Sept. 10, 2024, 11:39 p.m.
This time, it was a fair fight. This time, someone was on the stage who could challenge Donald Trump and take the fight to him. This time, Trump was the old guy in the room, the one who seemed to yearn for the past. In their debate showdown Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris did what President Biden utterly failed to do in his debate with Trump in June—counterpunch and hold the Republican nominee to account for at least some of his misstatements and accusations.
Judging by Trump’s frequent scowls and apparent anger, many of those counterpunches hit their mark. Too often, the former president showed a lack of discipline, straying from the question asked in order to reprise some of the more outlandish things he usually says at his marathon rallies.
Democrats generally were pleased when it was over. “She looks presidential,” said one veteran strategist. “She’s gotten to him in a way nobody ever has before.” Longtime Democratic campaign manager Jerry Austin said Harris performed well on the three things that matter—optics, theater, and debate plan. On all three, Austin, who was critical of Biden in June, gave Harris high points. “She was the new kid on the block versus the old kid who proved he has overstayed his welcome.” A senior Republican strategist, speaking on background, agreed. “He's gone from being controlled to hot and angry.”
Unlike that June 27 debate with Biden where it only took moments to know the direction the night was going in, this one seesawed back and forth with both candidates scoring points. Trump wasted no time tarring Harris as a liberal Marxist. The vice president fired back, reminding what is likely to be the biggest television audience of the year why they tossed Trump out of office four years ago in the middle of a collapsed economy and a surging pandemic.
Trump on multiple occasions turned the topic to illegal immigration and the border to great effect. He said undocumented immigrants are overwhelming cities and claimed that “all the people pouring in are killing people.”
He did himself no favors, however, when he repeated a claim that's been making the rounds on conservative social media: that immigrants in Midwestern towns are “eating the dogs; they are eating the cats.”
That exchange had some Republicans wincing. "Game over,” said the senior strategist. “If you’re talking about dog-eating, you’re not winning.”
Even for a political debate, his hyperbolic reaches were Olympic in proportion. He claimed that Biden “hates" Harris, that Israel will cease to exist if she wins, and that Democrats want to “murder” babies fully born after nine months. He tried to tie Harris to Biden and mocked the president, telling her to go “wake him up” at 4 p.m. “Where is our president?” he asked mockingly. “We have a president who doesn’t know he is alive.”
Harris pointedly reminded him, “You’re not running against Joe Biden. You’re running against me.” But he returned to the charge late in the debate, flatly stating, “She is Biden.” Harris laughed but retorted, “Clearly, I am not Joe Biden. And I am certainly not Donald Trump.” It gave her a chance to offer herself as “a different generation,” as someone 19 years younger than the former president.
It was perhaps her strongest moment in the debate as she closed, attacking his “lies” and making a pitch on health care while Trump scowled and rambled a bit in his close.
Earlier in the night, the vice president was less aggressive but firmly consistent in mocking him as “weak and wrong,” someone who succeeded only because of family money, and an international laughingstock. When Trump defended what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, she listed his many indictments, his felony conviction, and the civil adjudication against him as a sexual predator. Repeatedly, she tried to remind the country of the “chaos” that characterized his four years in office.
Even with the mics supposedly muted by the rules, Trump bulled his way over the moderators to get more time on several occasions. “They are letting him rebut everything—not a good job by the moderators,” complained one senior Democratic campaign veteran. According to a New York Times tally, Trump got nearly six more minutes of speaking time than Harris.
More importantly, Harris lost her ability to cross-examine, something she did to great effect in her previous debates. Time and again, the former president asserted things that just aren’t so. But, her voice often silenced by the rules, Harris had no chance to rebut. That was particularly noticeable when Trump accused Biden of taking money from foreign countries. “This is a crooked administration,” he charged. But the moderators went to a commercial rather than letting the vice president respond.
Without that immediate rebuttal, Trump was able to get away with many of the misstatements on tariffs, NATO funding, abortion, Biden’s family, energy, and Afghanistan—all regular parts of his rally speeches.
In some ways, the debate restored a sense of normalcy to a campaign that has been anything but normal. Never since the first presidential debate in 1960 has a candidate taken to the stage with more questions about her than Harris faced, debating only 50 days after declaring her candidacy and only 56 days before Election Day.
Even if voters end up concluding she did not “win” the debate, she survived it, which is something Biden did not. She looked presidential in her first presidential debate. The night did provide answers to some of the questions voters had about her. They were able to take her measure against an opponent who boasts of his manliness and too often resorts to bullying women. She was calm amid the barrage, neither wilting nor backing down during the 90-minute encounter. In doing so, she makes possible a 56-day run certain to be fierce and certain to include some twists, but also likely to be far more normal than anything that preceded it in this decidedly weird election year.
Tom DeFrank contributed to this article.
