…
She set a tone at the very start when she walked right into his space to shake his hand and made him almost pull back into himself in response. She was in charge and never stopped being in charge.
Harris also managed what neither Joe Biden nor Hillary Clinton nor any of the 2016 Republicans managed to do which is successfully bait Donald Trump and get under his skin. Within a few minutes Trump was visibly angry and not in a way that empowered him but in a way that made him lose focus, go down rabbit holes and generally go off onto damaging tangents. Spittle anger, not righteous anger, shall we say.
I’m disappointed a little in Harris. She’s letting him get away with the narrative that she hasn’t done anything in the last 4 years.
I really wanted her to turn to him on immigration and say his fucking wall was in that boarder bill and he scuttled it for political points, drop the mic and walk out.
She won overall, but she could of hit a couple of those rebuttals out of the park for a walk off homerun…they were singles instead.
She was only the VP, though. Her job is to do the things the President lets her do, and break up fights in the Senate. VPs simply don’t do that much. She could (and did) bring out the accomplishments of the Biden administration, but that just called attention to the fact that Biden had to drop out, so she could only do it sparingly.
Also, Donald “I have the concept of a plan, I’m not president” Trump probably shouldn’t be pushing that angle too hard
I know the below doesn’t quite work since Biden dropped out before 8y but doesn’t it benefit the party for the president to give some higher profile jobs to the VP so the VP can campaign on those after their 8 year run? Maybe they wait for the 2nd term to be more beneficial, but it’d seem like a good idea for both terms in case something like this happens.
Yes there were a couple of situations where she could have made him look like a huge idiot (more than normal), but she kind of dropped the ball IMO.
It’s probably easier to see from the outside, she’d have to be razor sharp to catch these opportunities real time.
Still she did well, and did catch him a few times, and made no serious mistakes.
But border security, healthcare and the idiot thing about emigrants eating pets, were all obvious chances.
We just have to hope enough voters know enough about the issues to see through Trumps lies and lack of policy.
When talking about Climate Change, I was wishing Harris would say something like “Trump is 79 years old and won’t be around long enough to see the worst effects of climate change so maybe that’s why he doesn’t care anything about it…”
When talking about international affairs, I was wishing Harris would say something like “Trump’s chaos is going to cause an explosion of nuclear proliferation, but Trump is 79 years old and won’t be around long enough to see the terrible problems he is going to leave us…”
Agreed. To me it seems like a mix of relying too much on her memorized prep and possibly a bit of the old Democrats “taking the high road” thing. She did well at baiting him, but less so at exploiting his openings I’d say.
It’s a fine line to walk, between drilling deep into each of his faults and failures and presenting herself as the capable adult in the room – especially when his lies per minute are so high, he’s just spouting a firehouse of bullshit, and they’re limited to 2 minute responses.
I think she did a fantastic job of baiting him into anger and incoherence without seeming petty, and delivering her points concisely. Trump is a challenge to debate, not because he’s good at it, but it’s like trying to wrestle a pig – his only strategy is to drag you into the mud with him.
Even when she was muted, she got her response across very effectively with her facial expressions of disbelief, astonishment, and incredulous amusement. Her reactions where she didn’t even speak are already becoming memes.