" />

The Moderate Voice

An Internet hub with domestic and international news, analysis, original reporting, and popular features from the left, center, indies, centrists, moderates, and right


You are here: Home / Featured / PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE REACTION: HARRIS WINS, TRUMP BOMBS (UPDATED)

PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE REACTION: HARRIS WINS, TRUMP BOMBS (UPDATED)

by Leave a Comment

Sometimes after a Presidential debate it takes a while for a consensus on who won to emerge. But after the first and perhaps only 2024 Presidential Election debate between Democrat Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump, there quickly was a consensus:

Harris had a huge night, successfully baiting and triggering Trump, explaining getting political positions and repeatedly prosecuting Trump. Often with a smile.

And Trump had a terrible night, often triggered by Harris, usually with a scowl. Trump even made the thoroughly debunked claim that immigrants in Ohio were eating peoples dogs and cats – a claim quickly fact-checked by David Muir, one of ABC’s two moderators.

Harris’ performance sparked more than $10 million in contributions for Democrats and an endorsement by super-duper mega singing star Taylor Swift. In her Instagram post, Swift said the debate led to her endorsement.

How bad was Trump’s performance? Even Sen. Lindsey Graham called it a “disaster.”

The best summary of the debate is by The Atlantic’s David Frum:

Vice President Kamala Harris walked onto the ABC News debate stage with a mission: trigger a Trump meltdown.

She succeeded.

Former President Donald Trump had a mission too: control yourself. He failed.

Trump lost his cool over and over. Goaded by predictable provocations, he succumbed again and again.

Trump was pushed into broken-sentence monologues—and even an all-out attack on the 2020 election outcome. He repeated crazy stories about immigrants eating cats and dogs, and was backward-looking, personal, emotional, defensive, and frequently incomprehensible.

Harris hit pain point after pain point: Trump’s bankruptcies, the disdain of generals who had served with him, the boredom and early exits of crowds at his shrinking rallies. Every hit was followed by an ouch. Trump’s counterpunches flailed and missed. Harris met them with smiling mockery and cool amusement. The debate was often a battle of eyelids: Harris’s opened wide, Trump’s squinting and tightening.

Harris’s debate prep seemed to have concentrated on psychology as much as on policy. She drove Trump and trapped him and baited him—and it worked every time.

Trump exited the stage leaving uncertain voters still uncertain about whether or not he’d sign a national abortion ban. He left them certain that he did not want Ukraine to win its war of self-defense. He accused Harris of hating Israel but then never bothered to say any words of his own in support of the Jewish state’s war of self-defense against Hamas terrorism. In his confusion and reactiveness, he seemed to have forgotten any debate strategy he might have had.

Something every woman watching the debate probably noticed: Trump could not bring himself to say the name of the serving vice president, his opponent for the presidency. For him, Harris was just a pronoun: a nameless, identity-less “she,” “her,” “you.” It’s said that narcissists cope with ego injury by refusing to acknowledge the existence of the person who inflicted the hurt. If so, that might explain Trump’s behavior. Harris bruised his feelings, and Trump reacted by shutting his eyes and pretending that Harris had no existence of her own independent of President Joe Biden, whose name Trump was somehow able to speak.

Hemmed, harried, and humiliated, Trump lost his footing and his grip. He never got around to making an affirmative case for himself…

And:

Almost from the start, Harris was in control. She had better moments and worse ones, but she was human where Trump was feral….

…She dominated and crushed him, using as her principal tools her self-command and her shrewd insight into the ex-president’s psychic, moral, and intellectual weaknesses.

Read the entire piece (Frum is always must-reading).

GO HERE for a full transcript of the debate.

GO HERE for Washington Post analysis of key moments from the debate.

Accurate. pic.twitter.com/D0Zzd3SmkP

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) September 11, 2024

ID 333563301 @ Cttpnetwork | Dreamstime.com