Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, stops by a presidential debate watch party after the debate in Philadelphia, on Sept. 10.HAIYUN JIANG/The New York Times News Service
One of the great unexplained mysteries in recent U.S. politics remains Kamala Harris’s transformation from a failed Vice-President into a transformational presidential candidate who can take the country in a fresh new direction.
Barely a year ago, Ms. Harris set a record for the lowest net-favourability rating of any U.S. vice-president going back decades. Her rare official appearances were stiff and scripted, and the White House seemed eager to keep her out of the public eye.
It turns out President Joe Biden’s declining mental acuity wasn’t the only cover-up going on in Washington. Ms. Harris’s political talents now appear to have been a closely guarded secret for reasons that remain couched in intrigue.
Not surprisingly, many American voters remained unsure about Ms. Harris after her coronation as the 2024 Democratic presidential nominee. Many of them have had a hard time squaring her stint as Vice-President with her spectacular media makeover.
Ms. Harris went a good way toward dispelling those doubts at last month’s Democratic National Convention, with an acceptance speech that was a model of efficiency and grace. But in her only interview with a mainstream media outlet since then, on CNN, she revived many of the earlier criticisms with trite and uninspired answers, explaining away her reversals on core policy issues by insisting her “values” had not changed.
For independent voters who were unsure about what Ms. Harris really believes or how she would govern, Tuesday’s ABC News presidential debate is not likely to have put to rest all their concerns. Still, they had to have been impressed with how she conducted herself and took down Republican nominee Donald Trump with the methodical precision of the former prosecutor that she is.
Ms. Harris was superbly prepared and remained even-keeled throughout. Yes, she remained frustratingly evasive about her policy flip-flops and her core beliefs. But she expertly lured Mr. Trump into the traps his debate coaches almost certainly warned him about beforehand. He collapsed into a puddle of helpless rage, ranting unintelligibly about migrants eating cats and the size of his rallies.
“I have travelled the world as Vice-President of the United States. And world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump. I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you. And they say you’re a disgrace,” Ms. Harris said, adding, with prosecutorial presumption, “Perhaps we do not have in the candidate to my right the temperament or the ability to not be confused about fact.”
All Mr. Trump could do in response was to offer Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban, whose own serial violations of democratic norms and admiration of Russian President Vladimir Putin exceed even his own, as a character witness.
Mr. Trump did manage to get in a few jabs that could reinforce doubts about Ms. Harris among a small, but critical, percentage of voters still on the fence. He reminded Americans that Ms. Harris had become a candidate for the highest office in the country, and the world, without having won a single primary contest. He called her a “Marxist” and sought to undermine her economic credentials. He insisted she would renege on her pledge not to ban fracking.
He cast doubt on her foreign-policy chops, suggesting she is anti-Israel (in an unsubtle slight, she skipped Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s joint address to Congress in July) and would be soft on Iran. And he reminded Americans that she was at Mr. Biden’s side during the disastrous U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021.
She shot back that Mr. Trump would betray Ukraine in a heartbeat. “If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now.”
For all his ranting about the unauthenticated reports of pets being eaten by migrants in Ohio, Mr. Trump did pound the nail on immigration to some effect. Illegal border crossings surged on Ms. Harris’s watch, until a June executive order by Mr. Biden enabled border agents to turn away migrants seeking asylum. Her recent support for a bipartisan immigration bill she accused Republicans of killing, at Mr. Trump’s behest, belied her history of calling for the decriminalization of illegal border crossings. This week, CNN unearthed a questionnaire Ms. Harris filled out during her 2019 run for the Democratic nomination in which she pledged to slash funding for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency. She also vowed to provide taxpayer-funded gender-transition treatment for prisoners and those in immigration detention.
“She wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens who are in prison. This is a radical-left liberal,” Mr. Trump claimed. “She wants to confiscate your guns and she will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania.”
Still, if you were judging this debate only as a contest of wits, Ms. Harris was the clear winner. She may even have turned enough of her doubters into believers.