Watching the debate last night, I scribbled some notes. My notes are not comprehensive. (You’re welcome.) But I will give them to you nonetheless, as I wrote them down “in real time.”
• For many years, a question about presidential debates has been, “Who won the handshake?” This stems from 1980, when Candidate Reagan strode over to shake the hand of President Carter, surprising him.
Tonight, it is Harris who does the striding.
• It is odd, in my opinion, to watch a debate without an audience — a debate with no audience in the hall.
• It is odd, too, to watch a debate unmoderated by Jim Lehrer (1934–2020)!
• Vice President Harris says “intend on” — “I intend on extending a tax cut,” for example. Very American. Our vernacular.
• “My mother raised my sister and me.” I’m shocked Harris says “and me.” She does not have the American disease of “and I” (used incorrectly).
• Donald Trump seems composed, relatively crisp. He “leans in” to his usual beliefs and statements: about the badness of immigrants, the goodness of tariffs, etc. He is running, he is debating, as Trump.
• If I were Harris — that’s a laugh, I know — I’d say something like this: “We have great problems with immigration, to be sure. But we should not forget how important immigration is to our country — in a good, beneficent way. I am the daughter of two immigrants, from two different countries. Mr. Trump’s mother was an immigrant, and his father was the son of an immigrant. All this is very American.”
• Harris implies that Trump caused the pandemic. (“Donald Trump left us the worst public-health epidemic in a century.”) Dirty pool.
• At times, Trump sounds like a “normal Republican” (by which I mean a pre-2016 Republican). So does Harris, especially when she talks about foreign policy, America’s place in the world, and the general greatness and goodness of our country.
• Harris can be hectoring, quavery, and overemotional. You are never supposed to say that — those things — about a woman. That’s the rule. But, you know what? I’m a writer. And the things I’m talking about are human.
• Harris indulges in some class warfare, the birthright of a Democrat. (Republicans do it just as much now, I think.)
• She is much more aggressive toward Trump, much more confrontational, than I expected.
• The moderators call Trump “Mr. President.” Talking to Harris, they refer to him as “the president.” Harris ought to say: “The president? No, the president is not in the room.”
I have a memory of the first debate in ’96. Senator Dole told President Clinton he was going to refer to him as “Mr. President” — a courtesy Clinton had not extended, Dole pointed out, to President Bush in ’92.
• In his career as a politician, Trump has been very “flexible.” He has flipped and flopped all over the place. But some things he is utterly consistent on: including the belief that foreigners are always “ripping us off.” This is pure populism.
Harris ought to say, “He forgets that he hurts our people with tariffs and then has to make up for it with government subsidies, to the further detriment of the taxpayers.”
• Harris speaks of a “trade deficit” — bogus phrase, bogus concept.
• Trump pronounces “MAGA” “magga.” I pronounce it “mahga.” But since he invented the thing, his pronunciation should rule.
• “She’s a Marxist,” says Trump. “Everybody knows she’s a Marxist. Her father’s a Marxist professor in economics. And he taught her well.” The moderators don’t give Harris a chance to respond to this, and Harris does not return to it, at any point in the debate.
• Trump is now less crisp, less composed — rattled. Kind of sweaty-mad.
• Republicans say that Democrats are radical on abortion — and that is true. Kamala Harris exemplifies this radicalism. Her position is clearly abortion-on-demand. She says over and over that abortion is a matter of a woman’s control over her own body — freedom. There is no thought that another body, another life, may be involved.
• More than once, Harris says she is “the only person on this stage” to do this or that. That flies when you are in, say, a primary debate, with a cluster of others on the stage. But when there is just one other? A little weird.
• Often, Harris looks at Trump with a mixture of pity and bemusement.
• It seems like Trump is talking a lot more than she — but maybe that is simply a “seeming.”
• If this were one’s first encounter with Trump, one would be shocked — shocked at the nasty, vile, outrageous, extreme, mendacious things he says. But we are all inured now, I suppose. Everything about Trump is “priced in.” Anything outrageous about him is merely dog-bites-man, barely worth a yawn.
This is, of course, wrong — unfortunate — this inurement.
• From one of the moderators, the questions are far too long — mini-speeches.
• The moderators are fact-checking and arguing. That is not their role, as I see it.
