Harris Meets And Exceeds Expectations

It was his seventh presidential debate; it was her first.

They put on the best presidential debate performance ever seen, according to MSNBC.

The media pundits had breathlessly pitched the potential calamity:  the race was dead even; Trump was super-confident; he was a stronger story-teller.

It didn’t play out that way; in fact, the pundits were wrong on every count.

First, the race is already over: Harris has won (see below).  In fact, Trump has never won a popular vote, because his base is small – he won in 2016, on an Electoral College fluke.

Second, she is a seasoned debater herself, and comfortable with live argument for a Public Cause.  Further, she has a better record in public office than Trump has.

Before going further, let me give accolades to ABC’s debate moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis.  They were polite but firm, and even fact-checked Trump on several occasions. When you open a box of Trump, you never know what is going to spring out.  They kept him in line.  Professionals.

I don’t think anyone needs a blow-by-blow account of the debate; I will give a flavor of the dynamic, and the reason Kamala will be president.  I start however with the media coverage.

Politico called the debate for Harris. NPR said the debate wasn’t even close: Harris took it with “calm and control”.  The Washington Post asked voters in swing states – smart move – for their views, and they thought that Harris had performed better.  CNN reported that registered voters who watched the debate said, 63% to 37%, that Harris turned in a better performance.  The Guardian noted that Harris had managed to lure Trump into a number of traps where he became unhinged. CNN confirmed that Trump often appeared ‘out of control’, and loudly repeated lies that had already been disproven. The BBC agreed that Trump was on the defensive, and CNBC called the debate performance “excellent”.  AP News agreed that Harris had one of her best debates ever.  Reuters concurred that Harris had managed to get under Trump’s skin and goad him into bizarre statements.  Time Magazine said that Harris had dominated the event, and the New York Times confirmed that Trump had been “rattled”.  The best it could do to offset the Harris evening was to find some undecided voters who claimed to be upset that Harris had not presented more about her plans…as if that was possible in two-minute speaking increments.  The LA Times acknowledged that Harris “set the tone”.

Vox, Bloomberg, USA Today, France 24, the Financial Times…all put Harris on top in the debate. MSNBC said “Donald Trump got destroyed.”

Even Fox News stated that Harris won, but that “she was aided and abetted by two ABC News moderators who seemingly felt the need to fact-check virtually everything the former president said.”  It pouted that “The debate was hardly fair. And absent a debate on Fox News, there’s little reason to believe he’ll get a fair shake from any other network.”  Fox grudgingly acknowledged that Harris “will get a slight bump from her performance at this faceoff”

“Felt the need to fact check…”  I wonder why. And for Fox to portray itself as the only network able to give a neutral stage for the two candidates is the view taken by someone digging a deep grave and peering up at a small section of sky.

“It would be a profound mistake to count him out,” the network added hopefully.

A few kids online asked the best questions: “why doesn’t he answer the questions?”  and “why aren’t they talking about the environment?”  Good point.

In the debate itself, Trump did not seem to have a cohesive strategy, responding to Harris’s attacks and thereby letting her drive the agenda.  If he had a theme it was one Trump pounded home since he started his run for the presidency on Thursday, August 6, 2015 – the first Republican primary debate. He hammered on immigration, and his base went nuts.  Remember his line about Mexican immigrant: “They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”

In the past decade, he has not changed.  He keeps hoping that what worked once will work again.

Kamala stressed the middle class and her role in lifting it up.  The Child Tax Credit of $6k per family is aimed at supporting that; a $50k tax deduction for small business would be a similar uplifting event for the middle income foundation of American life.

Trump leaned into tariffs as his way of funding his plans.  Kamala laughed off the idea.  He then went back to citing immigration as a disaster:  millions of immigrants are flooding into America. Kamala pointed out that Trump himself had prevented the passage of a bill that would have kept immigration down.

Just to provide this factoid because immigration was such a Trump card: the percentage of immigrants in the US population has been below 14% since the 1900’s, when it dropped after a 60-year run of higher immigration. 

Kamala sliced into Trump for leaving us with the worst unemployment and health record in history, and did not omit his crowd attack on the Capitol.  She referenced Project 2025. Trump denied knowing about it…”I’m an open book”.

“Donald Trump has no plan for you; we have the Opportunity Economy,” retorted Harris. She cited the economic experts who say that Trumps plan would nose-dive the economy. 

Trump’s tariff plan will cost Americans another 20% a year in raised prices.

She highlighted that he also had the highest trade deficit in the history of America.  Trump sold American-made computer chips to China to help them improve their military.  Instead, we need to focus on our allies and on our workforce.  Trump claimed she is a Marxist, and her father was a Marxist.  He again pivoted to immigration and how they are all criminals…the very first argument he used in the first Republican primary debates.  It’s still untrue.

Trump says Kamala is promoting abortion in the ninth month.  Kamala laughed.  He said she is pushing execution after birth.  He was happy with Roe v. Wade going into the states.  All the governors wanted this, he claimed, all the states want abortion banned.  Kamala retorted that every state election on the issue has overwhelmingly backed a return to women’s choice on abortions. As a woman, her description of the agony a mother goes through was very vivid.

Trump was brought up short by the commentators who said he was not accurate.

Kamala pointed out that there were no abortion rights in cases of rape or medical emergency.  She promised to sign Roe v Wade back into law…v.s. Trump who would sign a national abortion ban law.

Trump said it was a lie, and that she couldn’t get the vote in Congress anyway.  He brought up the government’s failure to pass student loans relief bills – he seemed proud of killing an economic support package.

