A Very Different Debate
Donald Trump fared considerably worse against a cogent opponent.
On June 27, former President Donald Trump’s nonsensical debate ramblings were overshadowed by an epic meltdown by his successor so bad that the latter was forced to exit the race. Last night, the contrast with a considerably younger, sharper opponent highlighted how little he had to say and how bizarre much of it was. Harris dodged questions about the Biden administration’s record all night, seeking and largely succeeding in making the discussion all about Trump.
WaPo (“Harris crisply attacks Trump in debate; he retorts with fiery rhetoric“):
Vice President Kamala Harris made a sharp, fiery case against Republican nominee Donald Trump during a freewheeling debate Tuesday, blasting the former president’s character and preoccupation with himself while pressing him on issues including abortion, democracy and foreign policy.
Trump used the head-to-head event to attack Harris as a “Marxist” masquerading as a moderate and repeatedly turned the subject back to the U.S. southern border — an issue where polls show voters trust him more than Harris — often straying from the facts to embrace debunked conspiracy theories about immigration and the 2020 election.
Both sides went into their first debate, hosted by ABC in Philadelphia, spoiling for a fight after several weeks of attacking one another on the campaign trail, and they wasted little time launching into harsh attacks. Harris’s barbs landed crisply, while Trump often veered off-message in response to her attempts to bait him on sensitive topics like the size of his rally crowds, his 2020 election loss and his admiration for strongmen.
“In this debate tonight, you’re going to hear from the same old tired playbook, a bunch of lies, grievances and name-calling,” Harris said early in the debate, one of several times that she turned to address viewers rather than her opponent. A few minutes later, she said, “Donald Trump actually has no plan for you, because he is more interested in defending himself than he is in looking out for you.”
Trump dismissed the remark as “just a sound bite” and went on to accuse Harris of misleading the public about her positions.
“Everything that she believed three years ago and four years ago is out the window — she’s going to my philosophy now,” Trump said. “In fact, I was going to send her a MAGA hat. She’s going to my philosophy. But if she ever got elected, she’d change it and it will be the end of our country.”
Harris was able to deliver the Democratic case against Trump — that he is self-involved, unfit and consumed with his own interests — in a way that President Joe Biden struggled badly to do in the last debate, a little over two months ago. Her performance, and Trump’s often-frustrated reaction, underscored how much the dynamics of race have changed since Biden stepped aside.
Harris seemed to regularly get under the former president’s skin, sometimes prompting angry or meandering responses. He accused the vice president and the Biden administration of being responsible for inflation, high crime and illegal immigration, but he also went on tangents, such as repeating baseless assertions.
NYT (“In Debate With Trump, Harris’s Expressions Were a Weapon“):
She turned to him with an arched brow. A quiet sigh. A hand on her chin. A laugh. A pitiful glance. A dismissive shake of her head.
From the opening moments of her first debate against Donald J. Trump, Kamala Harris craftily exploited her opponent’s biggest weakness.
Not his record. Not his divisive policies. Not his history of inflammatory statements.
Instead, she took aim at a far more primal part of him: his ego.
At his rallies, on his sycophantic social media network and surrounded by flatterers at Mar-a-Lago, Mr. Trump is unquestioned, unchallenged and never ever mocked.
That changed over the course of 90 minutes in Philadelphia on Tuesday, when the woman who had never before met him succeeded, bit by bit, in puncturing his comfortable cocoon and triggering his annoyance and anger.
Ms. Harris questioned the size and loyalty of the crowds at his rallies. She said world leaders call him a “disgrace.” And she claimed his fortune was built by his father, recasting a business mogul who proudly boasts of being a self-made man as just another nepotism baby.
Then she stood by and watched, as Mr. Trump did himself a whole lot of damage.
In answer after answer, the former president reminded Americans of his role in so much of what many would rather forget: the deadly and devastating pandemic, his refusal to accept the results of the 2020 election, a bloody siege on the U.S. Capitol and the fall of Roe v. Wade. He lingered on his criminal charges and praised Viktor Orban, the strongman leader of Hungary. He defended a false claim that migrants in Ohio are eating their neighbors’ dogs and cats and recycled years-old anti-abortion attack lines that Democrats supported “execution after birth.”