• Many people who worked with Trump, at high levels of government, are refusing to support him this year. They say he is unfit to be president, and a danger to our country. The Democrats ought to use this as a campaign point — and Harris is.
• Is it my imagination or is Trump shouting his way through this debate? His voice seems unmodulated.
• Trump refers to January 6 as “J6,” which I find cutesy. Supporters of the rioters — or their apologists — say “J6.” And they refer to the rioters as “J6-ers.” Too cute for me (and worse).
• Harris misses a beat. Routinely, Trump and other Republicans refer to the January 6 defendants and convicts as “patriots,” “political prisoners,” and “hostages.” The vice president should point this out and does not.
“Hostages” is especially grotesque. Trump started using this term after October 7 — started using it about the January 6 criminals.
• Of course, Trump cites Viktor Orbán as a character witness. The Republican Party is broadly Orbánite, and so is the pop-Right constellation: Heritage, Turning Point, CPAC, etc.
• In a discussion of the Gaza war, Harris does not say that Israel should defeat Hamas — crush it, destroy it (to the extent possible). Too bad.
• One of the Communist newspapers in America — I forget which one — used to begin sentences with “As is well known . . .” Bill Buckley described this as the paper’s “ritualistic introduction of a lie.” Kamala Harris goes on a riff of sentences that begin, “It is well known . . .” (But what she says, in this riff, is true.)
• Watching the debate, I think, “I know what I think, about this debate and the two candidates. But I find it very hard to know what millions of others will think, and are thinking.”
• I have always wanted someone to ask Trump, or JD Vance, “Do you want Ukraine to win the war?” Well, one of the moderators does: “Do you want Ukraine to win this war?” Trump answers, “I want the war to stop.” Later on, the moderator takes another crack at it. Again, Trump cannot say, will not say, that he hopes Ukraine wins.
I do. I hope the Ukrainians keep their country, their freedom, their independence. I hope they repel Putin’s invasion and spare themselves subjugation. I hope they can keep from, once more, entering the “prison house of nations.”
It is one of the things that most sharply separate me from the Trump-Vance ticket and the new, transformed GOP.
• Harris says she has met with President Zelensky “over five times.” What a strange thing to say.
• Talking to Trump, Harris says, “. . . you adore strongmen instead of caring about democracy.” Twice, she says “the late, great John McCain.” The times, they have a-changed, in various ways.
• About our departure from Afghanistan — the manner in which we departed — Harris expresses no regret. She should. She should at least nod to the disaster that it was. She portrays the war as a simple waste of taxpayer money. In my view, she should honor the people who fought in the war — American servicemen and our NATO allies. (Afghans themselves, too, of course.) She might say something about the Taliban’s crushing of women in particular.
Yes, Trump and his administration greased the way, as she says. Still — the disaster happened on the Biden administration’s watch.
• It was an outrage, says Harris, that Trump invited the Taliban to Camp David. Sacred Camp David. I quite agree — but, hell, Arafat was there.
• I keep asking, but don’t nobody care: If insurers have to cover preexisting conditions, how is that “insurance”?
• “We have created over 800,000 new manufacturing jobs while I have been vice president,” says Harris. An old question: Does the government create jobs (except for governmental ones)?
• In this debate, there was no question about the national debt or the federal budget deficit. There was no question about our fiscal house (which threatens to collapse). There almost never is. I suspect this is the reason: The two parties agree. They agree to pretend the problem does not exist.
• Harris often speaks in platitudes. Her rhetoric is often gassy. What was that line from The Simpsons? The politician says,
My fellow Americans: As a young boy, I dreamed of being a baseball. But tonight I say, we must move forward, not backward; upward, not forward; and always twirling, twirling, twirling towards freedom!
But in a race against Trump, platitudes may well cut it. And they can sound reassuring. Normal (in an age rife with abnormality).
• Did Harris “win” the debate? Well, sure, but — does it matter? Is there anyone in the country whose opinion of Trump and Trumpism is not set? Has not been set for years?
In 2016, I thought Hillary Clinton overwhelmed Trump in the three general-election debates. Who cares? The people want what they want. (Yes, I realize Clinton won 3 million more votes. Not enough, in our system.)
• Last night, I would have asked Trump, “If you lose the election on November 5, will you concede defeat and attend the inauguration, as a former president?” I might also have asked, “Are there any circumstances under which you would accept your defeat as legitimate?”
This matters, to some of us.
To be continued . . .