Kamala Harris dodged, but Donald Trump descended into self parody at Tuesday’s debate | Opinion
In 90 minutes of debate, Donald Trump invoked the threat of a nuclear World War III and the kidnapping of baby kittens by Haitian immigrants looking for a tasty appetizer. He veered dizzily from stark portraits of reality to debunked delusions trafficked only in the dumbest corners of the internet. Vice President Kamala Harris sounded like a former prosecutor ready to be commander in chief. She is not as dumb as Trump and the comedians led us to believe.
The biggest laugh of the night wasn’t Trump’s feigned concern for feline Americans, but rather the moment he argued that after trying to overturn Obamacare 60 times — he’s the guy who, out of a overwhelming sense of responsibility, saved the Affordable Care Act. Sure, buddy.
But as much as Trump surrendered himself to being a parody of the character he plays on Truth Social and in “rallies” where attendance has thinned in recent months, Harris was notable for how weak she seemed.
If any competent Republican took the stage with her in Philadelphia’s Constitution Center, her patina of competence and inspiring hope for America’s future would have crumbled as fast as the credibility of Elon Musk after he recirculated cat-eating immigrant memes on X.
Her question-dodging was so obvious any decent high school debater would have had a field day holding her feet to the fire, something ABC’s journalists largely failed to do.
Asked about her shifting position on fracking, she took the opportunity to attack Trump’s views on Social Security. Asked whether the Harris-Biden administration should have gotten around to doing something about the border crisis before the election was looming she never came close to answering the question.
She used the cheesiest of rhetorical tricks, calling state laws that have restricted abortion since Roe v. Wade was overturned “Trump abortion bans,” as if the famously lazy and flip-floppery Trump could have done anything so arduous as organizing dozens of state legislatures to pass anything, let alone controversial bills on such a divisive issue.
A halfway coherent debater would have pointed out that for a candidate of the Democratic Party who makes a point of the fact that she’s running to save democracy, she sure has a dim view of legislatures, you know, democratically voting in the states that make up our republic.
Oh, Trump showed a few flashes of competence, as did ABC’s David Muir, who together managed to make clear that for all Harris’ claims that Trump’s tariff plans were a tax on the average American family, her administration did precious little to get rid of the ones he already put in place. The Harris-Biden trade policy looks remarkably like the trade policy Trump left behind 3 1/2 years ago.
But Trump was more comfortable citing third-rate autocrats like Hungary’s Viktor Orban and Fox’s prime-time bloviator, Sean Hannity, as character witnesses — one most Americans have never heard of and the other most Americans don’t believe.
Trump never even brought up the vice president’s role in hiding the precipitous mental decline of President Joe Biden instead opting to turn a serious concern into a fact-free joke by saying, “We have a president who doesn’t even know he’s alive.”
I don’t think Biden knows much these days, but surely he knows more than Trump claims.
The Donald’s bungling let Harris be the biggest person on stage when everyone knows the tallest candidate tends to win in presidential races.
Among Harris’s best moments was her peroration on how racial differences mask our common aspirations. It sure sounded right.
And on Tuesday night, sounding right was enough.
David Mastio, a former editor and columnist for USA Today, is a regional editor for The Center Square and a regular Star Opinion correspondent. Follow him on X: @DavidMastio or email him at dmastio1@yahoo.com