In such a fractured and polarized country, it remains unclear how the lopsided debate may alter the 2024 presidential race. But the immediate reaction was telling: Mr. Trump led Republicans in attacking the moderators — the debate was “three-on-one,” he complained — while Democrats notched perhaps the most important endorsement of the election cycle with Taylor Swift.
WSJ (“Harris Baits Trump in Fiery Presidential Debate“):
Vice President Kamala Harris put former President Donald Trump on the defensive in their first presidential debate, provoking him over crowd sizes at his rallies and his felony convictions—a sign of how the race has been upended with her ascent to the top of the ticket.
The debate Tuesday, which was hosted by ABC News at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, came after weeks of bickering over debate rules, which were set before Harris became the nominee. The prior debate, in late June, resulted in President Biden’s exit from the race after his halting debate performance against Trump. Harris, 59, the first woman of color to lead a presidential ticket, presented a starker contrast on the debate stage with Trump, 78, than the octogenarian Biden did.
Trump attacked Harris for the Biden administration’s record on immigration and the economy, and she was also pressed by the moderators on the many issues she has reversed positions on since her unsuccessful campaign for the 2020 Democratic nomination.
The race was essentially tied heading into Tuesday night’s event, polls showed, and it didn’t appear that the debate would shake up the contest, though some Republicans worried afterward about Trump’s performance.
Unlike the Biden-Trump debate, this one began on a civilized note, with the vice president initiating a handshake with the former president. Their exchanges grew progressively more combative, with the candidates shaking their heads at each other’s answers. Trump at one point grew irritated when the vice president suggested that people leave his political rallies early out of boredom. He responded by attacking her rally turnout and touting his own, and by claiming that America is on the verge of World War III and its citizens are living in squalor under the Biden-Harris administration.
Trump, who at times meandered off topic, repeated an unfounded social-media claim—previously amplified by his running mate, Sen. JD Vance—that Haitian migrants are traveling to places like Springfield, Ohio, and “eating the dogs…They’re eating the pets of the people that live there and this is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.”
Harris from the start contrasted her economic agenda and middle-class upbringing with Trump’s, calling the former president’s proposal to raise tariffs a “Trump sales tax” and criticizing his plans to extend tax cuts for the wealthy.
“I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class and working people of America,” she said, adding: “Donald Trump actually has no plan for you, because he’s more interested in defending himself than he is in looking out for you.”
Later in the debate, Trump was asked about his repeated criticism of the Affordable Care Act and whether he had an alternative plan to offer. “I have a concept of a plan,” he said.
The former president painted a picture of a nation that has plunged into chaos and despair since he left office. He aggressively pinned Harris to the Biden-era migrant crisis, reiterating his unsupported claim that the administration is allowing people from prisons, mental institutions and “insane asylums” to enter the country illegally.
“They’re coming in, and they’re taking jobs that are occupied right now by African-Americans and Hispanics and also unions,” Trump asserted. “They’re going in violently. These are the people that she and Biden let into our country, and they’re destroying our country.”
The WSJ Editorial Board (“Trump Lets Harris Off the Debate Hook“) grudgingly concedes that Harris won the night.
Donald Trump and Kamala Harris debated each other with the skill, knowledge and dignity befitting a great democracy on Tuesday—well, at least they appeared on stage together. Americans were able to see the candidates their two parties have bequeathed for President, for better or (mostly) worse.
Ms. Harris, less well known than the former President, had the most to gain and our guess is she helped herself. She clearly won the debate, though not because she made a powerful case for her vision or the record of the last four years. Though she kept talking about her “plan” for the economy, she largely sailed along on the same unspecific promises about “the future” that she has since Democrats made her the nominee.
She won the debate because she came in with a strategy to taunt and goad Mr. Trump into diving down rabbit holes of personal grievance and vanity that left her policies and history largely untouched. He always takes the bait, and Ms. Harris set the trap so he spent much of the debate talking about the past, or about Joe Biden, or about immigrants eating pets, but not how he’d improve the lives of Americans in the next four years.
