“The question going into last night’s debate was which candidate could more successfully exploit the format to expose their opponent’s biggest weaknesses in front of the largest audience of the campaign. By that standard, Donald Trump performed extremely poorly and emerged the clear loser. Kamala Harris, though she had the occasional wobbly moment, emerged not merely unscathed but strengthened.
The game plan for the Trump campaign was to tie Harris to the Biden administration’s unpopular record on the economy and immigration, and portray her simultaneously as a California liberal with a left-wing agenda, and a phoney for trying now to evade her own record of past progressive positions. The hope was that if Trump could maintain message discipline, and hammer her along these lines, she would buckle under the spotlight.
The Harris team’s plan was to bait Trump into self-sabotage. If he could be provoked with attacks designed to poke his ego, he might lose his temper, and with it his focus and self-discipline. Thus knocked off his game, he might spend less time delivering his own issues and message, and more time rambling intemperately in ways that would make him look a blend of scary and foolish. Meanwhile, Harris could score points by hitting hard her own stronger issues, especially on the Republican Party’s efforts to restrict abortion and reproductive rights.
Within the first ten minutes of the debate, it became apparent that Harris’s was the plan prevailing. Early on, she presented bait with a jab about Trump’s rally crowds, and he lunged right for it, launching into a sprawling, belligerent and at times bizarre answer that made him seem angry and incoherent. Harris could step back and let him damage himself, before returning to speak, once he had finished, with remarks designed to make her seem the more composed presidential figure. Once that dynamic set in, it never really departed. Harris, whose opening statement and first question response showed some signs of nerves, settled. Her composure and stature grew as it became apparent her plan was working, and she repeated the manoeuvre several times. Trump, meanwhile, began to look ever-angrier, and was tempted again and again into answers on a range of issues – January 6th, Ukraine, healthcare, immigration – that did him no favours.
It was telling that in the aftermath of the debate, the Harris campaign was willing to offer another if Trump wanted it, while Trump – with more than a whiff of desperation – appeared personally in the post-debate media room, to try and spin away the gathering consensus he had tanked.
There are weeks to go in the campaign, and debates are just one part of a complex, moving picture. In 2016, Hillary Clinton unquestionably won all three of her debates with Trump and still lost the election in November. But the mission of the night for Harris was to present herself to unfamiliar or undecided voters as an assured, capable figure ready to lead the nation, while inducing Trump to show his worst side to that same audience. In the first regard, she did well enough. In the latter, the mission could not have been more thoroughly accomplished.”
