Well, the second presidential debate of the 2024 election — and the first featuring Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump as the nominees — is over. And, the biggest takeaway might be that there’s probably going to be a second one.
After a contentious night, what do we know? Well, here are five takeaways from the showdown in Philadelphia, in case you missed it:
1) Trump started strong and finished strong, but the middle of the bout belonged to Harris.
It’s always said that the beginning of any major presidential event — debates, the State of the Union, etc. — is the most important, because that’s what people tune in for. If that was the case, Donald Trump might have come away the winner on Tuesday.
Harris had a shaky start on a question regarding whether or not voters were better off, economically, than they were four years ago, and wasn’t able to land many rhetorical punches on tariff policy or job creation post-pandemic, while Trump laid into her on inflation and border security. On abortion and IVF, it was a draw, with Harris failing to make the (erroneous) claim stick that a Trump administration had promised to ban IVF, and refusing to say she would allow states to limit late-term abortion if she had a chance to get federal abortion-access legislation through Congress.
Even the most MAGA-centric observer had to concede, however, that the middle rounds belonged to Harris. If there was any turning point, it was when the Democratic nominee goaded Trump into a comparison match regarding crowd sizes at rallies — something that seemed to throw the former president off-kilter:
Kamala Harris just baited Trump into going on an unhinged rant about crowd size.
Executed perfectly 30 minutes into the debate. pic.twitter.com/FkUiRCOa03
— Brian Krassenstein (@krassenstein) September 11, 2024
Trump recovered with a strong closing statement, noting that while Harris had told America “She’s going to do this, she’s going to do that, she’s going to do all these wonderful things,” she and her boss have already had three and a half years to do them — and they still haven’t been done.
Who do you think won the debate?
Donald Trump: 0% (0 Votes)
Kamala Harris: 0% (0 Votes)
What most of the media took away from the affair, however, was the middle part of the contest, where Trump too often rambled. That’s an issue the Trump campaign is going to have to address in the days and weeks going forward.
2) It didn’t help that the moderators were on Kamala’s side, either.
Unlike the first debate between Trump and Joe Biden, it was clear where the sympathies of ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis were. Virtually every breath Trump took was “fact-checked,” with fact-check in very heavy air quotes, while nothing of the sort was done for numerous Harris fibs.
Just one instance, on crime statistics:
Trump debates Kamala and the *checks notes* moderators on crime: pic.twitter.com/GKQ67luMjy
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) September 11, 2024
Meanwhile, the moderators didn’t fact-check Harris’s numerous assertions that Trump was tied to the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, nor did they bother interjecting when Harris repeated one of the most debunked Trump-related statements ever: that he called the white supremacists at the Charlottesville, Virginia, “Unite the Right” rally in 2017 “very fine people.”
.@ABC moderators neglect to fact-check Kamala on the “very fine people” hoax. pic.twitter.com/uQo5dBFMuv
— Daily Wire (@realDailyWire) September 11, 2024
In fact, it was one of those nights where satire site The Babylon Bee wasn’t too far off: “Moderators Call Timeout To Huddle And Discuss Strategy With Kamala.” Sounds about right.
3) Like it or not, Kamala 2024 is not Kamala 2020.
The great hope entering Tuesday’s debate was that, after taking virtually no questions from the media and having a mostly iffy sit-down with CNN as her only major interview before the debate, that the gaffe machine that was Kamala Harris of old would return.
Kamala Harris: We’ve been to the border
Lester Holt: YOU haven’t been to the border
Harris: … and I haven’t been to Europe.
Even if you’re going to take her defense on “root causes..” she failed at that too! The leaders of those countries said she never called them! pic.twitter.com/SAlOuOlr78
— Matt Whitlock (@mattdizwhitlock) August 25, 2024
The hope was, of course, for a “Tulsi Gabbard moment” — like the one that took her out of presidential contention during the 2020 process, when the former Hawaii representative dismantled her on stage over the inconsistencies between her drug enforcement policies as a prosecutor and her private drug use in college, which she bragged about:
Tulsi Gabbard confronted Kamala Harris in this pivotal debate moment, demanding answers on key issues of accountability. This revealing exchange highlights the importance of transparency and truth in politics. pic.twitter.com/MZ1Eocwb0F
— Robert F. Kennedy Jr (@RobertKennedyJr) September 1, 2024
The problem is, that moment didn’t happen — and it hasn’t happened yet. This means it may be time for the Trump campaign and Republicans to face up to an unpleasant (but navigable) reality: Kamala 2024 is not Kamala 2020.
