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Harris Trounces Trump with Help From ABC
What if a single debate could completely shift the momentum of a presidential election? Join me, Lucas Klein, on Real Clear as we dissect the showdown between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump in what might be the only presidential debate of 2024. Harris's resonated with Gen Z, millennials, and millennial women, potentially turning the race into a dead heat. Meanwhile, Trump's lack of focus and meandering responses left him struggling to present a coherent strategy. Could this be the game-changing moment Harris needed?
David Muir and Linsey Davis from ABC were horrific and assisted one party in what was in effect a 3 on 1 debate between ABC/Harris vs Trump. From unchallenged statements by Harris to Trump's scrutinized comments, we break down the moments that may have tipped the balance. Plus, hear our critical take on Trump's strategic missteps and the uphill battle his campaign now faces. Don't forget to share your thoughts on realclearpodcastcom!
And hello again, folks. I'm coming to you here on Real Clear, your host, lucas Klein, to review the first and probably only presidential debate of 2024. After tonight's performance, the Harris campaign is likely going to deny requests to have a second debate and the Trump campaign better succeed in getting another one because they dropped the ball. Oh boy did I'd like to encourage you to send this episode to other people. They dropped the ball. Oh boy did I'd like to encourage you to send this episode to other people.
Speaker 1:I don't do any marketing and that's why not enough people have listened to my review weeks ago where I said President Donald Trump does not have a plan to take on Harris in a debate. I knew this. And yet the only people who gain a voice in America right now are the shills on public media, on the cable news stations and so forth, and they claim variously that, oh, trump is going to trounce Harris, and so on and so forth, or they claim that Harris is going to trounce Trump. Well, neither of them have cogent reasons for believing what they believe. But I knew that, given the dynamics at play, that Trump was not going to be well prepared for Harris. She needed to come out tonight and make herself known, and she did. She didn't do particularly well in terms of content, but then again, politics is not about content, is it? The fundamental flaw that the Trump campaign made, as well as Trump himself made, was that they did not stick to a serious game plan. There were many instances through the evening where Harris was looking at Trump with that obviously scripted, programmed glance toward him, as if to say oh Donald, aren't you silly and pathetic? And unlike Biden, where he just came across as demented and weird, when he tried to do that, harris made it work. Now listen to me when I say made it work, I'm not asking you to believe that it worked. I'm asking you to imagine what occurred in the perceptual processes of the American voting blocs. Remember the crucial voting blocs at play, the crucial voting blocks at play Gen Z, millennials and specifically millennial women. All of these blocks are emotionally vibrated into their motivation for voting.
Speaker 1:What do you think happened after tonight's debate? Trump had a fairly consistent delivery for him, but it was basic Trump. He meanders, he speaks in platitudes and so forth. He has a lot of good rejoinders in terms of content, but he also gets very distracted and dispersed, as I've always said. Again. I said this a few weeks ago he's not an effective debater. One of the greatest sleights of hand that has happened is that Trump himself has probably started to experience himself as though he's an effective debater because he's had to go up against Joe Biden for the last few years.
Speaker 1:The DNC completely outfoxed the Trump campaign this year, and this was actually brilliant politics. Listen to me here. The Trump campaign agreed to debate Joe Biden anywhere, anytime, and they agreed to a debate that was months earlier than has ever occurred in presidential politics. What this did was allow the Democrats to put forth their candidate so that he could be destroyed on stage, which would allow them the motivation and impetus to then opine to their masses and their political pundits to replace him. That was an operation to actually get Biden off the stage. Now, I was actually surprised by how effective Harris was, and I'm tying this into Biden's exodus by saying I think many people have been under the illusion over the last several years as to Trump's effectiveness as an orator, because the contrast to him has been Biden, who's been clearly demented.
Speaker 1:Harris was well prepared tonight. I did not expect this. I didn't think Trump was going to necessarily win. Remember, I thought he had no plan for Harris, but she was much more prepared than I imagined she would be. Usually she has these sort of blanks and she can't think and she gets odd and stilted. She didn't have any tonight, maybe one. She was prepared to a T. Her team prepared her exhaustively and, unlike the Biden team who tried to prepare him and it was going in one ear and out the other, it stayed with her and she stuck to the game plan. This probably relies on her prosecutorial history where she has to develop a strategy and go into a courtroom and convince a jury.
