Harris Played Trump Like a Big, Orange Fiddle

Kamala took charge and Donald took the bait. But how much will it matter?

Going into Tuesday night’s presidential debate in Philadelphia, Vice President Kamala Harris needed a win. The honeymoon she had enjoyed since replacing President Biden as the presumptive and now official Democratic nominee finally faded, and her momentum stalled. The polls tightened into a dead heat with former President Donald Trump. Harris needed more than a draw. To overcome the electoral college advantage that allows Republicans to win close elections with a minority of the votes, she needed distance, breathing room, and a decisive victory.

Harris effortlessly passed the first hurdle of being better than Biden. She strung together coherent thoughts in a clear voice and didn’t look like a reanimated cadaver. In the sad state of affairs that is US politics, this depressingly low bar can no longer be taken for granted. Both candidates started strong out of the gate, hammering practiced talking points and attacking their opponents with vigor. Trump once again initially displayed the discipline and restraint he’d shown against Biden in June. Each candidate said the other had no plan to address the problems facing the country. Each excoriated the other’s record, and gave dire warnings about the harms their opponent would cause if elected. But the stalemate didn’t last long.

Soon into the contest, Kamala Harris got under Donald Trump’s skin. Over and over, she slammed Trump on every one of his insecurities and sore spots. Harris accused Trump of selling out the US out to China by helping them modernize and by praising Xi Jinping while the virus his government likely had a role in spawning spread in a global pandemic. She brought up the fact that Trump pulled strings to kill bipartisan immigration reform so he’d have it as an issue to run on. She said people leave Trump rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom, and mentioned that everyone who’s ever worked with Trump hates him. She took aim at his wealth, saying, “Not everyone got handed 400 million dollars on a silver platter and then filed bankruptcy six times.” She lambasted his image on the global stage, saying that world leaders think he’s a “disgrace”, that authoritarian regimes and strongmen can “manipulate” him “with flattery and favors”, and that Vladimir Putin would “eat” him “for lunch.”

And every time, without fail, Trump bit hard and took the bait, going off-topic into angry and bizarre tangents that served only to call more attention to Harris’s attacks and Trump’s weaknesses. Trump ranted about caravans of escaped mental patients flooding over the border, claimed Harris buses paid actors to her rallies, and called her closet-MAGA and also a Marxist in the same sentence. He alleged that Tim Walz wants to guillotine newborns, asserted that Harris wants to perform trangender surgeries for illegal aliens in prison, and bellowed that “they’re eating the dogs” in Ohio. All the while, Kamala looked on at her handiwork with a radiant smile of pure delight.

Trump stepped on every rake she laid out, stumbled into every trap, and hung himself time and again. Trump was an instrument, and Harris played him all night like it was a recital. Harris mocked Trump, ridiculed him, laughed at him, roasted him, trolled him, bullied him, and, yes, at times lied about him.¹ She Trumped him. You could practically hear the cracking snap of a rubber glove as she administered dose after dose of Trump’s own medicine right back at him. She took away Trump’s greatest strength on the debate stage: the ability to make other people emotional without losing your own cool.

Throughout the debate, Trump’s discomfort was so evident that he repeatedly reverted to grumbling about Joe Biden. He persisted in his delusion that Biden stole the 2020 election and said “our elections are bad.” He loudly voiced his displeasure that he can no longer run against Biden (“They threw him out of the campaign like a dog”). He said that Biden hates Kamala Harris, spends all his time at the beach, and “doesn’t know he’s alive.” Trump suggested more than once that Harris leave the debate stage then and there in order to go back to the White House, wake Biden, and close the border. All that was missing was challenging her to a duel at high noon while claiming that 5G is turning the clouds gay.

At some point in the past five years, Kamala Harris learned how to debate. This was not the unremarkable candidate we saw skewered on stage in 2019 by Cruelloha de Vil. Somewhere along the way, Harris learned how to take a punch and figured out how to pivot. She developed the skill to expertly deflect her own weak points — immigration, policy flip-flops, the bungled Afghanistan withdrawal, etc. — back to her opponent in a way that leaves audiences remembering only Trump’s unhinged tirades. She learned that the best defense is a strong offense, and for 90 minutes, she launched a full-court press against Trump and penned him in.

This was not a debate about policy substance, although policy was discussed at times. It was a spectacle of contrasts. Her beaming smile versus his furrowed scowl. Her composure versus his agitated belligerence. Her respect for norms versus his disdain for them. Her message of finding common ground, universalist values, and future-oriented optimism versus his blustering doomerism — “We’re a failing nation, we’re a nation in serious decline. We're laughed at all over the world.” 

Republicans are already spinning the debate the way they spin every loss in the Trump era — by claiming that the contest was rigged and the other side cheated. Trump got harder questions, they say. Trump was fact-checked by the moderators, they say. Of course, Trump’s record has many more soft targets than Harris’s, and he told more outrageous lies than she did during the debate. When the mismatch reaches a certain level, forcing parity onto the situation smacks a little of equity and the equality of outcomes. Is it “fair” to treat an arsonist and a jaywalker the same? A question for the philosophers. In any event, blaming the refs is an incredibly weak move that only highlights Trump’s poor performance.

The larger question is, will any of this move the needle? In recent years, the effect of debates has gradually waned, however the 2024 race seems to be breaking this cycle. After all, the previous debate led to one of the candidates withdrawing from the race in an unprecedented shake-up. Needless to say, no one expects Trump to drop out after this debate, but to the narrow band of undecideds who determine almost every election, the rumble in Philly may very well make a difference.

See also: “How the Dems Got Their Groove Back”

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1. The “bloodbath” and “fine people on both sides” remarks critics often slam Trump for are taken out of context, as the complete quotes make clear.