With Ed Kilgore’s cautionary flags about attaching too much importance to the election consequences of the Harris-Trump presidential debate in mind, there are a few more articles about it worth checking out. At The Hill, for example, Juliann Ventura writes, “Former GOP presidential candidate Chris Christie warned Vice President Harris against challenging former President Trump to another debate following Tuesday’s showdown….“Nothing great can happen for her in a second debate,” the former New Jersey governor said on The View Wednesday. “She’ll either do as well as she did this time… or he could do better.” However, Ventura explains that “The Harris campaign quickly challenged Trump to another debate after Tuesday night’s matchup wrapped up, as pundits largely agreed that she had the stronger performance….Trump has declined to accept the challenge, however, arguing that it’s Harris who lost, comparing her to a prize fighter demanding a rematch….“She needed to show those undecided voters that she belonged on that stage, and last night she showed that she belongs on the stage,” Christie said. “That’s why — look, I saw her campaign put out a challenge for a second debate right after the debate. Please stop. Don’t do it!” Withdrawing a challenge is a bad look. But Harris is now in position to set tough conditions.
If you want more numbers, Nathaniel Rakich has them in his caveat-rich article, “Early polls say Harris won the presidential debate“at abcnews.go.com, and writes: “As of 1 p.m. Eastern, 538 has collected three national polls and one swing-state poll that were conducted since the debate.* In all of them, more people who watched the debate said Harris won the debate than said Trump did. On average, 57 percent of debate watchers nationally said Harris turned in the better performance; only 34 percent said Trump did….CNN/SSRS also conducted a poll of the same respondents before the debate, allowing us to compare what they thought about the candidates before the event with what they thought about the candidates after it. And according to their poll, Harris’s net favorability rating among debate watchers rose from -11 percentage points (39 percent favorable, 50 percent unfavorable) before the debate to +1 point (45 percent favorable, 44 percent unfavorable) after it. Trump’s net favorability rating, however, barely changed (from -11 points to -12 points).” Rakich adds that, “even if Harris does rise in the polls after the debate, those gains could be fleeting. CNN polling also found that Americans thought former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton turned in the best performance in all three of her debates with Trump in 2016, and she rose in national polls after the first two of them (although other factors, such as the “Access Hollywood” tape, likely factored into that as well). But, of course, the race tightened in the final days and Clinton went on to lose that election.”
At Brookings, Elaine Kamarck and William A. Galston explain why “The presidential debate accomplished more for Harris than it did for Trump” and write: “Kamala Harris faced three key challenges. First, 37% to 42% of voters in some swing states knew virtually nothing about her except that she serves as Joe Biden’s vice president. Filling in this gap, or at least beginning to, was job one. From the very first minutes of the debate, it was clear that she knew she had to define herself and that she did—as a child of the middle class who, in contrast to Trump, was not given $400 million to start a business. In addition, she repeatedly came back to her experience as a prosecutor….Second, Harris has shifted her position on many important issues—health care (Medicare for All), climate change (fracking), and immigration (decriminalizing border crossings), among others—since she ran for the nomination in 2020. This left people wondering, what kind of Democrat is she—a classic California progressive or the next generation of the Clinton, Obama, and Biden-style center-left? She had to persuade voters that the new version of Kamala Harris is the one they will get if she is elected….Here her performance was more mixed. She explained her shift on fracking but didn’t give as clean and crisp an answer as she could have on other issues where Trump has accused her of flip-flopping. However, she defended the Biden administration and her participation in the bipartisan immigration legislation that Trump killed, she let the audience know that both she and Tim Walz are gun owners who have no intention of taking away people’s guns, and she pushed back against the charge that she was weak on crime by emphasizing her experience and record as a prosecutor who put criminals behind bars…. Third, as is the case with every candidate who hasn’t previously occupied the presidency, Harris had to convince swing voters that she has what it takes to serve effectively as the nation’s chief executive and commander-in-chief. Simply put, they needed to be able to see her as big enough to be president, a barrier that some previous candidates, such as Michael Dukakis in 1988, failed to cross….Harris passed this test easily. She never got flustered, she made her points concisely and quickly, and she spoke with confidence about traditionally “male” issues like war, defense, crime, and foreign policy.”
