“Instant polls suggested viewers judged Ms Harris the victor. Her performance delighted Democrats, and she supplied far more of the punchy moments that tend to get highlighted in subsequent newscasts and shared online.”
“Instant polls suggested viewers judged Ms Harris the victor. Her performance delighted Democrats, and she supplied far more of the punchy moments that tend to get highlighted in subsequent newscasts and shared online.”
With the last eight years as context, I don’t think Trump will lose any supporters over his performance last night against Kamala Harris.
However, after watching that debate in June, I can say this one left me feeling much better. Trump was easily baited into saying ridiculous shit, such as immigrants are “coming to eat all the pets,” that there are ongoing free transgender reassignment surgeries on illegal aliens in prisons, admitted he negotiated with terrorists by bypassing the Afghan government to directly negotiate with the Taliban, wasted time defending his rallies after Harris is pointed out people were leaving them early because they were “bored,” and defended the consequences of Roe versus Wade being overturned by saying “This is what everybody wanted.”
In my opinion, Kamala Harris set the tone of this debate at the very start when she crossed the stage to force Donald Trump to shake her hand.
Yep, she played him like a fiddle. His game “plan” was so predictable she essentially made it part of hers, and it worked.
Harris basically spent the first 15 minutes trying to break Trump’s concentration and get him to start lashing out emotionally. Trump had a brief edge there. Once she got him that was it though, by the time other areas he was strong at or points Harris was sidestepping came up it was too late, Trump was thinking with his mashed potatoes instead of his notes.
That’s basically the game here. Get Trump to act stupid and let him hang his own noose, side step the controversial positions or stuff Harris changed her mind on. Trump needed to keep his cool and play to his strengths, sidestep his faults(he did this ok for Abortion, but after that it crumbled) and tear into economy issues and Harris’s flipflops, which he did initially (I will say he never sounded ‘Old’ in the way Biden did), but once that was gone he went full Weird and lost it, just could not get back on track.
It’s inherently a bit of a gamble especially since Trump’s handlers know the game and he’ll know it today once he’s sobered up and calmed down. If Trump held on long enough Harris could have been in trouble with a couple issues, Harris is inherently on the backfoot due to such a short campaign season and stuff like having to change her policies to appeal nationally can’t be done gradually the way Hillary did it. There’s an inherent vulnerability there that someone like Niki Haley or another democrat would utterly maul her on. Trump can too, if, if he keeps his cool. He didn’t.
Walz doesn’t have the same weaknesses either. Neither does JD, but that’s just mostly going to come down to competency and normalness so Walz is walking in with an edge. (If it was Vance vs Harris and Trump vs Walz there might be a problem for the democrats, that configuration doesn’t play to their strengths)