Well, like some of you (and Taylor Swift), I watched the debate.
I don't usually watch presidential debates. I didn't watch the Biden/Trump debate until I saw some parts of it after the news on it broke. But usually it strikes me as a waste of time to watch debates. Last night was definitely an exception, it was fascinating. Partly it was fascinating to see how well Harris executed. There was a lot she was trying to manage, reactions to lies, staying on message, and keeping Trump off balance. She handled all of it very well. The only moment I really didn't like from her came at the very beginning, where she sidestepped the question of whether people are better off today than four years ago. It seemed she was a touch nervous right in the first few seconds (rightly so, the world is on the line here), and she just went to her prep. However, it would have been easy to say something like "four years ago Trump was getting covid and spreading election lies. Four years ago we didn't have a vaccine and the news was worried about economic collapse". Whatever, the details aren't as important as how easy the ramp was to take to answer the question and dovetail into policy - that could have been the prep. Instead she went straight into policy without acknowledging the question. Trump dodged the question as well (as John Stewart pointed out). Other than that one picky bit of criticism for her, I thought she was quite excellent. She was particularly excellent, and brutal, on abortion. She also effectively derailed discussions of Afghanistan with discussion of Trump inviting the Taliban to camp david.
Trump, on the otherhand, came off defensive, angry, and sometimes incoherent. His train of thought is hard to follow, because it swerves mid-sentence so many times. There were several times when I was wondering what the hell he was even talking about. As
@Famine pointed out, Trump tried some insane claims about abortion after birth and Haitians eating pets. Harris handled that with reaction expressions perfectly, she barely even needed to comment on it substantively other than to just explain that she already told us he was going to lie. His lies, having been predicted at the start, end up reinforcing her instead of putting her on the defensive. This was obviously part of the strategy and she was executing. I don't think Trump came off presidential at all, he came off as an angry, somewhat deranged old man who makes stuff up. For some, that's probably comforting and exactly what they want to vote for. But I don't think it resonated with most people. His core message of "America has gone to hell" I think is a hard sell.
One thing I absolutely despised about the debate was the moderation. They let Trump run over them constantly, he got so many rebuttals he wasn't supposed to get, and I was wondering where the hell the mic mute buttons were. They asked him direct follow-up questions, calling him the president like, "Mr. President, the question was..." and then he would just go off on another rant because they gave him another opening. They'd remind him of the question and then two seconds later he'd be talking about whatever the hell he felt like talking about. I also felt they were too combative with him, though not as bad as he characterizes ("3 on 1"), but they took his bait far more readily than Harris, and showed poor restraint that ended up playing into his hands a bit. I thought they should have left some of it (not all) to Harris. I say not all because I have no problem with them addressing things like people eating cats or killing infants with direct fact checks instead of leaving it to Harris to try to fact check him.
Harris gets an A. ABC gets an F. Trump gets a D.
www.independent.co.uk
abcnews.go.com
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