Man, that was painful. The moderators were biased and self-important; Harris was well-rehearsed and effective for her purposes, but obviously a mediocrity; and Trump was ill-disciplined and vague and repetitive.
I’ll just dwell on the latter for a minute. We’ve now had two presidential debates, and at neither one has Trump managed to say one specific thing about his economy (the stock market was up and inflation was low don’t really count). He hasn’t deployed one figure about how real wages were up in his first three years and have been stagnant under Biden-Harris — perhaps the best argument for himself. It’s all been foggy generalities.
Same on immigration, his signature issue. All he ever says is that millions of people are coming in, they commit crimes, and foreign countries are emptying their jails — over and over.
He never makes any arguments that are designed to convince anyone or that connect outcomes in his administration to his specific polices. Now, of course, most people aren’t policy wonks and don’t watch the debate the way pundits do, but even discounting for that, these have been poor performances that could have been much better with some minimal effort that Trump refuses to make.
J. D. Vance — or Ron DeSantis or Nikki Haley — presumably would have killed her, because there is so much material to work with and they would have thought through how to deploy it and prepared appropriately to make sure they delivered on stage. I doubt this debate will be decisive, but if it is, Trump’s carelessness will be the root cause.