Like @jgeraghty I think Kamala Harris had a successful night. You can complain about the bias of the moderators, but on his best days Donald Trump is able to turn that to his advantage. Tonight, he took the bait laid out by both the moderators and Harris and allowed himself to veer off in directions that made him look crazy. Harris was fake and vacuous, as usual, and nothing she said will be remembered after tomorrow, but she also avoided any major stumbles. Instead of using this as an opportunity to define Harris, Trump turned the focus to himself. He wiffed in making the case against the administration on immigration and Afghanistan. The only thing people will remember from this debate is Trump ranting about Haitian migrants eating dogs. That’s a win for Harris.
@jgeraghty is correct, as usual.
Trump hits the note he needs in his closing: if Harris wants to do these things, why didn’t she & Biden do them already? Focuses on her incumbency.
Nobody on the right is going to want to hear this, but Kamala Harris, by and large, did what she wanted to do tonight — that is, she flipped through her mental notecards and delivered the rehearsed lines that she wanted to deliver. This wasn’t a perfect performance – there’s a coldness to it, a too-rehearsed phoniness. But she’s standing a few feet away from an erupting volcano in a blue suit. Trump’s base will love his shouting, his “we’re a nation in decline” gloom, his scowling. The Harris campaign wanted exactly that contrast. We will see in the coming weeks if they’ve accurately assessed what the electorate really wants.
Harris says she wants to invest in America — unless it’s actual investment, from the private sector, which she wants to tax more.
Kamala’s closing statement is a mixture of stump speech odds and ends. Again, I think “opportunity economy” is a loser message. Americans want a restored promise of the American dream: if you work hard and play by the rules, you will have a better life than your parents had and can give an even better life to your children.
To that end, a more appealing message would be about economic strength and stability in every region of the country,
I was right. Trump did too much winning in the first debate, against Biden. Although I still think he’s favored to win, he now has a more formidable opponent.
It’s an encouraging sign that the climate change topic rapidly devolved into a discussion about the acute tradeoffs associated with public policy aimed at making productive enterprise less competitive.
UAW president Shawn Fain is under investigation for workplace retaliation and financial misconduct, but Harris is still proud to claim his endorsement in the presidential debate.
ABC moderator Linsey Davis said Kamala Harris supported a private health care option. This is misleading. She supported kicking 180 million people off current private plans and put all of them in a new Medicare system. Some private companies would be allowed to administer the new Medicare plans. https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/08/how-kamala-harriss-first-presidential-campaign-unraveled-thanks-to-health-care-policy/