What was the Kamala Harris team thinking in offering Donald Trump the chance of another debate, after decisively beating him in the ABC debate on Tuesday?
Why invite your opponent to get back up when he’s been flattened? Best to make this the last major event of the campaign. The debate was estimated to have had a hefty 67 million viewers.
Ms. Harris’s momentum had stalled prior to the big show in Philadelphia. She recaptured it with a stellar performance in which she feasted at the fearmonger’s table time and time again. Even many prominent Republicans handed her the win.
The Democratic standard-bearer didn’t have overly high expectations going into the debate. If there’s another one, they’ll be tougher to meet and Mr. Trump would be better prepared.
He had an effective line at the end of the debate, when he cited the big promises she was making and asked where had she been on them for the last three-and-half years as vice-president. He should have used that line of attack from the start and would likely do so in another encounter. It’s a hard broadside to rebut without criticizing her own record with Joe Biden.
In another debate, moderators might not let Ms. Harris get away with dodges like she did on the very first question, when she was asked if the country was better off now than it was when she and Joe Biden took over. She promptly changed the subject.
If, as expected, the polls over the next week or so show a good bounce for the Democrats, there’s no use risking another debate. The bounce from this debate is not certain. One was expected after the successful Democratic convention – it didn’t happen. It should also be remembered that Hillary Clinton was seen as the winner in the debates against Mr. Trump in 2016, and she lost the election.
In Tuesday’s debate, it looked for a while like Mr. Trump could win it. He was self-assured and dominating microphone time. With his baloney being dispensed at a machine-gun clip, he was knocking away Ms. Harris’s attacks with bullying strength.
But then he became an angry, bitter caricature of himself. He made wild claims that Ms. Harris is a Marxist, and that Joe Biden hates her. He took fearmongering to uncharted heights with his assertion that the dogs, cats and other pets of Americans are under threat by Haitian immigrants bent on devouring them.
“They’re eating the dogs,” Mr. Trump said, burnishing his credentials as a bigot. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating – they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.”
He defended his reputation abroad by pointing to great compliments he received from none another than the Hungarian strongman Viktor Orban.
Republicans needed a more moderate Trump because support from his hardcore Republican base hasn’t been enough. It has resulted in poor election showings for the party since 2016. But he missed the opportunity at the Republican convention to expand his appeal, and did so again at this debate.
It’s become apparent that having been an hyperbole-addicted headline-seeker all his life, Mr. Trump can’t change now.
Ms. Harris benefitted from her experience as a prosecutor. She was articulate, precise and savvy. Her voice has a unique intonation. She landed haymakers. Vladimir Putin would “eat you for lunch,” she told Mr. Trump. He bristled at that, and again when she said that in the last election, he was “fired by 81-million people.”
She knew he was hypersensitive about crowd sizes and got under his skin with the remark that “people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”
The shots led to his unravelling, and in the latter half of the debate, Ms. Harris took control.
She didn’t flesh out her policy vision very much. The moderators could have pressed her on that more, as well as on some of her past contradictions. But the complaints from Republicans fall short when you consider how the moderators let Mr. Trump have the mic for more time than Ms. Harris and have the last say on virtually every question posed. Not that it did him much good.
He got more bad news when at the debate’s close, Taylor Swift announced she was supporting Kamala Harris. Instead of another debate, the Democrats should plan a different type of event: one with Ms. Swift and Ms. Harris on stage together.