Vice President Kamala Harris demonstrated in Tuesday night’s presidential debate, in case any rational person had doubts, that she is the only decent, prepared and fit candidate in the presidential race. In both her answers and demeanor, she demonstrated the unmistakable contrast between a mature, responsible adult and someone who resembles the mean, crazy relative no one wants to sit next to at the holiday table.
When ABC News’s debate moderators, Linsey Davis and David Muir, opened the proceedings, she came out swinging, rattling off a list of her domestic proposals. She plainly had her ducks in a row, attacking Donald Trump for the largest trade deficit in history, for selling microchips to China and even for praising Chinese President Xi Jinping for his handling of the coronavirus. Trump was clearly rattled, resorting to lies about everything from his economic record to abortion.
Throughout, Harris remained calm and collected, not bothering to rebut every lie, and instead hitting Trump on the main issues — his favoritism toward the rich, his contempt for democracy and his weakness on national security.
On abortion, when Trump made his usual infanticide claim about Democrats, moderator Davis debunked it. Harris then hit the answer out of the ballpark, giving a passionate defense of freedom. She demolished his claim that “everybody” wanted abortion law to be determined by the states. Between the moderators and Harris, Trump was put on defense, refusing to say whether he would sign a national abortion ban. Harris stood, amused, urging him to answer the question. He never did. The moderators got Trump to admit that he did not yet have a plan to replace the Affordable Care Act. (“I have concepts of a plan” will surely be mocked.)
On national security, Harris hit him hard for refusing to back Ukraine in the war with Russia: “He would just give [Ukraine] up.” She recounted her meetings with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and European allies aiding Ukraine’s “righteous” defense. She warned that Russian President Vladimir Putin has “his eyes on the rest of Europe” and dared Trump to tell Polish Americans that he would abandon the fight to curry favor with Putin, “a dictator who would eat you for lunch.” Liz Cheney was right: Harris is the Reaganesque candidate in this contest.
Emphasizing the need for unity and decency, she attacked Trump’s race-baiting: “I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone who wants to be president who has consistently over the course of his career attempted to use race to divide the American people.”
Harris was properly aggressive throughout, launching into Trump’s criminal record, his inherited wealth and his weakness on foreign policy, citing his susceptibility to flattery from dictators. Again and again, she raised the number of his former aides who now show disdain for him. (“I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you. And they say you’re a disgrace.”) Harris utterly flummoxed Trump by mocking his rally rhetoric as bizarre and tedious, noting that his followers leave early. That seemed to set Trump off, as he went on a tirade about having “the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”
When Trump railed about the Biden administration, at one point saying, “She is Biden,” Harris deadpanned, “I am not Joe Biden.”
As for the ABC debate moderators, their performance should be graded on three criteria: Did they refuse to treat Trump as a normal candidate? Did they provide as much fact-checking as possible to counter his nonstop lying? Did they help voters understand the basic views of the two candidates? On all three, Davis and Muir did well.
To a greater extent than the CNN moderators in Trump’s debate with Biden in June, the moderators confronted Trump with some of his most outlandish lies (e.g., on Democrats’ abortion policies and the 2020 election results). They confronted him with his racist comments about Harris, and their prodding helped reveal his lack of a health-care policy. When Trump repeated his ludicrous claim about undocumented immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, eating people’s pets, Muir promptly knocked it down.
As for the debate offering clarity about the presidential race, it certainly revealed that Harris has a truckload of specific positions and proposals; Trump has grievances, revenge fantasies and blather. If voters cannot figure out which candidate is prepared to be president, blame rests with them, not with the ABC News team.
Some pundits before the debate set a flurry of tests that Harris supposedly had to pass: Could she appeal to independents, could she appear presidential, could she show mastery of policy details? Harris did all that and more, conveying an optimistic vision that offered a dramatic contrast with Trump’s apocalyptic rhetoric.
Disregard any post-debate analysis that says the confrontation won’t matter, won’t change any minds. Harris did superbly Tuesday, and it will make a difference. Fair-minded voters will notice.
