The conventional wisdom after Tuesday’s debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris seems to be that Trump did poorly while Harris cleared the very low bar that had been set for her. I agree that Harris didn’t fall flat on her face, thanks in large part to ridiculously biased questions from ABC’s moderators and their outright refusal to press her on the many false claims she made.
But the debate was not a win for Harris. She failed to do the one thing she really needs to do: Clue voters into what exactly she would do if they agree to send her to the White House in November.
Harris’s refusal to answer specific policy questions, a pattern that has defined her campaign, is a legitimate problem for voters. A new poll by the New York Times this weekend found that 30% of voters say they need to know more about Harris, versus just 9% for Trump. Her efforts to stay vague on the issues and rebrand as a generic Democrat have only backfired: Half of voters said she’s far too liberal, and 55% said she’s no different from President Joe Biden. In other words, because Harris has given them no reason to believe otherwise, they are rightly assuming she is the same candidate who once vowed to ban fracking, abolish private health insurance, and generally govern as a left-wing progressive.
She did nothing to clear up those concerns on Tuesday night, despite being asked directly about some of her policy flip-flops. Voters still don’t know what Harris plans to do about fracking. They don’t know whether she supports a mandatory gun buyback program. They don’t know whether she supports any restrictions at all on abortion. They don’t know whether she supports moving to a single-payer healthcare system. And most importantly, they still don’t know why, if she is as concerned for the middle class as she claimed, she has not done a single thing as the sitting vice president to address any of their key concerns.
Harris seemed to think that if she succeeded in needling Trump and exposing some of his worst impulses, voters might be willing to look the other way on these issues. The problem for Harris is that voters are much more comfortable with what they already know about Trump compared to what they don’t know about her. Yes, Trump took the bait several times throughout Tuesday’s debate. He rambled a bit and went off on tangents. But these are known character flaws that voters have come to expect, and even accept, from the former president.
Again, recent polling confirms this. His approval ratings have only increased since he left office, with 46% of voters telling the New York Times that they have a favorable view of him. There’s also the fact that Trump went from consistently trailing in national polling in both 2016 and 2020 to consistently leading the field this time around. Voters simply are not as off-put by him as they used to be.
Finally, whereas Harris failed to clear up significant questions about her campaign on Tuesday night, Trump largely did what he needed to do: He stuck to the center on key issues — his answers on abortion were fantastic — and tied Harris to the Biden administration’s many failures. On inflation, immigration, and the Afghanistan withdrawal, Trump reminded voters that Harris owns the past four years just as much as Biden. He could have done so more forcefully in some cases, but the point was not lost.
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It’s probably true that the debate won’t move the needle all that much in either direction. And if that’s the case, perhaps especially if that’s the case, then Trump really was Tuesday night’s winner. Based on current polling, it is Harris who needs another burst of momentum to get her over the finish line in some of these key swing states.
But don’t take it from me — take it from her own campaign staffers, who began clamoring for a second debate almost immediately after Tuesday’s ended. Conventional wisdom aside, it sure seems even they know this was no blowout win for Harris.
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