Vice President Kamala Harris got one thing she wanted on Tuesday night in Philadelphia : The second presidential debate was much more about former President Donald Trump than the first.
That was only partly due to Harris’s own efforts. ABC News’s moderators aggressively, and almost exclusively, fact-checked and argued with Trump. The former president and 2024 Republican presidential nominee also frequently took the bait, allowing the conversation to shift to his four years in office rather than prosecuting the case against Harris.
Democrats have long believed that their best chance for victory is for the election to be a binary choice between Trump and themselves rather than a referendum on the Biden-Harris administration.
The first debate was defined almost entirely by President Joe Biden and his struggles communicating effectively. It was arguably the most one-sided general election presidential debate in history.
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Biden dropped out of the race less than a month later. Harris is now at the top of the Democratic ticket, a fact that she was eager to remind voters.
“You’re not running against Joe Biden. You’re running against me,” Harris said.
“She is Biden,” Trump shot back later in the debate.
What effect this will have on the presidential race is unclear. The perception that the moderators were biased against Trump could redound to his benefit. Trump is also a familiar figure after more than nine years in national politics. Harris needed to reintroduce herself to the voters.
But Harris was able to prosecute the case against Trump’s temperament and record. She also argued that at 59 (she will turn 60 later this month), she represented a generational change in leadership compared to both her 81-year-old boss and the 78-year-old Trump. And Trump was put on the defensive multiple times, abandoning his early hushed tone for a more exasperated one as the debate wore on.
ABC News allowed considerably more interplay between the candidates than CNN did in the first debate despite an extended dispute between the campaigns this time around over whether open microphones and interruptions would be allowed. The rules remained the same, but the network approaches were different.
Trump had his moments. While he is considerably less disciplined and focused than Harris, he is funnier. He mentioned Harris’s abandoned liberal policy positions. He asked why she did not do the things she is now promising to do during her time as vice president. He hit the Biden-Harris administration’s record again and again.
But every moment spent talking about the 2020 election was one not devoted to the issues of 2024. This helps Harris, who talks about Jan. 6 much less than Biden did but still views the attack on the Capitol by Trump supporters as a winning issue for her campaign. In one exchange, Harris successfully baited Trump into devoting more time to defending his rally crowd sizes than his record on immigration and the border.
At one point, Trump caught himself after giving an extended answer about the 2020 election and said they should be focused on the future.
Faced with a backlash from his socially conservative supporters about his recent abortion waffling, Trump wobbled on the tightrope he has been walking on the issue. He reiterated his opposition to late-term abortion and tried to paint Harris as the true radical while praising his own leadership on in vitro fertilization treatments. But he wouldn’t back his running mate, Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), on assurances he would veto what Democrats call a “national abortion ban.” That is a strategic departure from Trump’s focus on the states, which may suggest he has heard the criticisms from anti-abortion activists that he is running away from the reversal of Roe v. Wade.
The split screen between Harris and Trump was much better for the Democrats than Biden vs. Trump. She is younger and more articulate. Trump had to do more than just let his rival implode, with mixed results. Harris also struck the right balance between her prosecutor and “Momala” personas, often smiling and laughing as Trump spoke.
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Trump nevertheless said many things that will be pleasing to his base. He was also at times able to challenge Harris’s commitment to any set of positions for a set period of time. But he often accepted the premises of questions rather than returning to his preferred attack lines, allowing the moderators and occasionally Harris herself to accept the terms.
The race has tightened since Harris took over from Biden, though her honeymoon seemed to be fading according to predebate polls. The vice presidential candidates are set to debate on Oct. 1. It is unclear whether Trump and Harris will debate again.
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