The first debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump couldn’t have gone much better for Harris, who successfully baited an increasingly irritated (and loud) Trump on everything from the enthusiasm of his rally attendees to being an embarrassment in the eyes of foreign leaders.
The first half of the debate, where most impressions are formed, was also heavy on her best issues and Trump’s worst, including abortion and the Jan. 6 attack. Even the immigration portion, Trump’s favorite issue, began with relitigation of the border bill he instructed his Republican allies to kill.
Trump pivoted continuously to illegal immigration; Harris repeated her vision of an opportunity economy for middle class Americans.
In a sign of confidence, the Harris campaign called for another debate as soon as this one ended. To cap the night, Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, signing her endorsement “childless cat lady.”
I feel obligated to note at the top that you can win a debate and lose the election. Donald Trump isn’t a momentary candidate. He has a big national political following that has remained loyal over almost a decade. Nothing happened tonight that is going to shake the confidence of his supporters. But with that said, this debate was an absolute rout. Harris had a minute or two of nerves in her opening statement. But from the very first exchange she maintained the initiative, kept Trump on the defensive the entire time and simply dominated him. I don’t see any way to contest that basic verdict.
She set a tone at the very start when she walked right into his space to shake his hand and made him almost pull back into himself in response. She was in charge and never stopped being in charge.
10:38 PM: In any war, in any sport, you maintain the initiative and you’re on the road to victory. Harris has controlled the entire debate. She’s effectively baited him in a way no other candidate has ever been able to do. It’s not like she’s going to rocket into some big lead. People aren’t going to abandon Trump. But she needed to show she can dominate him, be the one in control. She has. It’s as simple as that. She’s also gotten him to spend most of the debate showing his most feral and angry self. This debate was a rout. I don’t think there’s any other way to put it.
10:19 PM: Is she actually going to overmatch him on the Afghanistan withdrawal question?
10:05 PM: Trump has simply been on the defensive for every moment of this debate. She delivers her messages, while also baiting him and he responds and gets angrier in a way that makes him even less coherent than normal. She’s controlling the tempo and frankly dominating the debate. Meanwhile he’s spent most of the debate talking about his worst vulnerabilities.
9:55 PM: Trump’s definitely not going to be a strongman and his character witness is Viktor Orban.
9:54 PM: They say you’re a disgrace. Wow.
9:48 PM: So Trump spent his time saying that Nancy Pelosi did January 6th.
9:44 PM: So I’m going to say that energy answer wasn’t great for Trump. Good lord.
9:37 PM: I keep hoping she’ll say one thing and then she doesn’t. But she says something better. She’s hitting her points.
9:33 PM: Obviously Afghanistan is a good issue for Trump. It is what it is. But Trump’s getting angrier and angrier. It’s visible.
9:29 PM: She’s just baiting him and he’s taking the bait. He’s hitting points he wants to certainly. But he is reacting to her.
9:23 PM: JD made a crunchy sound after Don threw him under the bus.
9:21 PM: Harris’s response on abortion was literally perfect.
9:20 PM: There are technical points I was hoping Harris would hit on abortion. But what she’s actually doing is much better. “Trump abortion bans”.
9:18 PM: This is a good example of a case in which his furry and fast talking could give the appearance of coherence. But it’s all nonsense. I’m listening now to the abortion answer. It just sounded like jibberish.
9:14 PM: She’s spinning him in the circles. I’m not trying to be over-optimistic. But every exchange so far is her pressing a point that is important to her campaign and he’s responding and often with a fugue of nonsense.
9:11 PM: She’s driving this debate so far.
9:08 PM: Harris started a bit nervous, a touch wobbly. But she’s hitting the points she needs to hit. She’s making him respond. That’s what I’m seeing so far.
9:01 PM: Why is he calling him “President Trump”. He’s the former President. He’s not Prsident.
For the past day, Viles Dorsainvil has been fielding all kinds of calls: some threatening, some demanding that he leave, others plaintive, still more worried.
Democrats might be forgiven for experiencing a slight touch of PTSD as they watch Kamala Harris’ soaring and sudden ascent to the party’s presidential nomination seem to stall. The scene could be seen as reminiscent of Harris 2020 primary campaign, where she entered the race to great fanfare and, at one point, surged in the polls before ultimately crashing out before the first votes were even cast.
Tonight we have the second presidential debate of the 2024 campaign cycle and the first for this presidential campaign. Much as I would like to buck the conventional wisdom, the stakes are genuinely quite high. One poll I saw this morning showed a remarkably high, really impossibly high percentage of voters said that the debate would have a major impact on their vote: 30%. But as debate watchers we come back to a basic conundrum: if you’re paying enough attention to be worked up about the debate you are almost certainly not the intended audience. And not only are you not the intended audience but your experience of the campaign and politics generally is so totally different from that of the intended audience that absent a real suspension of disbelief, a real effort to separate yourself from your own impressions, you’ll have a hard time knowing how each candidate did for the audience that matters.
Not that long ago the performative dance of dominance politics was more of a burlesque show, but any nuance has long since been stripped away in the Trump era. It’s full frontal now, with physical size and naked power being wielded unapologetically.
It yielded this cheeky NYT style section piece titled: Trump Mocks Harris’s Height. But Her Fans See a Certain Stature. This sentence hurt my soul: “But seeing the candidates together may make many who tune in for the debate aware of her actual height for the first time — a reality that could have been previously masked by what some call Tall Energy.”
