Harris toys with Trump in U.S. presidential debate
In starkly different contest from earlier Biden debate, she knocks him off-topic
Kamala Harris exorcised the ghosts of June. After needling Donald Trump in their televised debate, nudging him off topic, she finally stuck the landing that famously eluded her boss.
It was a catastrophic cognitive blip in June's debate that ultimately curtailed U.S. President Joe Biden's career when he lost his train of thought and erroneously boasted that he'd crushed a public health-insurance system cherished by seniors: "I beat Medicare."
Coming from the vice-president, on Tuesday, the same message emerged more coherently: "We have allowed Medicare to negotiate drug prices — on behalf of you, the American people."
By this point, it was already late in the debate, and Democrats were giddy; Republicans were fuming about biased moderators; and Harris was enjoying a little bump from different online betting markets increasing her odds of becoming president.
It was a potentially make-or-break moment: Preliminary viewership data suggests more than 67 million Americans tuned in, easily eclipsing June's ratings, representing well over one-third of the likely November electorate.
At a basement watch party in North Carolina, Democrats expressed relief. Finally, a late-summer debate had bookended the early-summer disaster.
"It was so disheartening. A horrible, sinking feeling," Yana Whitman of Asheville said of the June Biden debate. Now? "She's doing a great job," she said of Harris. "She's embarrassing [Trump]."
She was referring, specifically, to Harris dropping little ego-wounding land mines for Trump — references to supporters leaving his rallies, or world leaders mocking him — at specific moments of the debate where she faced peril, like a discussion about the porous southern border.
'First, let me respond to the rallies'
Trump couldn't resist diving right in to rescue his pride. Instead of discussing the border he said, "First, let me respond to the rallies."
Trump added, "We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics."
He then pivoted to the possibility of another world war, spread a conspiracy theory about immigrants eating people's pets, and, finally, wound up back where he started: Talking again about his rallies.
The border was supposed to be his winning topic. Instead, he played into hers: the notion, raised repeatedly by Harris, that Trump only cares about himself. She even got Trump to complain again about the 2020 election being stolen, and to defend his supporters who stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Donnie Jones didn't bother watching the first debate. The North Carolina graphic designer says he's an independent, tends to vote Democratic, and isn't a political junkie.
But he said he started getting excited about the campaign a few weeks ago. And there he was Tuesday, at a watch party in the basement of a wooden house on a dead end on the outskirts of Asheville, at the Democratic Party's county headquarters.
"I'm feeling good now," he said.
Trump fans say he won debate
Some Republicans insisted they also felt good Tuesday. Trump, for his part, posted a string of unscientific polls where his fans declared he'd won.
"I thought that was my best Debate, EVER, especially since it was THREE ON ONE!" Trump wrote on his social media site, Truth Social.
But he revealed obvious frustration the morning after the debate by suggesting ABC News should lose its news licence.
The "three-on-one" comment was a reference to ABC's moderators correcting him several times. Such as when he accused Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio, of eating pets: "They're eating the dogs. They're eating the cats," Trump said.
This was based on flimsily sourced social media posts involving a town that has, indeed, seen an influx in immigration.
Republicans fume at moderators
One of ABC's moderators said the network had checked with the city manager, and he said there were no reports of pets being kidnapped for food. Trump replied that he'd seen it on TV.
It is true that the moderators only corrected Trump. They did not intervene to challenge Harris different times when she quoted Trump out of context, including his recent prediction of a bloodbath in the auto sector because of Democrats' trade policy on electric cars.
Harris suggested he was threatening political violence.
"Unfortunately we had moderators who were clearly biased. Who were constantly fact-checking Donald Trump but none of these kind of whoppers the vice-president was saying," Trump's new campaign ally, Robert Kennedy Jr., said on Newsmax.
But as two Republican panellists on CNN conceded afterward: Trump had a poor night. One used a basketball metaphor, saying it's no use complaining about the ref if you don't make the shot.
Trump pressed Harris briefly over several left-wing policies from her failed 2020 campaign, which she now repudiates; he questioned why she should be trusted to achieve anything the current administration hasn't.
And he complained about being described as a menace to democracy, when he's the one facing myriad criminal charges, and was just shot.
"I probably took a bullet to the head because of the things they say about me," Trump said. "They talk about democracy. That I'm a threat to democracy. They're the threat."
But Harris charged ahead when given a chance to address her own chosen topics.
On abortion, for instance. Trump has waffled on what he would do in a second term: he's said he wouldn't, then said he could, restrict access to abortion pills, and it's unclear whether a Trump-led postal service would halt interstate shipments of the medication.
Trump took credit for appointing judges who ended Roe v. Wade, saying he'd given the country what it wanted: a chance to settle the issue on a state-by-state basis.
Confrontation on abortion
That's when Harris tore into him. She described cases where women suffered the consequences, like a miscarriage with doctors too scared to intervene.
"She's bleeding out in a car in a parking lot. She didn't want that. Her husband didn't want that. A 12- or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term? They don't want that," Harris said.
Later, when the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol came up, Harris spoke directly to moderate Republicans watching at home, those who remain disgusted by the events of that day.
She joked that Trump has had a difficult time processing the fact that he was fired by 81 million voters. She invited other Republicans to support her: "There is a place for you. To stand for country. To stand for democracy. To stand for rule of law.… Let's not go back."
It was part of an unambiguous, sustained pitch to centrist and centre-right voters. At one point, Harris described herself as a gun owner, and promised not to confiscate firearms.
At another point, she touted recent record oil production. This, by the way, was the only moment that drew a solitary boo from someone at the Democratic watch party.
Debates don't always mean much
Harris boasted of having the support of Dick Cheney, the former Republican vice-president. She referred to the Republicans' 2008 presidential nominee as, "The late, great John McCain," while discussing his 2017 Senate vote to save Barack Obama's health-care law.
Now, a brief reality check for those giddy Democrats.
Debate performances aren't necessarily predictive of election success. Hillary Clinton won her first, second and third debates against Trump, according to polls in 2016. She then enjoyed a small bump in support. Mitt Romney, in 2012, was believed to have dominated his first debate with Obama.
These contests tend to budge the polls a point or two in the direction of the perceived winner. It's sometimes an ephemeral mirage, as supporters of the so-called winning debater are briefly more enthusiastic about talking to pollsters.
That's what makes the Biden disaster in June such an anomaly. That bumbling performance was easily the most consequential televised debate in U.S. history, leading to the end of his campaign.
Suddenly, after Tuesday, it feels like more distant history.
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