There’s good news and bad news to this. Yes, Harris was disciplined and didn’t walk into any traps like she has in the past. She also came across as rote and rehearsed and didn’t score any memorable knockout punches. There was no “There you go again,” as happened during the 1980 Reagan-Carter debate, or even “I really don’t know what he said at the end of that sentence; I don’t think he knows what he said either” during the Trump-Biden debate.
She did, you know, OK. Well enough. Disciplined.
But inspiring? No. Memorable? No. And if she wants a rematch — which her campaign has already declared it does — Trump will go in knowing he’s not facing a self-destruction machine on the other side.
4) Kamala still doesn’t have any real policy answers — save for Trump’s.
In one of the few adversarial moments from the moderators, Davis asked why Harris wanted to ban fracking during her last campaign but doesn’t want to now. The answer? TL;DR: You can just skip through this italicized section, which is Harris’s response from an ABC News transcript, if you want to — because, just like the rest of the debate, Harris’s answer is pretty much that she’ll say whatever she thinks you want to hear to get her elected, just so long as it doesn’t involve making any specific proposals:
So my values have not changed. And I’m going to discuss every one — at least every point that you’ve made. But in particular, let’s talk about fracking because we’re here in Pennsylvania.
I made that very clear in 2020. I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as Vice President of the United States. And, in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking.
My position is that we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil. We have had the largest increase in domestic oil production in history because of an approach that recognizes that we cannot over rely on foreign oil.
As it relates to my values, let me tell you, I grew up a middle-class kid raised by a hard-working mother who worked and saved and was able to buy our first home when I was a teenager.
The values I bring to the importance of home ownership knowing not everybody got handed $400 million on a silver platter and then filed bankruptcy six times, is a value that I bring to my work to say we are going to work with the private sector and home builders to increase 3 million homes, increase by 3 million homes by the end of my first term.
My work that is related to having a friend when I was in high school who was sexually assaulted by her stepfather. And my focus then, on protecting women and children from violent crime, is based on a value that is deeply grounded in the importance of standing up for those who are most vulnerable.
My work that is about protecting social security and Medicare is based on long-standing work that I have done. Protecting seniors from scams.
My values have not changed.
And what is important is that there is a president who actually brings values and a perspective that is about lifting people up and not beating people down and name-calling. The true measure of the leader is the leader who actually understands that strength is not in beating people down, it’s in lifting people up. I intend to be that president.
If you can identify a coherent policy proposal or a concrete reason for the change in fracking policy there, please let me know.
In fact, as Trump pointed out, Harris’s major policy proposals are basically his. “Everything that she believed three years ago and four years ago is out the window,” he said. “She’s going to my philosophy now. In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat.”
5) After all this … it likely won’t make too much of a difference in the polls.
Aside from the revelation that Kamala Harris can make it through a debate without glitching out as her boss did, nothing on Tuesday will change people’s minds. That’s doubly true now that Harris’s team thinks she did so well that she wants a rematch.
However, remember the media adulation that came from the Democratic National Convention? Remember how that was supposed to translate into a huge bump for Harris? On Monday, the latest New York Times/Siena College poll came out.
The results, according to The Hill? Trump still leads by 1 point. And that’s not even swing states, that’s the entire nation.
You’ll probably hear a lot of Kamalamania this week — just like you heard after the convention. And after she got the endorsement from Joe Biden when he stepped aside as nominee. After all that, the ball is still in Donald Trump’s court, albeit with a slim margin. Don’t expect too much difference a week or two from now, either, judging by what happened on Tuesday.
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