the similarities among us rather than the differences. Trump, on the other hand, has his own version of reality, which I’ve written about before. That reality, and the stark, brutal nature, which it conjures, demands a different way of acting. So, Trump’s aggressive, mocking, and diminishing ways of treating others become justified because, as he repeated over and over last night: “this country is going to hell.”
You can see this right up top with Harris’ shaking Trump’s hand. This image captures it best.
Trump seemed to have no interest in acknowledging her, yet Harris went right up to him and introduced herself as if they were put there do do a meet and greet. In a mirror image to Trump invading Clinton’s space back in 2016, Harris invaded his, almost right behind the lectern practically foisting the handshake on him. It was an act of civility and good natured politics that caught Trump totally off guard right from the start.
Whether it was strategy or not, Trump seemed to not want to have anything to do with Harris. He glowered and scoffed with a grin that was one part Grinch and one part Alfred E. Neuman. Directionally, he seemed only tuned into the moderators, which led Jess Bidgood of the NY Times to observe:
When Trump speaks, Harris often directs her gaze toward him. When she speaks, Trump typically stares straight ahead. He shrugs and shakes his head. But he is generally not watching her while she speaks.
I took a few screen caps to illustrate.
It was an alpha move, to say the least, but also one that did not look good in the moment.
As with 2016, I found myself thinking a lot about where the goal posts were for Hillary Clinton in terms of what she can and cannot do in the debate with Trump. Harris seemed to blow by all those suggestions. She interrupted him, even with the mic not on. She put her hand under her chin with some strong Mom-listening-to-a-kid-lie-about-why-they-stayed-out-past-curfew energy. Trump’s tactic was dismissal.
Harris seemed to relish that he continued to trot out the same lines from stump speeches more than five years old. Her refrain, that Trump’s ideas and rhetoric are “tired” and “the same old playbook” necessitate that. The more Trump stays Trump the more she can highlight his inability to change. Harris was clearly on point, locked in to everything that Trump said, while his tangential way of speaking was difficult to follow.
At one point, Trump moved from what should have been a slam dunk criticism of Harris on her previous support of banning fracking to the false claim that Democrats are performing gender affirming surgeries to undocumented folks who have committed crimes. At another, Trump responded to a direct question about Israel by bemoaning Russian dead in their invasion of Ukraine.
But, Trump definitely seemed more thrown than usual, and probably because Harris hit him where it hurts—crowd size. Let me quote this part in detail. Harris said:
And I'm going to actually do something really unusual and I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies because it's a really interesting thing to watch. You will see during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams, and your, your desires. And I'll tell you, I believe you deserve a president who actually puts you first. And I pledge to you that I will.
There seemed to be a palpable shift after this moment. Trump, of course, fired back that his rallies were bigger than hers, but the point was made. People leave because they’re tired of him. His ideas might still have purchase, but Trump the character is getting stale.
This leads to another observation—Trump is really, really, really online. The eye-catching moment, which I’m sure will lead a lot of the coverage today, was the false claims that immigrants are eating pets. Trump appears to be swimming in the morass of the social media echo chamber so much that his stump speech is starting to sound like Elon Musk’s Twitter feed. I mean, I follow a lot of this right wing stuff, and even I had trouble keeping up with which conspiracy theory was being lobbed up by the former president. But, they all, again, fit into the similar declinist theme—the US is being taken advantage of, WWIII is imminent, crime is flooding the streets. It was “American Carnage” all over again. I think that it’s this mentality which Trump uses to justify his treatment of Harris and others who don’t exist in his version of reality. Because how can you shake the hand of someone who you think has led the country to hell in a hand basket?
Harris tried to keep the emphasis off such sweeping pronouncements and, instead, inserted small digs in nearly every one of her responses, whether it was pointing out all the people who had left his administration or his financial troubles. It seemed at time that she was playing a game within the game—how can I get Trump to react? What part of his reality can I puncture and get him to drop (or at least suspend) the act?
Trump lost. And Trump supporters knew they lost. You could see, an hour in, messages in right wing spaces blaming the moderators and ABC for unfair treatment. If there’s a giveaway that the night didn’t go your way, blaming the refs is about as clear as there is.
There did feel like a bit of truth, though, too, to blaming Davis and Muir. It’s true that they didn’t fact check Harris as much as Trump. But, she didn’t bend (or break! Abortion after the baby is born? C’mon.) the truth the way that Trump did. And, there’s a false equivalency to fact checking someone for statements as a candidate four plus years ago as opposed to an actual record. Trump seems to forget that he has one.
Finally, if Harris won the night, I’d put The Onion up there as the second winner.