Harris Introduces Herself – By Eviscerating Trump
Originally published by Christopher Cadelago and Eli Stokols for Politico
Until Tuesday, Donald Trump spent much of the campaign running as an insurgent.
But in one night, Kamala Harris changed all that. After weeks of intense scrutiny on her own policy pivots over the years, the vice president deftly shifted the focus of the campaign to a referendum on Trump’s presidency.
As the candidates left the debate stage, the momentum Harris had generated after first replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee seemed to be cresting again. Her campaign manager announced she was ready for another debate with Trump, who himself plodded into the spin room in Philadelphia in an effort to shift the unfavorable post-debate narrative that saw even Fox News hosts declare Harris the winner.
But Trump, who insisted to Fox News’ conservative commentator and sometimes sounding board Sean Hannity that it was his best debate ever because it was “three on one,” with the moderators helping Harris, declined repeatedly to commit to debating her a second time.
“We’ll think about that,” he said.
In a contest where the nominees are battling for the mantle of change-agent, Harris’ precise re-framing of the race around Trump’s record — and not her own — could be the lasting impact of the evening. The exchanges — which at times recalled Hillary Clinton’s most effective moments in her debates with Trump in 2016 — allowed Harris to take viewers down a technicolor memory lane of some of the low points in his White House, while putting some distance between herself and the sitting president and escaping a more thorough examination of her own record.
Harris, a former prosecutor, put Trump on the defensive by brutally and methodically laying waste to his record, setting traps on everything from his handling of coronavirus to abortion, tariffs, immigration, China, national security and America’s standing in the world.
Trump stepped into every one of them, while she stared back at him in ABC News’ two-shots: She appeared befuddled and incensed by his attempts to explain himself. She laughed at Trump, and said he was the source of constant ridicule by other leaders, recalling his embarrassing episode at the United Nations.
“I have talked with military leaders,” she said, turning toward Trump, “some of whom work with you, and they say, ‘You’re a disgrace.’”
Harris’ campaign, which claimed that its own focus group of undecided voters responded enthusiastically to several of the vice president’s comments, insisted that she remains “the underdog” in the race but suggested her performance could lift her.
“I do believe that there were persuadable voters out there who will take a second look and who are far more open to her because she did so well and she was presidential and the contrast was clear,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), one of more than a dozen surrogates the Harris campaign sent into the spin room.
Yet for all the post-debate enthusiasm in Harris’ camp over her handling of Trump, most analysts doubt that the GOP nominee’s support would dip all that much. Although she is far less of a known commodity than Trump, Harris’ strategy of mercilessly attacking the former president left her less time to define her own candidacy — or to rebut criticism of her past calls for a ban on fracking, the Biden administration’s economic record and Trump’s caricature of her as a wild-eyed liberal who, as he said at one point, “wants to do transgender operations on illegal immigrants in prison.”
“I think Donald Trump comes out no weaker, no stronger from this debate,” said Vivek Ramaswamy, who sought the GOP nomination himself before endorsing Trump. “I’d say the same for Kamala Harris. No weaker, no stronger.”
But if some of Trump’s own backers could only go as far as to say the debate was a draw, several Republican operatives were more blunt about what was — like Trump’s first debate opposite Biden in June — a one-sided contest from start to finish.