An old-fashioned butt-kickin'

Trump fraidy-scared of rematch

Political discourse is full of hyperbole and superlatives, so take my view on last night’s presidential debate with a grain of salt.

As regular readers of this column are no doubt aware, I’m not a huge fan of Vice President Kamala Harris. But I know a winner when I see one. Last night, Harris shredded Donald Trump on that debate stage in Philadelphia. If you were a Trump supporter, it had to be difficult to watch. Harris put Trump on the defensive after the first bell and she never let up. It was the Muhammad Ali approach: “Float like a butterfly; sting like a bee.”

The New York Post headline above says it all. After a somewhat slow start, Harris baited the undisciplined Trump at every turn, eliciting bizarre comments from him. While he was talking, Harris smiled calmly at Trump and often shook her head.

In case you missed it, here is the full replay:

Some quick takes:

• As he often does, Trump mostly looked to the past. He wasn’t interested in making inroads with potential new Trump voters. He spoke only to his core group of supporters, ignoring an immutable law of politics: winning elections is about addition, not subtraction. In contrast, Harris at least made an effort to speak to undecided swing-state voters who will decide the election. He was narrow-casting; she was broadcasting.

• Note: after the debate, the Washington Post asked some swing voters who they thought won. If you watched the debate, the results should not surprise you.

• Harris was very well prepared, held her composure and did not overreact. Despite being nearly 20 years younger than Trump, she very much acted like the grown-up in the room. Hers was the best performance in a presidential debate I can recall — and I’ve seen every one of them since 1976, when I was a freshman in college and President Gerald Ford insisted that there “was no Soviet domination of eastern Europe” — otherwise known as “The Debate Gaffe That Changed American History.”

• Trump repeatedly tried to return the conversation to immigration, presumably because it polls well. But he made a complete ass of himself when he repeated a debunked claim (and a racist trope) that Black Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were abducting pets in that city and eating them.

• Harris cleverly leaned into a sore spot for Trump: his diminishing crowd sizes and the bored people at his rallies. This enraged Trump, a man for whom public adulation is central to his being. He became defensive and petty in rebutting Harris. He had great difficulty staying focused on any single topic.

• Last night, I followed several conservative pro-Trump commentators on X — especially the insufferable Megyn Kelly — who insisted the moderators were biased because they fact checked Trump more than Harris. This criticism ignores the reality that Trump lies at a level and frequency that, to borrow Trump’s own words, “nobody’s ever seen before.” And as Republican Trump supporter Scott Jennings said on CNN — and I’m paraphrasing — “It’s hard to blame it on the refs when you’re not even hitting your jump shots.” For their part, Dems complained that the moderators repeatedly unmuted Trump’s mic so that he could speak when it was not his turn. Consequently, Trump spoke more than five minutes longer than Harris.

• As we have seen before, Harris does not handle interviews from journalists particularly well. But at last night’s debate she put on her prosecutor’s hat and made the case against Trump. She was calm, measured and self-confident. She knew just which buttons to push and when to attack, as when she said, “I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you. And they say you’re a disgrace.” Trump’s reply: “You’re a Marxist.” Yes, that was the best he could do.

• Harris also brought out the old standby: abortion rights, castigating Trump for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and, for the first time in my memory, actually took away established rights rather than expanding them. Trump responded laughably that “Everyone wanted to return [abortion rights] to the states.”

• Harris fumbled her response to Trump’s statement about Biden’s botched withdrawal of U.S. troops from Afghanistan. She did not even acknowledge the 13 military deaths. I think this was a blunder. It appeared cold and heartless. But that was her only major mistake.

Now the question is whether another debate will take place. Harris has called for a second debate, but Trump insisted he won the first debate and doesn’t want to give Harris a chance to redeem herself. Right. It’s obvious that even Trump supporters think he lost. After all, when’s the last time a coach complained about the refs after a game his team won?

P.S. To top it off, after the debate, the biggest celebrity in the world endorsed Harris. Eat your heart out, J.D. Vance. Childless cat-ladies unite!