Opinion: Grading the Trump-Harris debate — the good, the bad and the weird

On Tuesday we may have seen the most important event in the 2024 election. Something even more earthshaking than President Biden dropping out of the race: Taylor Swift endorsed Kamala Harris.

Oh, and there was also a debate .

Swift’s endorsement , which included the meme-able line, “I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos,” featured a picture of her holding a cat and was signed “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady.”

The significance depends on how much she is willing to engage with the campaign. If she really gets involved, it could be a game-changer when it comes to motivating younger voters. But even just the bare endorsement is still gold, since she has 95 million Twitter followers, 80 million Facebook followers and 283 million Instagram followers. Perhaps childless cat ladies are the new soccer moms .

It’s a fair bet that Taylor Swift’s endorsement will earn a lot more votes for Kamala Harris than choosing JD Vance as his vice president did for Donald Trump.

And then there was the debate. Given the nature of American politics, it probably did not change a lot of minds, but it might have changed some important ones in swing states that will be won or lost by a few thousand votes. So, how did each candidate perform?

Donald Trump once said that he could shoot someone on Fifth Avenue and not lose any voters . That sentiment has proven largely correct , and the former president did not do anything to shake that base of support on Tuesday night. But that’s a low bar. Trump didn’t accomplish much more than that.

His trademark humor was largely missing on the debate stage. His best line of the night was accusing Harris of stealing his policies and quipping that he was going to send her a MAGA hat.

On several occasions, Trump ran circles around himself. At one point, when challenged about how he would replace Obamacare, he simply claimed he had “ the concepts of a plan. ” This was one of Harris’s missed opportunities; she could have reminded Trump that he began working on “the concepts of a plan” nine years ago, when he was sure it would be easy to replace Obamacare by doing deals with hospitals .

The low point of the debate for Trump had to be his claim that immigrants were eating household pets in Springfield. Mixed in with a discussion of whether people leave his rallies early , this was a weird moment , even if you happen to be a news junkie and knew what he was talking about.

If you didn’t, like probably 90 percent of the viewers, you might have thought this had something to do with an episode of “The Simpsons.” As it turned out, he was talking about Springfield, Ohio, and, as the moderator pointed out, the police in Springfield haven’t received any complaints that this is actually happening.

Trump’s best and most repeated attack on Tuesday was to challenge the vice president about the Biden record and to paint all of the decisions made during the current administration as her own. That’s difficult for Harris to counter without appearing disloyal. Nonetheless, it does make you want to ask Trump how much credit he gives his vice president, Mike Pence, for the successes of his own administration.

Overall, although Trump didn’t rise to the moment, his performance was somewhat better than at his typical rally speeches . Apparently, Trump didn’t rate his own performance very highly, though, as he made an almost unheard of personal appearance in the spin room after the event.

I give him a C-minus.

Harris, still relatively undefined , came into the debate with something to prove. For many voters, this was their first look at the vice president in action; she had to come across as someone they could imagine as the commander-in-chief. She certainly accomplished that.

Harris drove home two messages. The first was to contrast Trump’s focus on himself with her focus on voters. One of her best lines was, “As a prosecutor, I never asked a victim or a witness are you a Republican or a Democrat. The only thing I ever asked them, are you OK? And that’s the kind of president we need right now. Someone who cares about you and is not putting themselves first.”

The second was a sunny optimism, which stood in sharp contrast to Trump’s doom and gloom . She didn’t quite say it’s morning in America , but it was close.

The most impressive thing about her performance — or perhaps the least impressive thing about his — was Harris’s ability to bait Trump. Whether it was her dig about the Wharton school, the Central Park Five or the size of crowds at his rallies, Trump fell into trap after trap . At times, it was almost painful to watch. And although none of this will matter to Trump’s committed voters, it was remarkable nonetheless.

If I have one criticism, it is that Harris could have been more aggressive in following up on some of Trump’s answers. Trump spoke more than five minutes longer than she did. But this is a minor quibble. Harris gets an A-minus.

There was no breakthrough moment or knockout punch. The race will continue as trench warfare in a handful of swing states. But this debate will do a lot to firm up Harris’s existing support and may even convince some undecideds to come in from the cold. Certainly, Trump did nothing here to boost his own support.

The Harris campaign is already proposing a second debate. Stay tuned.

Chris Truax is an appellate attorney who served as Southern California chair for John McCain’s primary campaign in 2008.

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