Only one person looked presidential on that debate stage, and it wasn’t Donald Trump.
Yes: Kamala Harris, the one with the dirty word salad, beat the shit out of the former president. She has adapted to the times, going from “spoiled” to “prude” with ease.
She was shining. Her hair was shiny, her makeup was perfect, her outfit was impeccable.
Trump, by contrast, scowled. He had Harris cross the stage to shake his hand, then pouted from behind the podium, his brows low and heavy, his posture hunched.
Suddenly, Trump has become Joe Biden. The warrior of the assassination attempt has disappeared, with his fist raised, blood on his face, shouting: “Fight, fight, fight!”
Only one person looked presidential on that debate stage, and it wasn’t Donald Trump.
Yes: Kamala Harris, the one with the dirty word salad, beat the shit out of the former president. She has adapted to the times, going from “spoiled” to “prude” with ease.
It seems that his struggle ended long ago. Trump is now the old man who cannot pull himself together, who cannot formulate a coherent thought and whose expressions are impregnated with anger and grievance.
He seemed angry. He barely acknowledged Harris as she ranted about “migrants eating pets” and abortion providers killing live babies.
This is how bad the debate was: Kamala Harris offered no concrete details, except for a few points about her apparent “opportunity economy,” and still won comfortably.
In fact, on Tuesday Trump faced a competition to see who was the bigger loser: himself or the United States.
For now, Harris is on her way to winning the presidency, without telling anyone what she plans to do with it.
His utter inability to articulate a solution for Israel was perhaps most telling.
He began his response with one of his usual delays, gobbling up precious seconds with gratuitous verbiage.
“Let’s understand how we got here,” he said, pedantically reminding us that “a terrorist organization” known as Hamas attacked Israel on October 7.
“Israel has the right to defend itself, and how it does so matters,” he said.
Your plan for peace?
“This war must end and the only way to end it is through a ceasefire agreement and the release of the hostages.”
Okay, then. Simple as that. Oh, and Harris said she would craft a two-state solution, something that brighter minds than hers have tried and failed to implement for decades.
ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis, who did real-time fact-checking on Donald Trump, did not press Harris for details, here or elsewhere. Nor was there any “full disclosure” offered about Kamala’s best friend, Dana Walden, a top Disney executive who oversees ABC News.
How is this fair to the electorate?
She was shining. Her hair was shiny, her makeup was perfect, her outfit was impeccable.
ABC moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis, who fact-checked Donald Trump in real time, did not press Harris for further details, here or elsewhere.
Trump, for his part, was all outrage and all this. Harris was fully prepared for whatever came her way, and her response when Trump criticized her and her father as Marxists (hand on chin, eyes lit up, a bemused smile) suggests she received extensive training in set design from a Hollywood A-team.
Admittedly, her standards were low. All Harris had to do was sound serious, speak coherently (the actual content took a very secondary place) and remain calm. It was Kennedy versus Nixon in the Internet age, and Harris was Kennedy: comparatively young, optimistic and forward-thinking.
Trump talked about the past: the people he fired in the White House, the election he still claims to have won, the traitors who wrote tell-all books about him, the credit he still hasn’t received for his handling of the pandemic, his economy, his foreign policy.
“We need to move forward,” Harris said. “Let’s move past the same old, tired rhetoric. The American people are exhausted.”
She’s right. And on the only metric that might actually matter (I’m kidding, sort of), Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala less than an hour after the debate ended.
“Like many of you, I watched tonight’s debate,” Swift wrote on Instagram. “I’m voting for @kamalaharris… I think she’s a talented and steady leader, and I think we can accomplish so much more in this country if we’re guided by calm, not chaos.”
Her farewell: “The childless cat lady.” Meow!
But that is, in fact, what viewers saw: a calm, serious Harris versus a Trump who seemed crazy. And, for the record, neither Trump nor Harris gave any details.
Harris: “Let’s talk about our plans. Let’s compare plans. I have a plan.”
That plan remains unknown.
Trump, when asked if he had a plan to replace Obamacare: “I have concepts of a plan.”
Both are pathetic, but Harris at least prepared well for this debate. Trump came in clearly unprepared, as if he had this election under control, and called her (and Biden) “weak and stupid.”
It’s not a good look in a post-Roe election cycle; female voters have been activated like never before.
In another blow to Trump, Melania did not even show up, while second gentleman Doug Emhoff was there to greet Harris at a debate viewing party.
In another blow to Trump, Melania did not even show up, while second gentleman Doug Emhoff was there to greet Harris at a debate viewing party.
In the only metric that might actually matter (I’m kidding, sort of), Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala less than an hour after the debate ended.
Women often decide elections. According to the Center for American Women and Politics, in every presidential election since 1996, the majority of women have voted for Democrats. Kamala Harris gave them confidence that she can do this job — visually, cosmetically, in tone and tenor, if not in substance.
But that is the state of our politics, and we have only ourselves to blame.
This debate raises an existential question: Does Trump really want to win? His listless, agitated performance suggests not.
Perhaps he is defeated by the legal war, by his impending post-election sentencing in New York, by the media bias exhibited in this very debate, and by the assassination attempt that came very close to killing him.
“We are a nation in decline… seriously in decline,” he ranted. “We are laughed at all over the world. We are not a leader… We are going to end up in a third world war.”
Harris, by contrast, focused on futurism in her closing remarks. “What I do offer,” she said, “is a new generation of leadership” — a refreshing idea in our current gerontocracy.
The United States, she said, is “a leader” that “shows strength” and she ran as a candidate “who believes in optimism.”
And after this debate, Harris was feeling extremely optimistic. Instead of accepting victory and returning to the metaphorical basement, her team quickly issued a challenge to Trump.
“Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate,” her campaign manager said in a statement. “Donald Trump?”
Harris certainly had a great night. The United States did not.