The Harris campaign is giving as good as it gets, rolling out a debate day national cable TV ad that highlights former President Obama’s troll of the size of Trump’s crowds/manhood:
Immediately adjacent to the low-brow contest over physical size and prowess, is Trump’s assertion of unbridled political power as its own show of dominance. Every transgression – including his racist and xenophobic attacks, his threats to prosecute and jail his foes, and his refusal to abide by the election results – is not only a direct attack on democracy but a flex, showing off his own force of will by his rejection of existing norms.
There’s no reason to think that tonight’s debate stage won’t be a tableau of dominance politics, especially with the dynamic of Trump facing off against a biracial woman. But it comes with heightened awareness on the Democratic side that Harris stands to lose if she lets Trump dominate the physical space like he tried to by stalking Hillary Clinton on stage in 2016 or by talking over Biden in 2020 or by deploying rapid-fire falsehoods in 2024.
It’s the professional wrestling-ization of our national politics, a reality TV version of exaggerated masculinity with puffed-out chests, cock-of-the-walk strutting, and bulging veins. Democrats have long ceded this base-level stagecraft to Republicans. But with Trump himself a product of pro wrestling and intuitively familiar with its themes, even to the point of his willingness to play the heel role, the Harris campaign seems determined not to retreat from confrontation on the lizard brain level.
I find this all a dreary way to approach watching tonight’s debate, but this is where we are.
Watch With Us!
The TPM team will be all over tonight’s debate in Philadelphia, so come back and join us this evening. It begins at 9 p.m. ET on ABC and will be moderated by ABC News’ David Muir and Linsey Davis.
Cynicism Watch
WaPo: Vance, Republicans elevate false claims about immigrants eating American pets
TNR: MAGA Launches Most Unbelievable Conspiracy Yet—on Migrants Eating Pets
NBC News: Ohio police have ‘no credible reports’ of Haitian immigrants harming pets, contradicting JD Vance’s claim
What Could Possibly Go Wrong?
Arizona election officials tell TPM’s Khaya Himmelman that CPAC’s request to monitor ballot drop boxes is akin to an “arsonist calling the fire department.”
Good Read
Semafor: Mysterious influencer network pushed sexual smears of Harris
Quote Of The Day
Thomas Zimmer, on how to think about the role of the Cheneys and other anti-Trump Republicans:
What these prominent Republicans do in not just publicly siding against Trump, but supporting the Democratic candidate in a presidential election deserves appreciation, as they draw a line against autocracy, at considerable personal cost – a line that must be held if democracy is to have any chance at survival. At the same time, we must not help perpetuate their deeply flawed diagnosis of Trumpism as a mere aberration from an otherwise noble conservative tradition and venerable Republican Party – a type of nostalgic myth that, not coincidentally, tends to obscure their own role in tolerating and condoning the forces that have fueled Trump’s rise and their own complicity in elevating extremism within the GOP.
Terrorgram Leaders Indicted In California
ABC News: “The Justice Department on Monday charged two California individuals who were alleged leaders of a white supremacist group that wanted to ignite a race war in the United States and allegedly plotted to kill “high value” targets and incite its followers to carry out terror attacks around the globe.”
What The What?
NYT: “An eccentric German princess who evolved from a 1980s punk style icon to a conservative Catholic known for hobnobbing with far-right figures said on Monday that she hosted Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. and his wife at her castle during a July 2023 music festival.”
Kagan Keeps Pressing For SCOTUS Ethics Reform
Justice Elena Kagan continued to advocate for an enforcement mechanism for the Supreme Court’s new ethics code, during an appearance Monday at NYU’s law school.
Missouri Abortion Rights Measure In Peril
The Missouri Supreme Court is expected to consider this morning whether an important abortion rights measure will remain on the November ballot:
Cole County Circuit Judge Christopher Limbaugh ruled the abortion rights measure was invalid because it “did not sufficiently inform voters who signed petitions for the proposed amendment of its ramifications,” the WaPo reports.
Missouri Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft reversed himself and revoked his prior certification of the measure and removing it from the November ballot.
With the deadline for getting the measure on the ballot looming at 5 p.m. CT today, the state Supreme Court has set a hearing on the matter for 8:30 a.m. CT.
On The Hill
Punchbowl: “Speaker Mike Johnson’s self-described “righteous” idea to pair a six-month funding bill with the SAVE Act is on the brink of imploding. A number of House Republicans are unpersuaded by the proposal, describing it as irresponsible and ill-advised.”
Politico: Bob Good to step down as Freedom Caucus chair this week
WaPo: Congress to grill Andrew Cuomo on 2020 order linked to nursing home deaths
‘A Voice Of Rolling Thunder’
(Original Caption) In the “Great White Hope”, Jones portrays the legendary fighter Jack Johnson who was bald. Shaving his head has become a regular routine now for the actor.
The marvelous James Earl Jones is dead at the age of 93.
I wanted to look at a decent number of new polls out today. They paint a mixed and complicated picture. There’s no other way to put it. Two new national polls have a tied race. On it’s face, that’s not a great sign for Harris. A tie popular vote is very likely to mean defeat. But it’s not that simple. The two polls are from Pew and the Harris Poll. Pew is a very solid poll but generally unfriendly to Democrats in recent cycles. So for instance at the height of the Kamala surge they had her up one point over Trump. Now it’s even. Not a big a difference. The Harris poll (really the zombie Harris poll now owned and operated by Mark Penn) meanwhile is not just extremely unfriendly to Democrats but closer to Rasmussen territory. (Just to avoid confusion, let’s christen it the Penn-Harris poll.) In other words, we’re not just talking a house effect generally unfriendly to Democrats but really a question in my mind whether it should even be considered a legitimate poll. Taken together I think it’s fair to assume there may be some leveling off of Kamala Harris’ support. But I don’t think there’s real evidence of some kind of sea change in the race.