Speaker 1:Whether you're for Trump against Trump, for Harris against Harris, you have to admit after watching tonight's debate, she came out the victor. Now here's the rub. As I'd mentioned in my pre-debate analysis over essay today on realclearpodcastcom, trump has been underperforming in his typical polls throughout the years and yet he's at a 1% overage today, which means that, given that he was 5%, 6%, 7% trailing Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton in his previous bids, that likely means that he's up 5% 6% in today's tally. After tonight, we now have to enter into the formula. What is the equalization that Harris brought to the table? I think that that equalization is probably five points that big. You rarely get that from a debate performance, but tonight was so momentous. I think that she's probably going to get a five-point bump and that's going to make this election an absolute dead heat, and I mean a dead heat. 50-50 on the dot, whereas Trump previously had a 63% chance, according to Nate Silver, based on his modeling of winning the electoral college. I think that narrows down for Trump and his path to the White House is going to be very, very tenuous.
Speaker 1:Now, why is this going to occur? It's not again because as you look at the debate, you're swayed by the presentation. You have to remember the vital voting blocks and where they're located and who they are. We have a very impressionable younger generation and they're going to be looking at the emotional and visual presentation of almost any event. Don't forget we're in the meme culture. I actually saw an interview of people on one of the major news stations a few weeks ago and a woman, probably in her mid-20s, when asked about her rationale for who she's voting for, said that all the memes are supporting Kamala. No kidding. So let's go through the debate in more of a moment-by-moment manner.
Speaker 1:In the introduction, harris came out and she introduced herself. She said Kamala Harris and Trump. I thought that was so odd. And Trump went pleasure to see you, or something like that, and I thought that Harris was probably very nervous and I thought, okay, this is not going to go well for her Didn't end up that way.
Speaker 1:Before we get into a line-by-line analysis of this performance, I would like to make clear to you my greatest concern following this debate. It is not which candidate wins, it is not who has better content points, who has better visual and aesthetic points. My greatest concern was the fact that this was a three-on-one debate. This should scare you tremendously. Obviously made a decision with Muir and his sidekick there, david Muir and his sidekick that they were going to hold Donald Trump accountable Throughout the debate. They entered into the dialogue, fact-checked Trump along the way, didn't do that one time with Harris. They actually negated Trump and then pivoted to Harris. They assisted her in her debate against Trump.
Speaker 1:This should scare you. If you are a Harris supporter or a Trump supporter, that's irrelevant. We have a moment in time where a news station, a major news station, is an apparatchik of the state. This is scary. This represents that we have now an additional branch of government by effect. If you think Trump lies, he does. If you think Harris lies, she does. It is the purpose of a debate to allow the American public to stand in judgment of each person's ability to negate and countercheck the other. It's their jobs to do that against one another. It is not the job of the media to come in and do this for the American public. We are shifting into some very scary times, folks. This is the most important element of the evening to think about that we had an additional arm of the government essentially coming out and playing favorites in a presidential election.
Speaker 1:So from the introduction, kamala came out and introduced herself to Donald Trump. She shook his hand and said Kamala Harris, and I thought this is odd, she looks very nervous. That wore off and she found her own skin within about three or four minutes and her job tonight was to allow people to get a sense of her. Now, she didn't do so in a very detailed manner, but then again, this is politics. It's about managing presentations, which she did very well. She first talked about $50,000 tax deductions for small businesses, in fact, and this has been very vague on her website, so it's hard to know the details about this. As far as I can tell. This is about new businesses and also preferred businesses, and you can fill in the blank as to how you think that's going to occur.
Speaker 1:Trump had an introduction that was fairly strong and Kamala looked like she was wincing during it, as though she had been advised as much to do so, and I thought to myself she's been advised to take on a facial stance that Barack Obama used to have. She didn't do it quite as well, but she did it very dramatically and, I think, effectively. Trump came across as measured at first and I knew, and I imagine you knew, that he was going to come across as measured for the first half or maybe three quarters, but he would lose composure and become flapped towards the end. I couldn't tell at this point in the debate whether Kamala was effective or just more effective than Biden. Trump had a funny statement where he said her statements are very vague, they're like run, spot run, and I thought that that was pretty humorous.
