TKO
Yet the Polls are Still Tied
Let’s get it out of the way. My pick fave line was when he accused the Vice President of promoting “transgender surgery on illegal aliens when they are in prison”.
There is no doubt that from that first moment when the Vice President made him shake hands with her, and said: “Kamala Harris, let’s have a good debate,” Vice President Harris owned the Convicted Felon. I’ve been watching the presidential debates since 1976, and without question, this was the best debate EVER. There have been great one liners over the years (quiz yourself here) but the this was hit after hit. The tick-tock says that the Felon got more time, and gave more answers than the Vice President, but every drip of insanity that blathered out his mouth helped her.
Kudos to David Muir and Linsey Davis, who pushed back on lies, and really tried to get a straight answer out of a bumbling, ranting, man in obvious decline. Do they give an Emmy for debate moderation?
You can pick up any paper, watch any TV show (even on Fox News) and see that the Convicted Felon was unable to provide a straight yes-or-no answer to whether he supported Ukraine, whether he would sign a nationwide abortion ban, whether he lost the 2020 election, and yeah, everything else. Watching him on the split screen (even with the sound off) you could see he was struggling, angry, bewildered. Here are some of the fact checks: including that no one is eating other people’s pets. Especially fun, when David Muir told him that it wasn’t true, the Convicted Felon actually said that he’d seen people talking about it on TV, so it must be true. His supporters (like Lindsey Graham and Chris Christie) said his debate prep team should all be fired, it was such a disaster.
On the other side of the stage, the Vice President would briefly look at him, cite him, and then turn to the cameras and speak to the audience. Clearly and concisely. She was able to hold him accountable and simultaneously expound on her positions. Vice President Harris was brilliant and pitch perfect, right down to her facial expressions when he was speaking.
After the debate, I watched a few focus groups of undecided voters being interviewed on TV about what they thought about the debate. Here’s one group. While some were firmly now in the Harris camp, some were on the side of the Convicted Felon, but most said that while they were impressed by the Vice President, they wanted to hear more. And HOW the Harris-Walz campaign leverages the sound bites, and how accessible they are to voters, will determine if the needle can be moved off 50/50. Expect to see more interviews, and interactions with the press on the tarmac and other locales.
We know that the Convicted Felon lost bigly. We know that because he claimed that he’d won, and then went into the spin room. I cannot recall a time when a candidate EVER went into a spin room. It is the ultimate sign of weakness. If you’ve never been in a spin room, it is filled with surrogates, generally political supporters like Senators and Governors, some staff, plus policy people who can answer specific questions on an issue. The rest of the room is reporters, looking for additional clarification and sound bites to support their candidate. The candidate stays out because they should have made their case during the debate, plus it’s inelegant.
On the other side, Vice President Harris spoke briefly at a watch party and thanked her supporters for all the canvassing, phone banking and texting.
About a half an hour after the debate ended, Taylor Swift endorsed Harris on Instagram. You can read it here. She signed it “Taylor Swift, Childless Cat Lady." She has over 200 million followers, many of whom are too young to vote or buy tickets to her concerts, and they have parents. It appears that her post was liked over a million times in a few minutes after it launched. This election could easily come down to 50,000 voters nationwide, and they may come from her supporters. Remember when you read the polls, that when they choose their universe (especially the NYT-Sienna polls) they tend to ignore first time voters who have recently registered. That’s where a lot of Swifties would come from, and we may see a real surprise from that demographic. Especially here in Pennsylvania, as Swift is a native of Berks County, although she now lives in Tennessee.
And so now is the morning after. I can only imagine… Vice President Harris tired because it was hard to sleep after such a successful debate outing. The Convicted Felon having thrown all the ketchup he could find at the walls, in his heart knowing he lost both the 2020 election and last night’s debate.
If you didn’t see it, or want to watch again, here’s the video from ABC. The actual debate starts at the 1 hour mark (they, of course, had a pre-game show.)
"I have concepts of a plan" was my personal favorite 🤩 what a night
I was one of the seeming minority of Harris-Walz supporters who was disappointed tin the VPs performance. She left on the table two perfect opportunities to set down two Trump charges that held some water. One was the charge about the Afghanistan disaster to which she did note the Treaty Trump had entered into with the Taliban, but she failed to state that the Trump Treaty required U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan by August of 2021. Further that the 13 troops who tragically lost their lives during withdrawal were killed by a suicide bomber who managed to gain access to the airport, not any hostile firefight even after the Afghan military, for whom we had invested multi-billions in training and equipment over two decades, laid down their arms and went home as soon as we announced we would comply with the Trump Treaty and withdraw.
More importantly, if Trump really scored at all, it was in the charge that while she was making all kinds of wonderful promises of what she would do when elected, she never explained why she didn't do anything constructive in the 3 1/2 years as VP. All she had to do was point to failing bridges and roads being repaired, 15 million new jobs created---the most ever in any Administration;; the lowest unemployment rate in decades; the most oil ever produced in the U.S., more than any other country was producing (she did mention that), the most people ever employed at any time in US history, etc. Then stating in effect that our current Administration did make some mistakes but she learned from them and with a Democratic Congress in 2025 they would be corrected by the policies and plans she has promised to pursue.
Finallly, I thought she could have done a better job explaining how a tariff, although a tax as claimed by Trump, was a tax that a purchaser of the goods, if any, would pay and then pass off the additional cost to the consumer, i.e. we poor saps.
With all that left unsaid, I am concerned that the Debate will not move the needle enough to ensure election in the Electoral College.