Opinion: Harris cleaned Trump’s clock

She cleaned his clock last night, and everybody knew it.

Like the seasoned lawyer that she is, Kamala Harris took on Donald Trump point by point, with prosecutorial efficiency, and achieved her two objectives. She introduced herself to the 28 percent of voters who say they don’t know enough about her, and she reminded Americans of just who Trump is, and called upon them not to go back.

Harris came across as someone who could take charge, be a considerable president and lead the country. She pointed out that we have more in common than in our differences.

Trump came across as someone who, if he loves America, hates Americans. He seeks to divide the country along odious lines of race and gender.

As was expected, Trump lied repeatedly, and his lies undercut the heart of his claims. CNN counted 33 Trump lies to Harris’s one, and with the one she may have simply misspoken, saying he left us with the “worst unemployment” since the “Great Depression” when she probably meant the “Great Recession” of 2007 to 2009.

Trump’s lies were more compulsive and delusional. Among his most flagrant were that Democrats support executing babies after birth; that “every legal scholar wanted Roe v. Wade overturned”; that the Justice Department has mounted every case against him (tell that to E. Jean Carroll, Alvin Bragg, Letitia James and Fani Willis); “that we recently had the highest inflation in the history of our country”; that crime is down all over the world except here (the FBI has said violent crime has been falling); and that illegal immigrants are “taking over the towns, they’re taking over buildings in Aurora, Colorado” (it hasn’t happened).

They said she was short on policy, but so was he. But character counts more than policy. And on the character issue, he was highly vulnerable.

She effectively reminded us of Trump’s long history of racism: the 1973 race discrimination in housing case brought against him by the Nixon Justice Department; his full-page ad in the New York Times demanding the death penalty for the Black defendants in the 1989 Central Park jogger case, who were later proved to be innocent; his phony birther claims against Barack Obama; Charlottesville in 2017, where white nationalists and neo-Nazis marched shouting anti-Black and antisemitic slurs, and he said that there were “some very fine people on both sides.”

And in the present, the weird bogus claim that in Springfield, Ohio, Haitian immigrants are stealing dogs and cats and eating them. “In Springfield,” he claimed, “they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people who live there.” Even his running mate, Ohio Sen. JD Vance, in a position to know, conceded that the rumor might well be false. It is also patently racist.

She outfoxed him on almost every subject: Jan. 6 and democracy, national security, immigration, the economy and especially abortion.

Harris was brilliant in making the case on abortion. She pointed out that three justices appointed by Trump voted to overrule Roe v. Wade, allowing many red states to ban abortion, sometimes with no exception for rape, incest or life of the mother. “A survivor of a crime, a violation to their body, does not have the right to make a decision about what happens to their body,” she said, elaborating how this could affect 12- and 13-year-olds. “That is immoral.”

Harris kept her cool, and this was commendable. For the first time in the campaign, she took the fight to Trump directly. She needed to get under his skin, and she did. As she charged he was obsessed with crowd sizes at rallies where he made nonsensical references to Hannibal Lecter and windmills that cause cancer, he glowered into the camera with a pugnacious look that might have raised questions of emotional stability.

Like Captain Queeg in “The Caine Mutiny” court martial, he answered repetitively and non-responsively, and she nailed him on it with sharp, telling blows as he kept meandering to exaggerated claims of “many millions” of illegal immigrants entering the country who commit criminal acts of rape, murder and violence: “They allowed terrorists. They allowed common criminals. They allowed terrorists. They allowed common street criminals.”

And she countered well, pointing out that there was a comprehensive bipartisan immigration reform bill in Congress that was headed for passage when Trump personally blocked it for political reasons, preferring “to run on a problem instead of fixing a problem.”

Harris succeeded in separating herself from President Biden, whom Trump repeatedly smeared. “You’re not running against Joe Biden, you’re running against me,” she said at one point in the debate. Trump’s technique is that of a declinist autocrat. The nation is in decline; unless he is elected, we will end up “Venezuela on steroids.” And it’s all the fault of the immigrants. It is they who take your jobs and commit the crimes. Forget that the crime figures bely his claims. It is a stale story, a pipedream. Sadly, it yields a devotion that is hard to shake with the facts.

Harris reminded us that economic analysts such as Goldman Sachs say his policies would slow down the economy and hurt GDP. His tariff policies, featuring 100 percent tariffs on imports from China, are inflationary.

She nailed him. Generals, Cabinet members and White House staffers who worked for him — and his own vice president — say he is unfit to lead the country. As she put it: “I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you. And they say you’re a disgrace.”

Yet pre-debate polls say the election is a dead heat, or as Politico puts it , the “equivalent of a knife fight in a phone booth.” We will see whether Harris takes the lead after this impressive debate performance.

Trump bragged about his endorsement by Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s right-wing strongman. Harris now has the endorsements of GOP stalwarts Dick and Liz Cheney, the United Autoworkers and superstar Taylor Swift.

At the outset, she moved towards him and shook his hand. At the conclusion, they went their separate ways. It was high theater.

Harris immediately challenged Trump to another debate. He would be crazy to take her up on it.

James D. Zirin, author and legal analyst, is a former federal prosecutor in New York’s Southern District. He is also the host of the public television talk show and podcast Conversations with Jim Zirin .

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