Speaker 1:Then they went into tariffs. It is a fact that the Biden administration has kept the Trump tariffs in effect. This is something that was not acknowledged by David Muir and his sidekick. Again, they fact-checked Trump all throughout the night. Harris had an effective stance here. In response to the foreign tariffs, trump then said that she has no philosophy and she's tried to borrow his philosophy. This is actually one of his more cogent moments of the evening. He talked about her father as a Marxist professor. That's in fact true as far as I can tell, and it's something that really isn't talked about very much. They sure talked about, or Harris talked about, his father and so on, but there was no real mention of her own father, who was a Marxist professor at Stanford.
Speaker 1:They moved on to abortion, and this is an issue that I think the Republicans lose to Democrats on. Now I'm going to get into a little bit of commentary here, but look, whatever your position is on abortion, you have to admit in any broad political system you've got to pick your battles. This is not a battle that's going to win just based on the optics, and so it's very difficult to take this on. Trump did fairly well here Not great, but fairly well. Kamala tried to brand him as having Trump abortion bans. No-transcript, raised some hypothetical circumstances with people bleeding in a parking lot and so forth, and she says they don't want that. She was very effective. She was trying to appeal to an emotional state of desperate American citizens.
Speaker 1:Trump, up until this point, appeared very cool-headed, and that dissipated eventually, but he maintained his composure for a period of time. Harris was trying her best to goad him She'd obviously been advised to do that and he could have looked over at her throughout the night, by the way, and he could have said look, let's be adults here. Why don't you stop looking at me in that scripted the way? And he could have said look, let's be adults here. Why don't you stop looking at me in that scripted, absurd manner, and let's get down to debating the facts. Ron DeSantis would have done that, by the way, but Trump kept his head down and straight forward with that sort of karate chop movement that he uses, and he did not look very hmm, empathic. Let's say that, and that's important. You could be listening to the content, but you have to think to yourself what is this debate looking like? To crucial voting blocks? You have to admit it didn't look good for the Trump train.
Speaker 1:Harris continued on and she was obviously trying to elevate the women vote into focus, and this will work. By the way, she won in terms of women through the night, especially millennial women. Trump had a good moment where he said why don't you ask her Does she support having an abortion in the eighth or ninth month? And they didn't ask her. But again, several times through the evening they doubled back on Trump and actually engaged in debate against him. They moved on to the border and Harris goes on to talk about a Trump rally and how it's not very effective and people leave and so forth, and they got into a bit of superficial squabbling here and throughout the night. Trump was easily seduced by this and he would get back on track, but he would first meander over into Squabbleville and that's his narcissism coming through. It's what makes him ineffective.
Speaker 1:At this point in the debate her facial expressions started to look a little bit staged and I imagine people started to catch on if they were paying attention. They went into Springfield, ohio, and there's been some stories about Haitian immigrants collecting pets and eating pets and eating ducks out of public ponds and so forth. I don't know if this is true. It's an issue of national contention right now. As far as I can tell, based on some public appearances at a city planning event. You can find it on YouTube.
Speaker 1:What is striking here again is that David Muir stepped in and said Mr President, just to be clear, there's no evidence of that and so on and so forth. How does David Muir know? And David Muir said the city planner has said that there's no evidence of this and that and the other. Oh, I'm sorry, david, number one, I didn't know that you were running for president. And number two, so you're going to include the city planner as being a completely objective, nonpartisan source of evidence. Thanks, david Muir. I appreciate that David Muir should have lost anybody's support in his moderating any future debate of significance. That man should be run out of news right now.
Speaker 1:This was the most stunning gang pile I've ever seen in presidential politics. And again, this has nothing to do with who you support. This has to do with an additional branch of government forming. They moved on to deportation and crime and so forth. And again David Muir jumped in and said Mr President, as you know, the FBI says that crime is actually going down and so on and so forth. He's debating the presidential candidate from the Republican Party Completely unbelievable. And Trump responded appropriately that this is because of FBI changes in crime statistics reporting. He's actually right about that. The DNC has been on their heels in saying that crime is going way down. Yeah, it's like as if you're saying crime went up 300%, not as if it's like you're saying, specifically, crime went up 300% in 2020, and now it's dipped 7%. Oh great. Okay, so now we're at 293%. I'm using those figures hyperbolically, but they're not far off.