The Vice President had help from the ABC News moderators, who were clearly on her side. They fact-checked only Mr. Trump, several times, though Ms. Harris offered numerous whoppers—on Mr. Trump’s alleged support for Project 2025, Mr. Trump’s views on in-vitro fertilization, and that no American troops are in a combat zone overseas.
Tell that last one to the Americans killed by Iranian proxies in Jordan this year or the U.S. Navy commanders tasked with intercepting Houthi missiles in the Red Sea.
But Mr. Trump didn’t help himself because he let Ms. Harris put him on the defensive. We don’t have the transcript as we write this, but it’s safe to say he enjoyed talking about Mr. Biden more than he did Ms. Harris. That let the Veep keep saying she isn’t Joe Biden without having to explain how, or whether, she differs from Mr. Biden’s policies. Mr. Trump didn’t press the point.
He also fell into the trap of saying the last election was stolen, that the rioters on Jan. 6 were mistreated, and that the courts had ruled against him in 2020 on a “technicality.” Does any undecided voter worried about the price of groceries care?
We almost laughed out loud when Mr. Trump even fell into a debate about the size of his rallies and whether people leave early. All of this played into Ms. Harris’s hands as she portrayed the former President as a man of the past and asked voters to “turn the page.” She took the mantle of the “change” candidate, though she has been in power for the last three and a half years.
Mr. Trump also let Ms. Harris off the hook time and again on her policy views. One of his weaknesses is that he can rarely marshal policy details or arguments that explain an issue beyond a slogan. He resorts instead to over-the-top claims like she’s a Marxist, or the “worst Vice President in history.” He didn’t even say she wants to raise taxes by $5 trillion, which happens to be true.
If Mr. Trump won on any topic, it might have been foreign policy, where he contrasted as he always does the current world disorder with the relative peace of his four years. Ms. Harris didn’t offer much more than Biden Administration talking points.
Whether any of this will be decisive for swing voters, we don’t know. The electorate is closely divided, and most voters already have a firm view of Mr. Trump. The wild card is whether Ms. Harris made a strong enough impression to persuade the undecided that she is worth a risk. If she did, she will owe her success to Mr. Trump’s lack of preparation and discipline.
But, of course, lack of preparation and discipline are hallmarks of who Trump is. They characterized his term as President and would almost certainly do so again in a second term.
Where I absolutely agree with the WSJ gang is that Trump missed easy chances to score points. For example, the opening question was:
Vice President Harris, you and President [Biden] were elected four years ago and your opponent on the stage here tonight often asks his supporters, are you better off than you were four years ago? When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?
She dodged that question entirely, going into her “middle-class kid” schtick and shifting to her own policy proposals:
Because here’s the thing. We know that we have a shortage of homes and housing, and the cost of housing is too expensive for far too many people. We know that young families need support to raise their children.
The obvious retort here was that the Biden-Harris administration has had four years to address that problem and that, by any reasonble measure, things are worse on this front than they were when Trump left office. Rents are way up. Mortgage interest rates are through the roof. Grocery prices have skyrocketed.
That was obvious to me in real time despite zero debate prep. But, instead, he took the debate on her nonsense about a “Trump Sales Tax” and missed his opportunity.
Harris clearly came in to the debate seeking to exploit Trump’s ego and self-absorption and he regularly fell into the predictable traps. Because that’s who he is.
From what I’ve read, the Fox News spin is revealing: they concede it was a bad night for their boy, but don’t give Harris the credit, instead blaming it on the moderators.
This could actually be a really strong point for Harris. The Biden DOJ is currently investigating landlords for colluding to fix prices. If Trump were to be President again, do you honestly think he would let that investigation continue? Or would he favor himself and his fellow landlords over the working people?
Really?? you think it is nonsense? Voluntary tariffs that benefit the US treasury (we gained billions), that were paid for by consumers in the form of increased prices…… that is a hidden sales tax.
Did a post game with my brother and we agreed that you have to go back to ‘92 for a good policy debate. Harris had one job, make herself look good for the public and get Trump to let his freak flag fly so to speak. She did that. He was not ready for someone good at debating. But then, all he is good at is being a bully.
Had this been a prize fight the ref would have stopped it half an hour in. She beat the living shit out of him. He never laid a glove on her. She didn’t break a sweat.
