Why Trump’s debate performance may have resonated with undecided voters

Over the past several days, the media consensus has been that a ranting Donald Trump lost Tuesday night’s presidential debate to the far more contained and cheerful Kamala Harris . Observers on both the Left and Right predicted that the former president’s outraged performance would cost him dearly with undecided and independent voters.

But that’s not what these voters are telling reporters. Several media organizations, including the New York Times, are finding the vice president left a surprising number unpersuaded. Many are declaring themselves more likely to vote for Trump. For example, 34-year-old Keilah Miller, a black woman from Wisconsin who had previously voted Democratic, told the New York Times that she was now moving toward Trump because she found him “more convincing.”

No question, Trump was angry. But so are many people. Trump’s enraged performance and the surprising reaction to it contained echoes of the ‘70s motion picture Network. In that classic satire, the recently terminated news anchor Howard Beale launches into a rambling tirade on live TV about America during the inflationary 1970s. The dysfunction he describes sounds all too familiar:

“I don’t have to tell you things are bad. Everybody knows things are bad. It’s a depression. Everybody’s out of work or scared of losing their job. The dollar buys a nickel’s worth. Banks are going bust. Shopkeepers keep a gun under the counter. Punks are running wild in the street and there’s nobody anywhere who seems to know what to do, and there’s no end to it. We know the air is unfit to breathe and our food is unfit to eat, and we sit watching our TVs while some local newscaster tells us that today we had 15 homicides and 63 violent crimes, as if that’s the way it’s supposed to be...”

Beale commands viewers to open their windows and shout that they’re “mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” In the now-iconic scene, people everywhere start doing just that. Watching from the control room, the cynical network executive, played by Faye Dunaway, finds her horror turns to excitement as she recognizes that Beale has struck “the motherlode.”

Trump has similarly tapped into the collective outrage of Americans, who are mad as hell about the social and economic malaise created under the Biden-Harris administration. They don’t want to take it anymore. This may be why viewers interviewed by the New York Times and others found Trump “convincing.” And it may be why attempts by the Harris campaign to imitate former President Ronald Reagan's “happy warrior” campaign style seem to be falling flat, keeping her tied with Trump in the polls.

Reagan won the White House in 1980 and ‘84 because he backed up his optimism with substance. He told us that he would bring relief from a troubled economy by “getting the government out of the way.” He proposed lower taxes and regulations that would spur economic growth and allow more people to keep what they earned and prosper. Reagan eventually delivered on these promises, ending inflation and ushering in a 20-year economic boom.

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But what is Harris offering? Price controls that, throughout history, have only created shortages? Labeling grocers with minuscule profit margins as “price gougers” and promising to persecute them for raising prices? Decimating the personal wealth of millions of people through unprecedented tax increases? Ramping up already-gargantuan government spending that will require more government money printing, further debasing the dollar and fueling even more inflation? Subverting our constitutional system of federal government checks and balances by packing the Supreme Court?

How “joyful” is that? Unlike what the media have suggested, Harris’s evasiveness is not based on “having no plan.” It’s because she knows her party’s intention to expand its grip on power will not play well with people. Voters, including those undecided, are beginning to wake up to that. It may be why, despite their reservations, they seem to be moving toward Trump. They may not like the angry Orange Man. But they hate a phony.

Elizabeth Ames is co-author with Steve Forbes and Nathan Lewis of Inflation: What It is, Why It’s Bad and How To Fix It .