Donald Trump vs Kamala Harris presidential debate: Harris wins but it wasn’t by knockout
This fiery presidential debate will benefit Kamala Harris more than Donald Trump but is unlikely to play a decisive role in the final result.
The debate was a win to Harris who performed better than many expected by getting under Trump’s skin without making any major campaign-killing gaffes.
The downside potential for the relatively unknown Harris was far greater than for the well known former president so the fact that she survived this critical, prime time moment unscathed is in itself an important win for her campaign.
The debate was a robust and sometimes wild affair, with Harris and Trump both excelling on their strongest issues, which for Trump was the inflation and border security, and for Harris, abortion, character, democracy and global politics.
Harris started off nervously but improved progressively to the night successfully baiting Trump on a range of issues and forcing him to lose his temper and to ultimately come across as angry and combative rather than presidential.
For Harris, her debate performance was more convincing and assured than during her recent softball interview with CNN. She was in better command of facts and figures – the contrast to Joe Biden was palpable – and her attacks on Trump were pointed and effective and clearly annoyed the former president.
Harris’ best moments included the issue of abortion where she nailed Trump’s inconsistencies and his vulnerability on the issue while Trump again struggled to make a coherence case.
Harris also performed strongly when attacking Trump on the issue of character, using an effective tactic of reading out the negative assessments of Trump from his former senior military commanders and White House officials.
Harris used the debate to repeatedly hammer the theme of Trump as a negative dangerous throwback to the past, while portraying herself as a unifying rather than a divisive candidate.
Harris’ biggest tactical success was that she wriggled out of giving direct answers on her weaknesses, including why it took so long for her administration to take serious action on border security.
Harris also wriggled out of discussing the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan and the past three years of high inflation.
Trump’s repeatedly hammered home the issue of border, security, often returning to the topic randomly during unrelated questions. But his most effective moment came early when he talked about the huge price rises of everyday groceries and referred to inflation as a ‘country buster.’
Yet too often, Trump was ill disciplined and rambling. Harris clearly got under his skin on several issues, including that his rallies were boring and that he once invited the Taliban to Camp David. His answers often went down rabbit holes which swallowed up his speaking time and denied him the chance to attack Harris effectively.
At times, his answers veered into Trump crazy land, claiming that illegal immigration were eating cats and dogs in small-town America and that Israel would cease to exist within two years of a Harris presidency.
Harris was far more assured and convincing than Trump on global politics, arguing for an activist American on the international stage and portraying the conflict in Ukraine as a critical test for western democracy.
Trump, by contrast, did not answer the question of whether he wanted Ukraine to win, but instead repeated his claim that he would solve the conflict in 24 hours because he knew Vladimir Putin.
He also struggled to explain how his levying of a 10 per cent tariff on all imports to the US would not hurt American consumers, claiming wrongly that only other countries, including China, would pay all the cost.
In the end, we did not learn much more about the actual campaigns and the candidates than we knew before the debate, which is why it is unlikely to make a major impact on this already close race.
Harris will have surprised some of her sceptics with her performance and she will have enraged Trump faithful by repeatedly skewering him and making him lose his cool.
But it wasn’t a knockout victory and the polls suggest that it is anyone’s race at this point.
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