I’m curious about the next 2-3 days. In the past when Trump has suffered a public humiliation he has dropped out of public sight while he sulks in one of his residences. This goes back to his many bankruptcies, the cancellation of “The Apprentice” due to low ratings, etc. Not a wise thing to do with so little time left, so let’s see if his advisors can get him out there.
@Bobert: For one thing, she didn’t actually explain it so the average viewer will have no idea what the hell she’s talking about. For another, whatever the merits of tariffs–and I tend to be against them—the Biden administration kept Trump’s in place and doubled down, especially in the tech and energy sectors.
@James Joyner:
It’s not Kamala’s job to explain Trump’s proposal. The average viewer will take away that Trump would raise the cost of imported goods. And that will be the truth. Right?
Harris seemed normal. Wrong on a lot of stuff but normal. Trump seemed unhinged. In a functioning democracy, that would mean Harris had a ten point lead but half the country prefers unhinged demagoguery so we’re going to have a nail-biter in November.
While I largely agree with Michael, I think she missed a moment when Trump said about healthcare that he had “a concept of a plan,” I wanted her to say, “you had 4 years in office to make a plan and you have had another 3 and a half to get your project 2024 buddies to write it down. What the hell are you doing?”
As to fact checking being translated as, “the moderators were against Trump,” they were against Trump in the same manner that prosecutors were against Trump simply because he committed crimes. Don’t spew bullsh*t and you won’t get fact checked….don’t conspire to upend an election and don’t steal classified documents and you won’t get prosecuted. Trump’s derangement was on full display. Especially his childish refusal to believe that he could get more votes in 2020 than he did in 2016 and still lose the election. More people voted in 2020…DUH!
Maybe because there is no debate on policy to be had with Trump.
Trump got a question on the Congressional GOP killing off of the border bill on his insistence. He started rambling about crowd sizes and Haitians eating pets.
And Harris should have gone into policy? How did that work out for Biden? Biden didn’t just lose the first debate because of a raspy voice, but rather because he had no answer to a continuous flood of bullshit.
This election isn’t about policy (at all!), it’s about fitness to govern. Boohoo that Harris wanted it to be about that.
If the media/pundits don’t like it, they should have used the past eight years to paint an accurate rather than sanitized picture of Trump.
Gee, Trump said it was his “best debate ever.”
@Michael Reynolds: It wasn’t until her rebuttal to his rebuttal that I knew what the hell “Trump Sales Tax” was referring to. And, again, Biden kept the tariffs in place and doubled down on them.
I am so tired of gasbag pundits whining that Harris should spend her time laying out her policies in intimate details. Because I’ve been alive for five minutes, and I remember that when a Democratic candidate does exactly this, the gasbags started screaming about “laundry lists” and how nobody wants to hear all this boring technical stuff.
@Joe: One of the moderators did say (essentially) that: ” So tonight, nine years after you first started running, do you have a plan and can you tell us what it is?”
Once Kamala mentioned his crowds Trump lost what little grip he had. It was a very canny move, and paired nicely with the Obama dick size ad she ran earlier. If there’s a second debate he won’t do any better. He can’t. He is not intellectually or emotionally capable of study or preparation or message discipline. He never has been. He is not a smart man. He’s just an overstuffed garbage bag of rage, insecurity, greed, self-pity, hate and misogyny. The same can be said of MAGA as a whole: stupid, entitled, weak, dishonest hypocrites.
Speaking of which, where are Drew and JKB and Paul L?
@wr: I always remember a talking head confab during Hillary Clinton’s run, where they bemoaned how no one was talking about policy and that’s all the public wanted. At that very moment, HC had literally thousands of pages of white papers on her web site and I had never heard a single question about any of them. The “no policy” argument is meaningless boilerplate. The public isn’t interested (except for a tiny percentage) and pundits most certainly aren’t interested. If they had to actually spend time looking at policy proposals they would have to get off twitter and stop getting made up for their hot take on the next talking heads show, or working the phones to get the latest dirt on who said what about who to whom.
@Joe:
I have been surfing the web, it looks like “concept of a plan” has gone viral.