Speaker 1:Harris was effective at continuing to say things like it's time to turn the page away from this sort of divisive politics and so forth. It was effective. She presented a positive message. When I say positive, I don't mean one that you would like. I mean positive in terms of valence, right. She presented, she posited into the space something new, something that was constructed, whereas Trump got put on his heels and he operated in the negativistic stance, and that was. You've said this about me. Now I'm going to back tread and I'm going to defend against it Again.
Speaker 1:It was a three-on-one pileup, but he really didn't do well in predicting that that would be the case. Either his advisors didn't know that that was going to be the case or they did, and he didn't listen well in predicting that that would be the case. Either his advisors didn't know that that was going to be the case or they did, and he didn't listen to them. There was one moment where Harris was interrupting Trump, which is odd because the history of Trump debates goes that he's the interrupter and then he humorously said I'm talking now, please. Does that sound familiar? And he was referencing, I thought, rather comedically, the moment where she said to Mike Pence in the debate Mr President, I am speaking.
Speaker 1:They moved on to a peaceful transfer of power and Trump had his position that it was Nancy Pelosi and, as well as the officials, the mayor of DC who were responsible for safety and accepting the National Guard and so forth. Whether you believe that or not is irrelevant to my commentary here. This again was a moment where David Muir jumped in and he became a presidential contestant. Moments like these were mind-blowing. Right after this moment, they talked about Charlottesville, where Harris said of Trump that he said there were fine people on either side.
Speaker 1:Now, this is a moment that many of you who are left of center or just in the liberal camp who listen to me, you're not going to want to believe this, but it's true If you look back at the transcripts of what Trump actually said in Charlottesville. He did not say there are very fine people on either side, meaning that there are good neo-Nazis and so forth. He very obviously said if you read this that of the people who came to protest for the original issue that there were good people on both sides of that particular divide. That's what he said. It was taken way out of context and turned into this catastrophe known as his charlottesville comment. David muir did not fact check harris on that. It's just an unbelievable miscarriage of presidential debate moderation and again, if you're anti-trump, you should care about this as if it was occurring in the opposite direction, because if this kind of tradition starts to get going, literally the media will turn into an additional branch of government and anytime a station who has sympathies towards one party hosts a debate, they're going to be an apparatus of the party they favor. This is bad news for America.
Speaker 1:Now there was one moment that was more stunning than any other moment in the entire debate. They turned to 2020, and Muir asked Trump about January 6th and his comments and so forth, and Trump made mention of being sarcastic about losing the election and so on. David Muir then said I didn't detect any sarcasm and continued to debate the Republican presidential candidate. He relied a debate moderator, relied on his own subjective impression of a comment that one of the candidates made in the past and entered it into public opinion in a live debate. This is mind-blowing. At this point, trump finally went on the defense and he talked about a nation dying. Muir then pivots back to the election. Muir then pivots back to the election and he asks Harris, do you believe that Trump wanted this to happen? Talking about January 6th and so forth I mean talk about a softball question. It's like you're turning to one candidate and saying, hey, do you think that this guy's bad? What do you think she's going to say? No, I think he's very good.
Speaker 1:They moved on to Israel. Harris gave a really generic response. Trump came in very ineffectively and talked about how she hates Israel and talked about Israel not existing in a few years, and he was just, he meandered, he was hyperbolic and not effective, and this again was another moment where they did not fact check her. So Trump made the assertion that she did not meet with Benjamin Netanyahu when he came to testify, when he came to speak in Congress, and Muir and his sidekick did not then ask her whether she did. They would have if the positions were reversed. They moved on to Ukraine.
Speaker 1:Trump was rather compelling here and he did so in a calm manner. That was pretty good. There was actually a moment where Harris was interrupting him and he said quiet please, and he did so in a really calm way. That was fairly effective. But again, this moment not going to stand out to anybody because the overall tenor of the debate was Harris won bigly. Muir at one point asked Vice President Harris whether she had ever in fact talked to Putin. She completely evaded the question.
