Kamala Harris is a political athlete. And she can act – the amused, sceptical squint, the laughing tilt of the head, the hand on her chin. She was more interesting than Donald Trump, not only because she conveyed a greater air of dynamism but because she seemed interested in what was going on around her.
First, Harris showed what she needed to show, that she is tough enough, bright enough, quick enough. People hadn’t really seen her tested. She had been elevated with mysterious speed in a drama whose facts we still don’t fully know. In the summer she made a good early impression with strong speeches and events. But she did all that on teleprompter. In the debate she had to stand there and do it, and she did.
Did she present herself as a plausible president? Yes.
Second, the incapacity of Trump. He was famously unable to portray her as outside the mainstream, but the news is he didn’t seem to try. He couldn’t prosecute his case because his sentences collapsed. He leaves words out, and he’ll refer to “he” and “them” and you’re not sure who he’s talking about.
His mind has always pinballed, but on Tuesday night the pinball machine seemed broken. He has been spoiled by his safe space, his rallies, where his weird free associations amuse the crowd and his non sequiturs are applauded as authenticity. That doesn’t work on a debate stage. I don’t think he can do better than this.
But here is an important sub-headline. Harris won shallowly. I mean not that she won on points, or that it was close – it wasn’t, she creamed him – but that she won while using prepared feints and sallies and pieces of stump speech, not by attempting to be more substantive or revealing.
She was often evasive, and full of clever and not-so-clever dodges. Trump supporters, and not only they, perceived a disparity in how the moderators treated the candidates. So did I. I don’t remember a moment when anyone – including Trump – tried to pin her down. She got away with a lot of highly rehearsed glibness and often seemed slippery. Sometimes you have to slip and slide in politics but slipperiness doesn’t wear well.
We’ll see soon in polls the impact of her victory, whether it’s small or significant, and whether it changed much in the battleground states.
What should each candidate do now? I asked some Republican veterans, almost all of whom worked on George H.W. Bush’s 1988 campaign, after the debate. One said there is nothing for either camp to do but focus on turnout. “I think we are beyond changing minds, and I doubt the ‘debate’ did much to change any minds or significantly reduce the number of undecided. I think both sides are down to the ground game.”
Another old hound said the Harris campaign “should have a full-court press to get young women to vote, starting with sororities” in North Carolina and Georgia. He was thinking of Taylor Swift’s endorsement of Harris and its potential impact. She should also do interviews – a lot.
Should there be a second debate? Absolutely. With 7½ weeks to go there’s plenty of time, and it would serve the public in that the more information the better; the better you know them the better. It could be good for both candidates. For Ms. Harris it would be a chance to appear more substantive in terms of policy and to nail down what progress she made Tuesday night. Whatever you like or could like, she could deepen. If she wins, that deepening would help her presidency. And clearly she’s not afraid. Trump could use another debate to try to recover from whatever he just lost, and to see if he can make a coherent case against the current administration, and for change. I don’t know if he has what it takes to achieve that. (Trump said on Thursday that he will refuse a second debate, so maybe he wonders too. But he not infrequently changes his mind.)
Finally, yes, it is amazing that Swift’s endorsement could change the outcome of the election but: America, we’ve been in love with our entertainers and celebrities since forever. If Rudolph Valentino had come out in support of Calvin Coolidge in 1924, his landslide would have been even bigger.
Swift’s statement, released at the end of the debate, was a little master class in how to cloak a dramatic move that might invite charges of hubris in an air of velvety modesty. She urged her fans to read up on the issues and do more political research. She timed her announcement so that it came at the exact moment everyone was consumed and distracted by the debate, thus taking any hard edges off its impact. She sweetly offered that she felt she had to make her stand clear because there was an AI thing out there in which she appears, falsely, to be endorsing Trump, and unfortunately he posted it to his site. So she’s just trying to clear things up and correct the record. It went out to her 284 million followers on Instagram.
Swift’s a real athlete too. And there is no way, in a 50/50 race, her decision won’t have impact.
The Wall Street Journal
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He lost, she won, full stop.