@James Joyner:
So, tariffs in place, Trump wants to raise them still further, and you have a problem with her criticizing that? Is it true or not that Trump wants to raise the cost of imports?
When a pol wants to raise income tax rates, do you justify it on the grounds that a predecessor didn’t lower them? Or is it not the case that raising tax rates from X to 2X is a discrete problem?
@James Joyner:
1. You are not the target audience. At all.
2. It doesn’t matter what it refers to. Only low-information voters are in play, and only the feels get through to them. Because America.
I get the sense that, while intellectually you understand what wins debates in the US at the moment, emotionally you still haven’t really come to grips with that. Hint: the fact that everything Trump said was a flagrant lie was NOT the main story, and nobody is shocked by that.
@wr: I actually thought Harris was getting a little Elizabeth Warren-sounding with her repeated statement, “I have a plan” and offering to discuss them. But no one else there was interested.
@Michael Reynolds: I’m saying that jumping into “Trump Sales Tax” without explaining what she was talking about made no sense. Here’s the entirety of the rollout of that:
It was just nonsensical.
@wr: I’m not whining about her lack of specificity. I’m saying she rather obviously dodged questions about the administration’s record and that Trump did nothing to capitalize on that.
@CSK:
He totally bashed her knuckles with his face.
@James Joyner:
I’m not seeing it like you. “Tariff” is meaningless to a large segment of the population. “Sales Tax” is not. A tariff is a bumper-shot sales tax. Going right to “sales tax” made it clear what was happening. If someone (Trump or the moderators) had challenged her on that she could have explained it in a couple of sentences, and had the chance to reiterate the impact on the working class. But given that no one challenged her she was smart not to overexplain. Debate responses aren’t white papers. They don’t have to contain every piece of relevant information.
@James Joyner:
Actually, in terms of explaining a tariff to the general public, a ‘Sales Tax’ is exactly the way to do it, because that’s pretty much what it is. You can argue it on the margin but it’s not wrong. The short term goal is to make foreign goods more expensive and ‘force’ American consumers to purchase and alternative proroduct, preferably made in America.
That’s the first Presidential debate I’ve watched in it’s entirety, and it was awesome.
James- He has claimed that he would put a 20% tariff on all imports. I suspect that she is calling it a sales tax because many people actually believe Trump’s claims that the tariffs will be paid by China and the rest of the world and not the US. I think calling it a sales tax actually better explains how it actually works. Not sure this debate was the time and place to go into basic economics and try to explain that US citizens actually pay the tariffs.
I think its a fair point that the Biden/Harris admin left in place the China tariffs but Trump is calling for a massive expansion, having even floated the idea that tariffs could replace the income tax IIRC.
Steve
@James Joyner:
I knew what she was talking about immediately.
As several commentators have already stated, not only calling tariffs Trump’s sale tax accurate but politically brilliant. As to comparing the economy today with four years ago, one only needs to look at the leading indicators. GDP is up, unemployment is down, wage growth is up, deficits are down, and rents have followed inflation, so yes the economy is doing better. Yes there are many individuals and regions that are not doing as well, but 1- that’s always the case; 2-you are spreading propaganda.
@Stormy Dragon: It would be great if the trump lickspittles at Fox and elsewhere choose to focus on how a tariff is technically not a sales tax. This is a losing issue for Trump and every time it is brought up it benefits Harris. But I doubt that will be their tack, for exactly that reason.
@James Joyner: Stop digging.
This isn’t “nonsensical”. The audience understands it as saying that Trump has a plan that will raises costs for middle class Americans by $4,000 a year. That is simple and straightforward.
Now, you may want to be pedantic and dispute whether it is fair to call a tariff a sales tax but the target audience doesn’t care about your pedantry.
@DrDaveT: Indeed in reading it seems that Ms Harris achieved a spin path that can help eat away at Trump and get him distracted from landing points on her weak areas (notably the economic, whatever special pleading and explaining from the Partisans, it is the weak area that needs to be off-set and mitigated, doesn’t matter if well-founded or correct…).
The cheer of the Partisans here may likely be overdone but she certainly managed to get reporters to be writing about Trump in ways that can’t hurt, and may help – the rambling, the non-control, the unfocus…. and the weakness on the abortion subject as described in accounts.