Speaker 1:Now, when Trump evaded the questions previously in the debate, they had called him on it and said he did not answer the question. They did not do this to her here. They let her just continue to pivot. Good media assist. They moved on to Afghanistan. Harris meandered here. She let her just continue to pivot. Good media assist. They moved on to Afghanistan. Harris meandered here. She didn't do well, she lost wording and Trump had an okay response. But at this point in the debate he probably started to lose energy and focus I mean, he is 78 after all and they both appeared to be losing momentum and losing coherence.
Speaker 1:There was a moment of another ABC assist where they asked about race and politics. Now there are so many ways that you could talk about race and politics in America in a meaningful fashion, you could bring the matter up in such a significant way. They didn't do that. They made the issue about Trump commenting on Harris not being black or being Indian and so forth. Essentially, he's made comments that he doesn't know what race she is because she acts like a chameleon, and that's really not a very contentious political point. By the way, it's one that Trump tends to make in the most inartful manner possible, and that's why I think he's one of the most ineffective politicians that we've had recently. You could make that point very well. You talk about look, vice President, harris is a political chameleon. You don't know what she is and she even uses race to this effect, and I think that's unfortunate because it's such a sensitive topic for America. Look, I just came up with that, folks. It doesn't take a genius to do it. Ron DeSantis would have done it. But Trump is a very ineffective debater and he failed here again. He had a very weird moment. He said I don't know. I don't know what she is. It's okay with me, I don't know. It was very odd. And then David Muir handed this over to Harris on a silver platter and she got to play the victim. This was a complete media assist. All they did was say let's talk about race. Kamala, do you think that Donald Trump is mean? That's essentially what they asked. And then she got to go on the defensive as a perceived victim.
Speaker 1:Trump, at some point here on the racial conversation, tried to pivot back to the economy. He did so somewhat effectively, but not poignantly. There were many times during this debate that Trump needed a Reagan-like moment where he should have been looking over, being engaged with his opponent and commenting on her. Why are you looking at me this way? Let's get back to the goals of this debate, and that is to debate the substance Again. He was not positivistic. They moved on to health care. Trump meandered. He didn't do really well. It was kind of a big nothing burger.
Speaker 1:This topic. Harris also has had some flip-flops on this matter and she was not called out very well by again Muir and his sidekick At this point in the debate. They both actually really started to slow down. They moved on to climate Again. I thought that that was a very vague topic. Nothing really happened and in the closing statements, this was the biggest moment where Trump failed. My goodness, did he fail? Harris came out strong Again. Listen, you might not like what she said. It's not about that. This is about political analysis. Take yourself away from your own convictions of what you like and what you don't like. Try to be a political analyst right now.
Speaker 1:She was very effective in her presentation. It may not have worked on you, but you've got to ask the question. Who did it work on? She came across as personable and at the end she had a positivistic message that she left people with. Trump, on the other hand, had nothing but reaction to Harris, which was the stupidest thing that you could do in a closing statement. The reason is twofold. Number one you're going to leave people with the impression that you are a critical person, that you are a negative person. Remember, people who don't smile as much as their opponent in presidential elections almost always lose. That's right. Minutes smiling versus minutes frowning actually predict success. So Harris did very well throughout the debate based on things like that, and she left America with at least some sort of basic position. I don't think she had many details involved there, but again, this is politics. It's not about what you think is the right position if you're doing debate analysis.
Speaker 1:Trump came in, so the second reason why he failed in his closing argument was being opposed to her and critical of her, presents her as though she's the authority that he's reacting against. He actually made himself beta to her. You realize that he made her alpha as the closing segment concluded. This was a major mistake. So, overall, trump failed big time. This was a catastrophic debate for him and Harris really overachieved. She exceeded expectations far beyond what many people imagined, even me, where I thought Trump was going to have a pretty difficult time with Harris. Unlike some other pundits, she even was more effective than I thought was going to be the case. And so there you have it, folks. We have Harris winning big time, we have an ABC News assist toward her in that endeavor and we have a Trump campaign that is going to struggle right now to make up for what really was an underwhelming and potentially catastrophic debate performance.
Speaker 1:Okay, comment on this post at realclearpodcastcom and tell all your friends about it. Again, I don't do marketing, everyone listening. Go ahead to realclearpodcastcom, comment on the post, let me know, let everyone know what you think. You can comment on this particular post for free. You can join for free and comment on this particular episode and get involved in the mix. I hope you'll do it. Okay, everybody, take care.