- Trump clearly lost the debate. He was not disciplined enough in his response to focus on pinning her to the bad record the Harris/Biden administration has. His rapid move to one critique after another, seemingly unrelated to the issue under discussion, did not lead to any hard hits. Rather it felt like a constant series of jabs, rather than any hard-hitting blow.
- Trump allowed himself to be baited into going down every dark alley the moderators (who were biased, with several “fact checks” on his comments) wanted (e.g. stolen election) and further, took us down simply dumb alleys—somebody claiming Fido was eaten by immigrants north of my university in Springfield. Even if true, which it could be, is that really the issue with immigration? Why not talk about the problem in a way that addresses the concerns of most Americans? Why not instead talk very specifically about the tragic murder of Laken Riley instead? Kamala Harris’ smile while he was talking about eating pets said all you needed to know.
- Readers at BATG know I’ve repeatedly skewered Mr. Trump for his proposed tariffs, which are really bad policy and would be a massive tax hike on working Americans. And sure enough the moderators grilled him on that right away, and he went whole hog on the beauty of tariffs and how they raised so much money and it came all on China. All untrue of course, but that’s not the problem. The problem is that this is not only a bad economic policy, but it was a policy proposal that won’t win him one more vote (the Trumpians that are attracted to tariffs are a relatively small number and they’re already with him) and yet more time is spent talking about tariff’s than on the exploding spending that Ms. Harris unleashed which sent inflation soaring.
- Ms. Harris was disciplined and kept her façade of being a moderate going. She was asked some good questions (e.g., would you allow any restrictions on abortion) but she successfully non-answered and was not pressed by the moderators, nor did Mr. Trump have the discipline to do it well (they want to kill live babies!). (EDIT UPDATE: yes he did press briefly about late term abortions, but I don’t think the way he did it was effective, especially since a moderator had already effectively called him a liar by saying no state allows killing live babies {which is true, but legal protections mandating care of surviving babies from the abortion process are not uniform, and in some cases have been stripped out such as what VP-candidate Walz did in Minnesota}).
- I just kept imagining how this would have been different if Nikki Haley (or Ron DeSantis) would have been on that stage instead of Mr. Trump. She would have eaten Ms. Harris for breakfast and there would have been no slithering away from her failed policies. Republicans would likely be heading for a landslide victory with coattails. But alas, they have Mr. Trump.
- We should never have expected Mr. Trump to be a true believer on life issues, and he continued his squishiness. Clearly Mr. Trump sees pro-lifers as transactional partners, it would be wise for that to be reciprocal: we should not hold any politician too tightly.
Debate Reflections
11 Sep 2024
Bert Wheeler
Jeff Haymond
Marc Clauson
Mark Caleb Smith
Tom Mach