If you have a bellyfull of pundit analysis of the 2024 presidential campaign, it’s fun and sometimes instructive to see what the ‘smart money’ is doing. “Offshore bettors think Vice President Kamala Harris narrowed or even took the lead in the 2024 presidential race following her first debate Tuesday night with former President Donald Trump,” Jim Sergent writes at USA Today. “With $750,000 bet in the first 50 minutes of the debate, the odds swung from Trump to Harris on Betfair Exchange, the biggest U.K. peer-to-peer betting platform. The presidential election betting can’t be done legally in the U.S….On Polymarket, a crypto-trading platform, Trump’s and Harris’ likelihood of winning were tied at the end of the debate. After moving slightly in Trump’s favor on Wednesday, Polymarket bettors set both Harris’ and Trump’s odds of winning at 49% as of 6 p.m. EDT….The betting favorite has only lost twice since 1866, according to the Conversation, a nonprofit news organization. One of those longshots was Trump in 2016. Even on Election Day, bettors gave Trump just a 17% chance of defeating Hillary Clinton, according to Betfair’s historical data.” Brady Dale adds at Axios, “What happened: Before the debate began, bettors on the blockchain-based prediction market, Polymarket, solidly favored Trump — but Harris’ performance moved the odds to a tie by the end of the face-off….Harris shot ahead when pop star Taylor Swift endorsed her just minutes after the debate ended….How it works: Bettors on Polymarket buy a share for a given outcome in an event (such as the winner of the U.S. presidency). Every correct share can be redeemed for $1 in cryptocurrency….Between the lines: Proponents of prediction markets believe they yield better information because people are more honest with money on the line….Regulators in the U.S. have serious doubts, however.”
“She specifically needs to repeat that the border has already been closed for illegal immigrants.”
“Now that the horse has gone, we closed the barn door.”
Isn’t the whole point that there are “horses”?
I agree it was too late, but better late than never.
https://www.brookings.edu/articles/covid-19-inflation-was-a-supply-shock/?utm_campaign=Global%20Connection&utm_medium=email&utm_content=321776950&utm_source=hs_email
“First, the vast majority of the COVID-19 inflation surge is accounted for by supply-linked factors, especially a rise in company margins that followed severe delivery delays at the height of the pandemic.
Demand-linked factors, notably indicators of labor market overheating, play almost no role.
As a result, the argument that policy stimulus was excessive is weak.
Second, margins have yet to normalize from their elevated levels, which means there is more disinflation ahead as fallout from COVID-19 continues to unwind.
The effects of supply chain disruptions on inflation are thus both more severe and longer lasting than existing studies of this episode have flagged.
If this is true, it suggests that the Fed may have overtightened—as its hikes may have done little to slow inflation—and now needs to shift to cutting the policy rate in rapid fashion.”
The point of the debate isn’t to win, but to persuade.
Kamala had an excellent performance (the best of any Democratic candidate in more than half a century), but the fact still remains that people trust Trump (personally, not the Republican party) more on the economy.
This goes down to two explanations, the lived experience of 2017-2020 vs 2021-2024 and voters remembering that only with Trump did the United States break with globalization (and therefore deindustrialization and mass immigration).
There is still this false consensus among elites that Hillary won the 2016 debate. She didn’t. She failed to win the economics argument.
Now Democrats are still losing the inflation argument. Supply constraints as form of corporate malfunctioning need to be discussed or the Trump narrative prevails.
Democrats should come out with a proposal to break the monetary policy interest rate and the mortgage interest rate.
Kamala needs to focus more on deindustrialization (talking about place based economics -including current progress-) and opposition to mass immigration.
She specifically needs to repeat that the border has already been closed for illegal immigrants. She (and specially Walz) need a ready to go answer for giving immigrants many benefits (eg driver’s licenses, healthcare, etc).
(Walz should also prepare to explain Democrats’ transgender stances in the vicepresidential debate, as they will be his primary vulnerability.)
She also needs to talk about plans to hire more police.
Democrat’s definition of an Ukrainian win must be that Russia comes to the table to negotiate because it is losing not because America is afraid of Russia. America has never been afraid of Russia’s nuclear weapons blackmail.
Democrats’ strategy on Ukraine needs elaboration and Kamala would do well to publicly and forcefully ask more of Europe (geopolitics and not just domestic politics demands this).
Democrats’ incoherence over tariffs is a very weak point, but Kamala can say she welcomes tariffs on our adversaries (specifically China) and opposes those on our allies if they increase defense spending.
The strategy of taking away Trump’s talking points needs to be reinforced.
There are issues the media cares about that voters really don’t, mainly Afghanistan and Gaza. She could openly reject political Islam as a driver of opposition to Israel and reinforce that her focus is strictly humanitarian (if Democrats can’t win without Arab Michigan votes then the party doesn’t deserve to win).
Fracking and climate change are also mostly niche issues. By avoiding the dichotomy, they were neutralized by Kamala and she doesn’t need to dwell too much on them. With the war on Ukraine fracking gets a justification.
On abortion, Kamala needs to confront Trump on supposedly supporting the mother’s health exception while also opposing late term abortions.
Her repetition of some of her economic proposals was very good and should continue (dental and vision Medicare benefits should get airtime). This, along with the rule of law and Trump’s weirdness, should remain the core of her messaging.
She should have countered Trump’s argument about she not accomplishing anything by saying Trump has been president and was fired and is a whiner, while she hasn’t been elected yet.
She also needs to forcefully counter the argument that America is only great if Trump is president.
Democrats should proposed a dual ban: on US flag burning and on displaying the Confederate flag.
Overall the debate was backward looking and irrelevant to the American people. Too much focus on foreign affairs.
PS…Taylor Swift’s endorsement was ill timed (Democrats=entertainment elites)