Harris then raised the IVF treatment ban that Trump’s judges had imposed, and how people have to travel to another state to get the healthcare they need.  In every state, the people of America have voted for freedom – and against the ban.

Trump says he was a leader on IVF.

Her denial was forceful.

She actually invited people to attend one of his rallies:  people leave early because he only talks about himself.

He countered that people don’t attend her rallies – despite massive evidence to the contrary.

Trump allowed as how we are going to go into WW3, and the towns don’t want to talk about it.  People are eating the dogs in Springfield.  Great looks of disdain from Kamala.

Kamala noted that she has the endorsement of 200 Republicans….”just ask people who have worked for him – he is dangerous and unfit.  And when we listen to this kind of rhetoric…”

Trump said he fired most of those people who attacked him. 

He said that he got more votes than any other president.

He said immigrants and crime are through the roof.  The moderators pointed out that overall the FBI said the crime rate had gone down.

Kamala piped up with the observation that his comments on crime were rich coming from someone who is a felon with criminal sentencing immigrants.  “It is important that we move forward from this old rhetoric…”

Trump said the law was weaponized against him and he was winning most of the court cases.  He said he took a bullet to the head for America, referring to a shot (by a Republican) that went by his ear.

Kamala was challenged on some of the policy positions she had changed.  She defended the use of some measure of fracking, for example, in order to supply diverse sources of energy. She brought up her values based on her middle-class upbringing – a leader lifts people up.

Trump said she was for defunding the police, and was also pushing for transgender operations.

He was challenged about why he didn’t call off the rioters.  He flipped it to immigration…his strident focus on immigration. 

He was asked again if there was anything else he was sorry for about the riots.  He blamed Nancy Pelosi.  Harris was there in the Capitol and testified that Trump incited the mob that left 149 policemen injured.  She referenced the Proud Boys and the militia, and said that if you do not want to go back to that, “there is a place for you in our campaign.  Let’s turn the page on this.”

He flipped the Capitol attack back on immigrants again.  He blamed Biden for not closing the border.

A moderator noted that Trump himself had said that he had lost the election “by a whisker”, but Trump retorted that he was being sarcastic. The moderator said it didn’t sound like sarcasm to him.

He flipped back to immigration.

He said the nation was in decline.

A reference was made to Trump’s promise to intimidate the opposition.  Harris: “he was fired by 81-million people…World leaders laugh at Trump…Trump doesn’t have the nature to rule.” 

Trump said that Orban of Hungary liked him; Orban is the fascist that Republicans flock to.

Trump added that Biden can’t stand Harris.

On the subject of the pull-out from Afghanistan, Trump of course made no mention of the surrender to the Taliban that he engineered, just before the new Biden regime took over. Trump blamed Iran for the opposition that they started because he ended Obama’s treaty.

This prompted Kamala to say that Trump is weak and wrong on national security…’he exchanged loved letters with Putin and Kim Jung Un.  He is a disgrace.  We need to have a president who upholds our military.’

He deflected to immigration again.

On the war in Ukraine, Trump noted that Putin had nuclear weapons ‘and no one seems to care about this’.  Trump was proud that he made NATO pay its own way.  Kamala pointed out that NATO rejuvenated itself because of Putin’s invasion, and that she supported Ukraine and Europe to ensure our stability.

She added pointedly that ‘You will hear a bunch of lies coming from this fellow.’

He pivoted again to immigration.

And so it went.

No thinking person would change their minds based on this; no one watching the debate would convert to Trump or be convinced of his lies.

One person who is “very comfortable” with his forecast that Harris has the presidency “in the bag” is Allan Lichtman.

Lichtman has correctly called every election in the last 30 years since Ronald Reagan’s re-election in April 1982.  He usually makes his call several years before the election, but this one is closer because the Democratic candidate did a swap.

Lichtman’s “keys” to his election call do not rely on polls; he points out in any case that since 1992, Republicans have only won the popular vote once, way back in 2004, narrowly.

What would he think of the recent NYT poll that allegedly had Trump in the lead?  “Most of us don’t respond to pollsters…they’ve been underestimating Democratic voting strength. For example, in the marquee special election of 2024, to the seat previously held by the disgraced George Santos, the New York congressional seat, a poll taken right before the election had the Democrat up by one point. He won by eight points, exceeding the poll numbers by seven points.”

Lichtman expects a similar over-performance for the Democrats in this election.

He is annoyed with people who say his 13 ‘key factors’ are subjective: “the keys are not subjective. They’re judgmental. And historians make judgments all the time.  Moreover, each key is very specifically defined in my book. And I’ve answered each question, each key, from 1860 on, so there’s a whole record that you have to be consistent with.”

Trump, he points out, appeals to a narrow base. His approval rating as President averaged 41 percent, one of the lowest ever in history. He lost two elections by a combined 10 million popular votes.

Thus Lichtman: Harris will win, very strongly.

As a closer, right after the debate Taylor Swift came out and endorsed Kamala.  She told people to do their research.  In a post on Instagram published right after the debate, she said Harris would be the “warrior” who would fight for the causes Swift supported.  “I think she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos.” 

She closed her message as “Childless cat lady,” referring to a label by Trump’s VP choice JD Vance.

Within minutes, she had 6.5-million “likes”.

Tesla billionaire and Trump supporter Elon Musk posted after: "I will give you a child and guard your cats with my life."  He’s so classy.  But it you’re a Republican, cruelty is the point.

If Harris needed to convince only one person in the debate of her worthiness to run, she has done the job. Ms. Swift is onside.

Harris knew her assignment.  She followed through.

Now it’s our turn. Vote.