What a difference a change in opponent makes. In June, Joe Biden lost his debate to Trump so badly that he ultimately left the race. Last night Trump faced off against Biden’s replacement: Kamala Harris. There was little difference in Trump’s performance from the previous debate. If anything, he seemed a bit sharper. But Harris did what Biden could not: shift the focus on to Trump’s considerable defects and the dangers he poses to American democracy.
Last night, Trump repeated a bizarre lie that he had also voiced in the first debate. He claimed that in West Virginia (or Virginia, for he confused the two states) infanticide is legal. “They put the baby aside,” he claimed, to decide after birth whether or not to let it live. In June, Biden responded to this nonsense with a rambling answer that concluded with a story about a nursing student reportedly killed by an undocumented immigrant. Biden somehow shifted the debate from Democrats’ most popular issue – reproductive rights – to republicans’ most popular issue – the alleged threat of illegal immigration.
There was a world of difference in how Harris responded. Aided by the ABC News moderators, who did an excellent job throughout the night in calmly but firmly correcting Trump’s mistruths, Harris dismissed Trump’s assertion as ridiculous. While Trump talked, Harris’s face displayed a mix of concern and exasperation. And she could often be seen laughing at Trump’s absurd claims like this one. (Biden, by contrast, had just stared blankly ahead).
Unlike Biden, who has never been comfortable discussing abortion, Harris gave a passionate defence of reproductive rights rooted in an understanding of the consequences of the overturning of Roe v Wade for individual women. She spoke about “pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the healthcare providers are afraid they might go to jail and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot.” She offered a ringing defence of reproductive rights as a fundamental civil liberty. It is “immoral,” Harris declared for Trump or anyone else to tell a “woman what to do with her body”.
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While Harris made the most of her best issue, she also helped to neutralise Trump’s strengths. Throughout the debate, she successfully goaded Trump to go the defensive. When asked about immigration, she invited people to attend or watch a Trump rally to see how bizarre and extreme his claims are. “I’m going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies because it’s a really interesting thing to watch. He talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills causing cancer.” She concluded by noting how many people left Trump’s rallies early “out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about, is you.”
Trump took the bait. He was sidetracked from his best issue. When he did come back around to it, he voiced outlandish, widely debunked conspiracy theories about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating Americans’ pet cats and dogs. “They’re eating the dogs. The people that came in – they’re eating the cats,” he said. Harris laughed him off, while David Muir, the moderator, was forced to step in and point out that the city manager in Springfield had stated there had been no credible reports of pets being harmed, injured or abused by people in the city’s immigrant community. When Trump returned to the alleged criminality of illegal immigrants, Harris shifted on to his own criminality.
‘This debate did clearly demonstrate the wisdom of Biden’s decision to step down and nominating Harris to replace him’
Trump’s own blows did not land as well because his attack went in two different directions. On the one hand, he portrayed Harris as a flip-flopper who could not stick to any one policy. On the other hand, he depicted her as a radical leftist. “Everyone knows she’s a Marxist,” he claimed. But this debate is unlikely to have convinced many viewers that Harris is fickle, or radical, or somehow both.
Coming into the debate, many Americans said they wanted to know more about Harris who, unlike Trump, is something of an unknown quantity to the public. Last night, her performance was not flawless. She stumbled at the start of the debate and at times seemed to get lost in facts and figures. But overall she came off as presidential, as someone who has command of the issues, knows what she stands for, and can speak directly to the concerns of ordinary Americans. She effectively differentiated herself from the unpopular Biden, presenting herself as part of a “new generation” of leadership.
The most important thing Harris did was shift attention back on to Trump as an unhinged, felonious, authoritarian, racist, sexist president and force voters to think about whether the United States can afford four more years of his rule. She trolled Trump until he revealed himself as petty, vindictive, and a sore loser. On Trump’s election denialism, for example, Harris claimed that he was “fired by 81 million people” and “he is clearly having a difficult time processing that”.
It would be a mistake to put too much stock in a debate unlikely to shift the polls more than a point or two. Trump was on the defensive, but his performance was, by his standards, hardly a disaster. Most Americans have already made up their minds about the election, and the race is still likely to be very close. But this debate did clearly demonstrate the wisdom of Biden’s decision to step down and nominating Harris to replace him. After the June debate, Democrats appeared to be heading for defeat under Biden. Now, under Harris and after last night, they will like their chances in November. Because Harris, unlike Biden, can effectively highlight Trump’s weaknesses.
Daniel Geary is Mark Pigott Associate Professor in American History at Trinity College Dublin
[ Fact-checking Trump’s debate claims: from abortion to Project 2025Opens in new window ]
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