The first—and possibly only– presidential debate of the 2024 race, is now behind us.
The hype leading up to it was epic, with every pundit trying to anticipate the two debaters’ approaches. Will Kamala attack or defend? Will Trump come up with a new insulting nickname? Will he double down on his “top 40” list of hackneyed grievances?
They engaged in a spirited—and frequently bizarre– exchange over key issues such as abortion, immigration, and the economy. Harris, positioning herself as a candidate of change, directly addressed the audience, advocating for progress and urging voters to move beyond the Trump era. The campaign of joy—as it has been tagged– is projecting optimism and change. Trump, on the other hand, focused on defending his past term and still can’t stop repeating the usual tripe about the “stolen 2020 election” despite the fact that, by all accounts, his campaign team has hammered the idea that it’s poison to keep reminding the public of that.
The debate, marked by Harris’s prosecutorial approach, saw her frequently putting Trump on the defensive. If Donald Trump has any situational awareness left in his mental capacity, he should be ruing the day he agreed to debate Kamala Harris.
But it’s possible that living in his own little bubble, the former president no longer knows (if he ever did) what is happening outside of it. The proof is that he has still not pivoted away from attacking Joe Biden and accepted the reality that he is running against Kamala Harris—and that this is a completely different game from the one he had been playing against dear old Uncle Joe. Now he is the dotty old uncle. Harris had to remind him: “First of all, it’s important to remind the former president: You’re not running against Joe Biden. You’re running against me,” she said.
There is rarely a consensus about who won a debate; each candidate manages to squeak out some good points and fumbles the ball a few times, but in this case, this is as close as any debate is going to get to a clear win. Harris destroyed Trump. The noted historian Michael Beschloss concluded: “From start to end, Kamala Harris has just delivered what is easily one of the most successful Presidential debate performances in all of American history.”
Susan Glasser of the New Yorker reflects on the tone of the many outrageous claims made by the desperate and flailing Trump: “I can’t think of anything that ranks higher in pure stupidity than Trump ranting and raving to a national audience about immigrants supposedly eating people’s cats and dogs.”
Other extreme and unbelievable claims that he made included the gem that, Harris “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.”
On abortion, one of the most important issues of the campaign, Trump offered no thoughtful or coherent thought, but speaking in his usual categorical, scorched earth tone, he claimed that “every person in America” was for the repeal of Roe v Wade. Even worse, he repeated the claim that Democrats are in favor of “abortion after birth.” One must wonder if he realizes that would not even qualify as “abortion.”
What Harris did best was to lead the thin-skinned Trump into one trap after another. In the midst of a question about immigration, the former president of chaos wandered off into defending the popularity of his rallies against Harris’ claim that people leave early: there’s no way anyone was leaving his rallies early, he said. They are, he insisted, “the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”
When asked what he would do about the Russia-Ukraine war, his instinct was to remind the audience about his close relationship with the Russian dictator and how much Putin likes him. Harris, he suggested, cannot be respected by Putin, she hasn’t even called him once.
Nevertheless, Harris’ brilliant performance may have little or no impact in determining the outcome of the election. Trump’s fanatical MAGA base is not swayed by a good or bad debate. His support base remains stable. Indeed, in the face of a clear defeat, they are claiming that Trump won the debate. In the spin room, after the debate, Trump himself asserted that this was his “best debate ever.” This despite the fact that critics suggested the only reason he was in the spin room in place of his surrogates, was to try to mitigate the damage done.
The question is, how many undecided voters are left in America and which way will they lean? The reality is that the 2024 election will be decided by a small number of votes coming from the crucial swing states that include Pennsylvania, Georgia and Ohio.
The polls show that the race is still neck and neck and that Harris’ honeymoon period has pretty much stalled; her victory over the bombastic Trump is worth little more than bragging rights. Rumors are that they may have agreed to a second debate. If that’s the case, we may be seeing more of the same: fiery rhetoric from Trump that aims to rewrite his history, and a forward-looking Harris intent on turning the page.
