Consider the full magnitude of Kamala Harris' challenge coming into Tuesday's debate. She is half Black and half Indian in a predominantly white nation where they are in a growing funk about being reduced to less than a majority by 2042. Her opponent is an alpha male, Donald Trump, in a society that is more macho than any other “advanced” country.
Harris had a disastrous campaign for the Democratic nomination in 2020. She is remembered for her left-of-centre policies like universal health care and decriminalisation of illegal immigration, and for opposing fracking. She was the Vice-President - among the nation's most nondescript jobs - to a president who became deeply unpopular because of high inflation and botched immigration controls.
She did not go through the grind of nomination party primaries where her policies, postures and personality would get defined. She was catapulted into being the Domestic contender less than 100 days before election eve. She is not the leftist of 2020. She cannot position herself as the baton carrier of Biden's legacy because that would be electoral suicide. Her biggest problem is that people do not know enough about her or what she stands for.
Most Don't Know Who Kamala Really Is
She had a great debut at the August Democratic National Convention (DNC), but the NYT/Siena poll on the eve of the debate came as a damper. Almost a third of those polled said they do not know enough about her or her policies, compared to only 5% for Trump. Some 36% felt she is too “progressive” compared to 28% who felt Trump is too “conservative”. As many as 97% of those who voted for Trump in 2020 said they would vote for him again. His base of white non-college educated, elderly, rural and evangelicals is rock solid.
Going into the debate, it was the swing vote in the “Arjun eye” of both Trump and Harris. Some 18 million of the US's 161 million American voters are registered as “undecided”. Within them, it is estimated that the swing vote is 7% in seven states. Now observers have narrowed the swing vote down to 50,000 from five states.
For that narrow target audience - as much for anybody other than MAGA (Make America Great Again) bhakts - there is little doubt that Harris won the debate, hands down. In a consolidation of her convention profile, she came across as presidential, fully aware of the power and prestige of the office; as somebody who engages with policies and solutions, and wants to represent all Americans, including Republicans; somebody who values freedom in its widest sense, including woman's rights over their bodies; somebody who wants to lead Americans out of their recent fractious past into a future of opportunity.
Kamala Sprung A Surprise
She had become fully prepped by a team which, in a departure from Biden's lot, includes disillusioned ex-members of Trump's core team. She had her list of talking points and she made sure she ticked off all of them, irrespective of the questions asked. She made no effort to defend Biden's record on its weakest legacies but spiritedly defended the regime's record on healthcare and the NATO support for Ukraine. Her policy prescriptions were as nondescript — whatever does an “economy of opportunity mean? — as at the DNC, but she was at her passionate best on abortion.
Most importantly, she baited Trump repeatedly on all his pet peeves, so that the worst of him came out. This she did brilliantly from her opening statement, priming the audience to expect the “same old playbook and bunch of lies”. To her delight, Trump fell for every single bait she laid for him.
She said people left his rallies out of “boredom and exhaustion”; predictably, Trump thundered that his rallies are the “biggest ever”. She said the world's leaders she had met as V-P would laugh at Trump; at how easily he could be manipulated by flattery; that they call him a “disgrace”. He shouted into the mic how “strong” world leaders like Victor Urban of Hungary say that the world has gone to pieces after Trump; how the wars in Ukraine and Israel-Gaza would never have happened had be been President; how he would end the wars in “24 hours” by bashing the heads of all combatants the day he became the President-elect.
How Trump Missed Opportunities
Her coup de grace against Trump was on the results of the 2020 elections. In response to a question from the moderator, Trump repeated that he had not accepted that he had lost the last election. Harris latched on to the response, saying he had been “fired” by 81 million voters, and that his attempts at reviewing the vote had been turned down by over 60 courts. She stressed how his refusal to process the fact that he had indeed lost the election cast doubt on whether “this candidate standing to my right” had the cognitive ability to accept facts, and that the American people deserved something better from their Chief Executive.