Now the game appears to be winning the Swing State free-float, to not be the extreme choice.
In meantime, inflation metrics on several fronts seem now to ensure rate cut at next Fed cmte meeting which should help mitigate the economic sentiments in stress in the month in lead up.
A knife-edge moment, with strong dangerous chance of the Orange coming back but there is yet some decent chance of preventing that.
@SKI!: I would say as a proper economist (so my graduate degree says at least) on one hand yes, it was technically incorrect, but talking economist and egg-head talk in these contexts is loser – using simplified and indeed not technically spot on I can’t criticise. As a branding it seems quite scrumptious play at forcing into defence and undercutting (it is hardly as if Trump et al speak economically coherently about tariffs, so frankly playing tea-party primness is self-handicapping)
The debate was not intended to give voters rational arguments about policy decisions. They are intended to provide an emotional basis to sway people. The first debates, Nixon-Kennedy, were not decided because of cool-headed rationality. Nixon was a sweaty guy; Kennedy was cool. Nike doesn’t sell shoes based on repeated performance trials; it is cool to fly like Mike. Trump wasn’t laying out solutions. He was fomenting fears of the other. He appeals to the fearful. A calm rational answer doesn’t soothe the fearful. You have to break through to make people laugh at cat eating, sex fluidity, and tenth month abortions. Mission accomplished!
Nothing about American political debate would get a good score at an Oxford debate society, and it doesn’t matter.
I didn’t watch the debate – wedding rehearsal and dinner night with my son’s future in-laws over from Ireland – but from the clips/photos I’m seeing, Trump often could not bring himself to look at Harris but Harris did look most of the time at Trump.
I spoke to a friend this morning who did watch and when I asked him about this he pointed out that it made Trump look beta and “cuck-ish” and Harris look alpha. “She made him her b***ch and he knew it.”
@Michael Reynolds:
Probably waiting until they have consumed enough right-wing media spin to regurgitate it.
Or, frankly, they might be smart enough to realize that they can’t polish that particular turd (especially given their past predictions about how Trump and Harris would perform) or find a big enough squirrel to gish gallop with. So my bet is they will conveniently stop commenting for a bit.
And BTW, who identifies Victor Orban as a character reference? Outside of Tucker Carlson world, that is just insane. It was also another case of him making Harris’s case for her.
@James Joyner:
First, as I’ve read more on the topic, I find myself agreeing with this take. That said, I need to correct this. Yes, Biden has continued some of the Trump tariffs, in particular on materials. However, he has also let other ones run out, and that has correlated with the price of some good coming down: https://x.com/SteveRattner/status/1833675296626639281
I also would have preferred that rather than not renewing those tarriffs, Biden had eliminated them outright.
@Matt Bernius:
Anyone want to place a bet? I’ll give odds that the official trumper take will be that Harris wasn’t really very good, it was just that the moderators ganged up on Trump, ala Fox News last night. Any takers?
@Joe:
The press and the intertubes seem to be taking care of that. “Concepts of a plan” seems to be a meme this morning.
@James Joyner:
I’m not fond of tariffs and I dislike the wishlist campaigning: no tax on tips, subsidies for new housing (looking at construction here and around the country I find it hard to believe we have a shortage), we’ll drive down prices (no we won’t), etc. But. Remember your history.
The South seceded over slavery, pure and simple. But they added tariffs to their grievance list. The tariffs were the Hamiltonian ideas that became the “American System”, tariff’s on manufactured goods with the money used for “internal improvements” (infrastructure). For Southern agriculturalists, tariffs were a sales tax used to finance canals elsewhere. And it worked. Behind the tariff walls we stole Britain’s technology and developed dominant industries.
Tariffs, on a global scale and over long time periods, are bad for everyone. Short term and targeted, tariffs can protect developing energy technology and chip making critical to defense. I don’t want to defend Biden’s tariffs in detail, but in principle they can work. A Trumpian ten percent tariff on everything, not so much.
@James Joyner:
James – You so desperately want to keep carrying the water of the GOP.
