I finally finished watching the debate and have had time to ponder it.
It strikes me that Harris is not a natural improv speaker. She is not the smooth orator of Obama or Walz or Shapiro. She struggled a bit to transition her thoughts. She relied too heavily on catch phrases.
However, where she did well was connecting with her audience when she could engage emotionally. Abortion was a great topic, hitting on the litany of personal stories of harm by the destruction of Roe and ensuing ill-considered anti-abortion legislation.
She also did well talking about her own childhood and connecting on how expensive things are.
I would have liked to see a bit less deflection, a bit more considered and reasoned answers that explained her positions.
But Harris picked a different strategy. And it wasn’t just about insulting Trump, it served a legitimate purpose.
Trump has been something of a bizarre case in debate history. His method has been from the early days in 2015 to run with ugly nicknames and insults. So far, that has worked all for him. He has managed to capture a lot of sort support with his targeted attacks. And anyone who has tried to respond in kind has suffered.
Even the candidates who haven’t stooped to his level have been tripped up by giving his shots too much credibility.
What Harris managed was a masterstroke in finding the one hidden path through the labyrinth. She took the debate to Trump in just the right way to wind him up and push his buttons.
That had a couple of key strategic wins for her.
First, by playing the right topics, by responding to the question and then diverting to Trump with a pointed question or comment, it really put off his game. He couldn’t focus, as much as Trump can ever focus, on the issues that he could land points. She totally distracted him from any coherent criticism into raging fits. She got him wasting time on bragging and arguing over crowd size and not discussing inflation or the Afghanistan withdrawal.
Second, she showed his rants don’t phase her. She belittles him by dismissing him.
Third, and this is especially important, she showed how easily Trump can be manipulated. Sure, she did it with disdain instead of flattery, and got hostility instead of compliance, but she demonstrated her point which she do poignantly summed up about how Putin would eat him for lunch.
What she accomplished was to turn the tables. You know how there was rightwing talk about how weak she was? The weak with foreign leaders, weak with generals in the Situation Room? Well this just showed she is not an indecisive weak person who will be walked all over.
That was the ultimate value of this strategy. Anyone who tries to claim she cannot be strong, that she will be a pushover, just had that demonstrably disproven.
So the wins are
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Trump is unhinged and shouldn’t be allowed in control again.
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Trump is old and should be pitied, not praised.
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Harris is smart.
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Harris is no pushover.
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Harris has a positive plan to help Americans, Trump only has grievances and revenge.
Also considered that this format has stopped being a platform for sharing big ideas, or especially reasoned explanations for behaviors and changing positions. Those just set up soundbite and meme fodder to be used against you.
My hope is that she can get some help with practicing more natural responses. Then she will take on some more interviews, where she will take on more nuanced answers to those questions about changing political positions. How things went wrong with Afghanistan. Why the high inflation is not her fault and why her economic plan will get prices down and wages up.