So rattled was Trump that he barely nicked Harris on her vulnerabilities when he could have stuck a knife through her. He did repeat rants like “Biden was the worst President of the US and she was the worst Vice-President”, and he did nail the Biden administration on the chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan leaving behind $ 85 billion of fresh armaments. But he failed to pin her down on her several policy flip-flops, on the crisis of affordability in American families on the price of groceries, housing and healthcare, on the inability of the Biden administration to end the war in Gaza or to cripple Russia's economy because of the Ukraine invasion, or to prevent China from attaining superiority in strategic technologies.
On abortion, where he was on the defensive, he could have deeply wounded Harris by pointing out that women seeking abortion in Minnesota face no restriction on which pregnancy stage they opt for abortion at. In fact, Trump mentioned Tom Walz, the Minnesota governor and Harris's V-P nominee, as he began his answer on abortion, but he made only an elliptical reference to Walz and then lost his way. Instead, he alleged that Democrats were allowing unwanted babies to be “executed” after they were born, only to be corrected by the fact-checking moderators.
Shooting Himself In The Foot
Much as Harris predicted, Trump brought up immigration even when the question was not about that. He repeatedly ranted at the “millions and millions of criminals and insane lunatics” invading the country and went on to make the fantastic claim that this “invasion” would lead to WW-III.
In his first mention of immigration on the debate, he predictably repeated a lie that Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating cats and dogs of the people. Only, again, to be fact-checked by the moderator that town authorities had completely denied the story. The next day, the parents of the boy whose story had ostensibly led to the lie spread by the right-wing media and brought to national attention by a tweet from J.D. Vance asked the Republicans to back off.
Did Trump Underestimate Kamala?
No question, Harris got the debate she would have wanted in her dreams. Trump was either poorly prepared or, more likely, not prepared at all. A New York Post reporter, who has met him over the last 10 years, was shocked to learn at her latest meeting that Trump did not seem to know that Harris's upbringing had little to do with her Marxist-economist professor father. His staff confirmed to her that he was not being briefed.
It was evident in the debate that Trump is yet to come to terms with being denied the opportunity to take revenge from Biden. Sensing this, a sharp Harris reminded him in the debate that it wasn't Biden who he was contesting against, reinforcing the image of a man not in touch with reality. The debate was not even over when Taylor Swift tweeted that she was endorsing Harris, identifying herself as a “Cat Lady”, referring to Vance's rant against “cat ladies”. Swift's endorsement, in the air since the DNC, will impact some of the youth vote.
A Trip To The 'Spin Room'
There were other happy straws in the wind to follow for Harris. Word got out that Trump had visited the “spin room” immediately after the debate. This is a room where the candidate's media team gathers to issue denials and clarifications, gauge response and initiate social media ripples, knowing that it is the memes and clips that are played over and over again that agglomerate the debate's impact among fans and critics. Candidates typically never visit the “spin room” post the debate.
The next morning brought further confirmation for Harris when Trump lashed out at the ABC, the host of the debate. He charged the moderators with being biased because of their several fact-checks, which the channel had announced it would do, unlike other media hosts in the past. Trump ranted that the moderators should be criminally prosecuted and that the channel's licence should be revoked.
This was the ultimate proof that Harris had eminently succeeded in her objective of getting under his skin.
Harris Has Round One
Will there be another debate? Harris needs the vast audience these debates bring — 67 million watched the Tuesday debate — to present her personable and confident self to the electorate. Democrats have made it known they want another slugfest. Trump may not be able to resist the opportunity to get his own back at a candidate who he disparages privately far more than he does so richly in public.
This election will hinge on countless anonymous assessments made regarding which candidate has the better character to be the next President of the United States, based on fleeting and superficial considerations by people with only a scant interest in politics. The Harris team won this gladiatorial contest but the war will be on at full pitch till November 5.
(Ajay Kumar is a senior journalist. He is former Managing Editor, Business Standard, and former Executive Editor, The Economic Times.)
Disclaimer: These are the personal opinions of the author