Let it go. The GOP died. There is only
ZuulTrump.@gVOR10:
“concepts of a plan“
@gVOR10:
As an economists observation, while yes, but in the end other tools rather than tariffs are more efficient (operationally and cost wise) and superior for the evoked goal (fiscal [subsidies] or tax incentives or both) particularly as there is a long econometric data-set that in modern era tarriffs are really a poor tool (recognising improved institutional and legal tools that render 19th c approaches outdated). Noting that while not a huge fan of industrial policy (as rather too easily done wrong and wastefully) it can have its place (and in response to China notably which clearly is not in Fair Play). I would vastly prefer (but here am recognising I am the world of dreaming…) that US/North America and EU develop some common policy e.g. in Renewable / Green Economy since Chinese state gaming is just not real level playing fiedl together while having EU and USA/NAFTA in trade fight is handing advantage to China…
Otherwise I am hoping the post-Spin and Democratic effort now after this pleasing result doesn’t end up too online, too Uni Audience and Democratic base oriented. But Ms Harris has shown everyone was rather mis-underestimating her. No matter what happens, Democrats should be happy that they got her to give them a chance. I certainly am, you have to stop the Orange Cretin.
Serious proposal: let’s go back to debates sponsored by a neutral party and aired on multiple networks. I grew up with The League of Women Voters hosting every presidential debate. Once the networks got it and turned it into money maker it has gone downhill.
@Michael Reynolds:
Waiting at home for Gateway Pundit and OAN to publish the new talking points list?
@DrDaveT: I also think he’s being deliberately obtuse. I didn’t even watch the debate and can still manage to figure out what “Trump Sales Tax” means.
This is another one of those days when I marvel at what an amazing Republican Dr. Joyner is. Less amazing as the defections mount, but still amazing if only for being on the leading edge.
@MarkedMan: I was already on the observations you’re making yesterday before the debate started. It’s not exactly rocket surgery. What you need to hope for is that the targets of the debate (as opposed to the choirs rooting in the stands) don’t get distracted by SOP/Debate Response 101.
@gVOR10:
Walking home tonight when I get of the light rail and seeing the doorways and alcoves filled with sleepers and the tents, it won’t be hard for me to believe we have a shortage at all. But I live downtown and where you live matters relative to what you see. Seeing this phenomenon day in and day out,* also helps me understand how people can be so brainless and ridiculous as to think that the economy isn’t “wonderful” for everyone.
*And sadly, no, they aren’t all “tweekers.” I wish they were; there’d be a significantly less serious unhoused residents problem.
With regard to the phrase “Trump Sales Tax”, I think that they intend to use this throughout the campaign, and decided to roll it out during the debate, so he wouldn’t be ready for it. And this makes it better to not explain it up front, to just use it. To befuddle, first and foremost, Trump.
Trump will never ask, “what are you talking about?” because it makes him look subordinate or something. So the phrase might go unchallenged.
While yes, I would prefer discussions of policy where terms are all defined and everyone is polite, that ain’t what we are doing here. One side has a guy who contends that people are eating cats and dogs in Illinois.
I find it noteworthy that he said Illinois, not California.
@Jay L Gischer: Think its Springfield, Ohio they are claiming has the problem.
@MarkedMan: One very seriously doubts that such debates are money makers. Really.
I rather suspect you are erecting a symptom of the disease as the disease (being the fragmentation of the media market). That historical market is gone.
El Weirdo Felon won so bigly, that stock in his data mining company went down another 17% today.
Nothing indicates tremendous, beautiful confidence like a whopping drop in price. Manypeoplesaythat El Weirdo has the fastest dropping stock in history. Very bigly, cromulent drops.
And since Dr Joyner is addressing “nonsense”. I would dearly love Trump to answer this question about NATO.
You keep saying “they have to pay” (their share), exactly who should be paid? If Belgium and Luxenberg want to “pay their share”, where should they send the check?
@Bobert: The truly funny part is that Putin has managed to accomplish what Trump couldn’t. France, Germany, et al, are now ramping up defense spending, and sending lots of materiel to Ukraine. “They don’t spend enough” is outdated. Putin convinced them to spend more.
@SKI!: Thanks for the update.
I’m still surprised they didn’t say this about California. They say all sorts of other things about the “hellhole”.
