Debating has long been a Kamala Harris strength. It resembles courtroom argument, a core part of her career as a prosecutor. A debate helped her win her first statewide race in California, 14 years ago. In her only vice-presidential debate four years ago with Mike Pence, polls showed that she won.
And she certainly seemed to win last night’s debate with Donald Trump.
She was calm and forceful and repeatedly baited Trump into looking angry. As Trump told lies — about Obamacare, inflation, crime, immigrants eating household pets, and more — she smiled, shook her head, and then called him on the lies. She often looked directly at him or the camera; he seemed unwilling to look at her and looked mostly at the moderators.
During the debate, prediction markets shifted a few points toward Harris. Many political analysts, including conservatives, also judged Harris to be the winner — two-and-a-half months after many of those same analysts said Trump had trounced President Biden in their debate:
- “Y’all, this is not going well for Trump. Don’t get mad at me for saying so,” Erick Erickson, the conservative commentator, wrote on social media. He also accusing the moderators of being biased against Trump — a common Republican argument last night. (The Times’s media correspondent analyzed the moderators’ performance.)
- “I think she’s winning this. She comes across as normal, clear, and strong. Trump can’t land a blow — he is blustering and unfocused,” Rod Dreher, the Christian conservative, wrote.
- “Trump looked old tonight,” Chris Wallace, the longtime Fox News host who now works for CNN, said.
- At least one person who isn’t a political analyst also seemed influenced by the night. “Like many of you, I watched the debate tonight,” Taylor Swift wrote on social media afterward. “I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.”
Will It Matter?
There are a couple of important caveats.
First, Harris didn’t have a perfect night. She often ignored the questions from ABC’s moderators — like the opening question about whether Americans are better off than four years ago, as well as questions about her changed positions on fracking and other subjects. She recited her talking points instead.
She made a few false or misleading statements (though many fewer than Trump), including about the unemployment rate when he left office. She described her policies in ways that weren’t always easy to understand. In Trump’s closing statement, he parried her many promises by pointing out that she has been vice president for three-and-a-half years and asked, “Why hasn’t she done it?”
Second, it is uncertain how much Harris’s strong overall performance will matter. “Hillary Clinton also won the debates against Donald Trump,” Julia Ioffe of Puck News noted. The same prediction markets that shifted toward Harris last night continue to show the election as a tossup. The debate’s impact will become more evident as new polls emerge in coming days. But Harris’s campaign seemed very pleased with how last night went.
More On Tactics
- Body language spoke loudly. The debate began with a handshake (Harris walked over and introduced herself to Trump, as they had never met in person). Later, she used her expressions to signal her distaste.
- Many of Harris’s answers seemed aimed at Trump’s ego. She mocked his rallies as boring, and said that world leaders laughed at him and that he was “fired by 81 million people.” Trump at times appeared scattered and shouted into his microphone.
- Trump spoke longer than Harris did overall, but Harris spent more time attacking Trump, as these charts show.
- Harris’s campaign immediately challenged Trump to a second debate. Trump said he’d “have to think about it.”
More On Issues
- Abortion: Trump defended the overturning of Roe v. Wade and declined to say whether he would veto a national abortion ban. Harris deftly attacked Trump’s stance, but she declined to say whether she supported restrictions on abortion in the third trimester. (The Times’s Jonathan Swan noted, “Trump has made clear to advisers that he believes the abortion issue alone could cost him the election.”)
- Threats to democracy: Trump refused to acknowledge that he lost the 2020 election and falsely claimed he had “nothing to do with” the Jan. 6 Capitol attack, blaming Nancy Pelosi.
- Immigration: Trump repeatedly pivoted to discuss immigration, where polls favor him. Harris countered that Trump pushed Republicans to kill a bipartisan border security bill, saying he “would prefer to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”
- Ukraine: Trump wouldn’t say whether he wanted Ukraine to win the war with Russia. Harris said that Vladimir Putin would be “sitting in Kyiv” if Trump were president.
- Health care: Asked if he had a plan to repeal and replace Obamacare, which he has promised for years, Trump said he had “concepts of a plan.”
- Biden’s record: Harris largely deflected Trump’s efforts to link her to Biden, calling herself “a new generation of leadership.” But she defended Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan and much of his administration’s work.
Here are the night’s best, worst, and most surprising lines and six takeaways.
Commentary
- “Everything seemed to unfold on her terms, not his,” the Times Opinion columnist Lydia Polgreen argued. Here’s what other Opinion writers thought about the debate.
- The political consultant Frank Luntz praised the debate moderators, ABC’s David Muir and Linsey Davis, for “covering a wider range of topics than most debates. Perhaps it was because they knew this might be the only debate of this election cycle.”
- ABC News was the “biggest loser” of the night and the moderators “embarrassed themselves” by only fact-checking Trump, Liz Peek wrote at Fox News.
- “Trump has done nothing to capitalize on the fact that one-third of voters nationally (more in the swing states) feel like they don’t know enough about Harris. He is not defining her. He’s taking her bait,” National Review’s Noah Rothman wrote.
- Late-night hosts joked about the debate. “Harris got under his skin like she was stuffing in butter and rosemary. It was beautiful,” Stephen Colbert said. (The New York Times)
