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No, this week’s presidential debate doesn’t look likely to chase one of the candidates from the race. And even though it stretched fairly late into the night on Tuesday, it still managed to be somewhat light on actual policy details.
None of that was a surprise. Despite our hopes, this was always likely to be a clash of personalities rather than policies. What was surprising, however, was just how resoundingly Vice President Kamala Harris outperformed and outmaneuvered former President Donald Trump on the debate stage in Philadelphia.
Trump has often confounded opponents during debates, Republicans and Democrats alike, by showing little regard for the rules or the truth. There are signs that this act is wearing thin.
Despite the insistence from his campaign and other Republican Party officials that Trump somehow secured an “indisputable victory,” the reaction from many conservative voices and polling of registered voters told a different story. According to a flash poll from CNN (just one poll, with only around 600 respondents, to be clear), the voters watching thought Harris bested Trump by a margin of 63 percent to 37 percent. Poll results from Reuters and YouGov also had Harris victorious in the debate.
There should be little doubt that Tuesday was a bad night for Trump and his relentless approach of using falsehoods to stoke fear.
And boy, how those falsehoods flew. He once again claimed that he won the 2020 election. He didn’t. He bizarrely claimed that Harris met with Russian President Vladimir Putin before Russia invaded Ukraine. She didn’t. He amplified the racist and factually unsupported social media rumor that migrants in Ohio are eating people’s pets. He claimed that he saved Obamacare despite his multiple attempts to get rid of it. After pledging a plan to replace Obamacare while he was president, which he didn’t do, Trump said during the debate that he had “concepts of a plan” for a replacement. He went on a strange ramble suggesting that presidents can unilaterally sign bills. They can’t (we think he meant executive orders, but that’s not what he said, repeatedly).
It wasn’t just what he said, but what he wouldn’t say — like when he wouldn’t commit to saying if he wants Ukraine to win its war against Russia, or whether he would veto a national abortion ban — that we found especially troubling.
Yes, embellishment and over the top attacks are not new to politics, or to politicians besides Trump. Harris herself had a few factually challenged moments where she misrepresented parts of Trump’s record as president, or details like whether U.S. military members are currently serving in combat zones ( they are, but she said they aren’t). But to equate those few moments to the almost nonstop flurry of falsehoods from Trump would frankly be dishonest.
Harris certainly did not have a perfect night, and has much work to do if she wants to convince undecided independent voters that she has the experience and policy ideas needed to lead this country right now. Her nonanswer when asked directly if she had any responsibility for the way the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal played out, was a particular low point. She did not even specifically acknowledge the 13 U.S. service members who were killed in the Kabul airport bombing as part of that withdrawal, and missed an opportunity to acknowledge that a commander in chief and their administration always bears responsibility for the people serving in the military.
A less than perfect performance still beat Trump’s disastrous showing, however. It should be telling that he and his allies have already fallen back on a favorite approach: blame the moderators. In our experience, it’s usually the losers who blame the refs after a contest. Sure, the moderators could have pushed Harris on a few questions, like the Afghanistan one, as they did with Trump on Ukraine. But when you get way more facts wrong than the person you are debating, you’re going to get fact-checked way more than them, too. That is how it should work, and how it played out for Trump on Tuesday night.
If Trump and his team have so successfully deluded themselves into believing that he won Tuesday’s debate, then they should have no trouble in accepting Harris’ challenge for another debate. Trump, however, has said that this debate will be the last.
He should reverse course, and both campaigns should accept the proposal from Fox News to host a debate in October. And if and when Trump once again reminds everyone watching who he is, it still won’t be the moderators’ fault.