@gVOR10: About 10.5% of all housing is vacant meaning there’s about 15.1 million homes that are empty. Mostly because of investors spending billions buying up homes and rental properties. In 2022 investors accounted for about 30% of sales of single-family homes (up from 16% prior). In 2023 44% of single-family homes were purchased by investors…
What do you expect when you refuse to tax the rich properly. They are going to find ways to make even more billions and housing is traditionally considered an investment (for us poor people). They are also buying up mobile home parks and jacking up the rent because it’s not like people can move out (mobile homes don’t move well after sitting). Rental units in particular have been lucrative investments for several years now.
@James Joyner:
C’mon, now, Doc J. Even I knew she referred to Trump’s raised tariffs proposal. I refuse to believe a man of your intellectual caliber didn’t/couldn’t figure that out from the context of the conversation. Quit bullshytn us; it doesn’t become you.
@Matt: True, but most of “us poor people” don’t understand the difference between an “investment” and a “capital sink.” Back in the 80s, Andrew Tobias made the pithy observation that
Many of us have forgotten that in the real estate run up we’ve been engineering over the last 3 decades, or so.
@Stormy Dragon:
I’m telling you, Stormy, Doc J is gaslighting us with this type of bullshyt. This man is a professor at a military college. No way he doesn’t glean what she meant from the convo.
@James Joyner: “I’m not whining about her lack of specificity.”
Sorry, that comment about gasbags was absolutely not aimed at you, just following the thread of the discussion. You and your colleagues are among the least gasbaggy of those writing about politics and if you thought for a moment that I think that little of your writing or thinking, I humbly apologize.
“Trump Sales Tax” was right in line with the rhetorical work she did with “Trump Abortion Ban”: take something that lots of people don’t like (abortion bans; tax increases) and attach Trump’s name to it. I thought that was rather brilliant actually.
Why are things more expensive? Trump sales tax.
Why are women dying while trying to get reproductive health care? Trump abortion ban.
One thing I wanted to say:
While Trump fell for MOST of the baited traps set by Harris, there is one key one he did NOT.
Now you would think that was just push-back from Harris. But I think that it was her intent to have him say that HE TOO was a gun owner.
And then, he would have been f’ed. Because convicted felons can’t own a gun.
If he would have tripped that trap, we would be discussing his incarceration today.
OK… another deep thought:
If he can’t own a gun as a felon… How can he lead the combined armed forces of these United States? Wouldn’t he then own ALL those guns?
As president felon, he can’t own a gun, but has access to nuclear codes.
That’s just insane.
“Trump Sales Tax” was right in line with the rhetorical work she did with “Trump Abortion Ban”: take something that lots of people don’t like (abortion bans; tax increases) and attach Trump’s name to it. I thought that was rather brilliant actually.
Why are things more expensive? Trump sales tax.
Why are women dying while trying to get reproductive health care? Trump abortion ban.
See?
I didn’t see our resident trumpers around today. Did I miss them? Because I would have broken my soft rule about not wasting my time. I mean, to most of the commenters here, the Democratic Presidential Candidate resoundingly won the debate over some one we detest, Donald Trump. But to the racists and misogynists that make up Trumps base, a black woman totally owned their best boy. Black. Woman. How’s that sitting in their brains right about now?
Three quarters of his appeal to his base is that he says any racist or misogynist thing that pops into his head just because he feels like saying it. No one can push him around, he never apologizes, which makes them wet themselves with desire. But this 5’ 2” black woman walked all over him and had him sputtering. Trump knows he showed weakness, and showed it in the worst possible way. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.
@Matt: I hadn’t seen those numbers. Thanks. I can see the effects locally. There are four story apartment/condo buildings going up all over. The two new houses across the street are rental units (one’s been empty a couple months). There was a letter in the local paper from some guy who bought his dream house and now a venture capital outfit has bought two thirds of the units in his gated community, their employees hold a majority on the HOA, and they’re skimping on maintenance and improvements. Yet there seems to be a serious lack of affordable housing.
A few years ago the venture capital fad was car washes, which sprang up all over. Then it was medical practices. They seem to be buying up dental practices now. I hope we haven’t forgotten the 2008 collapse was driven by the “savings glut” seeking unrealistic returns.