As I said, these debates are all about optics and not substance and it was clear that Kamala Harris won hands down.
She appeared calm and confident and assured, smiling even when he made the most outrageous statements, while he looked angry all the time. For those seeing her closely for the first time, she looked, well, presidential. But most importantly, she controlled the debate, keeping him on the defensive by trolling him and he could not resist the bait, and ended up talking about his own vulnerabilities.
Perhaps the starkest difference came at the end in the closing remarks when she delivered a message of hope and uplift and unity, making her case about the future and comparing that with his message of gloom and divisiveness, ending by saying that we would not be going back to the past.
To add to a terrible night for him, after the debate Taylor Swift endorsed Harris, signing it “Childless Cat Lady”.
In her post announcing her support for Kamala Harris, Taylor Swift said that she had been spurred to act after the Trump campaign implied that she supported him, and also was not pleased with a certain remark made by his running mate, JD Vance.
“Recently I was made aware that AI of ‘me’ falsely endorsing Donald Trump’s presidential run was posted to his site. It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation. It brought me to the conclusion that I need to be very transparent about my actual plans for this election as a voter. The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth,” Swift wrote.
She signed her post, in which she posed with a long-haired cat, “Childless Cat Lady”. That’s something Vance once said, and which is not going away
This will enrage him and he will likely respond (you know that he cannot ignore any slight) by saying that she is a terrible singer and that the crowds at his rallies are bigger than at her concerts.
You can watch the full debate.
🙂
Well that’s good news.
Taylor Swift has three cats and no children.
VP Kamala Harris has two children and no cat.
I’d vote for either one anyway and would never vote for Trump or Vance,
I’d vote for Taylor’s cats before I’d vote for Donny. Heck, I’d vote for a rusty bucket full of used oil filters.
“You can watch the full debate.”
I wonder how many people hate themselves enough to do that. Or is it more like the horrible fascination engendered by a plane crash?
I watched about half the debate. Harris did well but there was no “clobbering”. Trump did what was expected(my bingo card was checked within a couple of minutes) and his performance would not have turned away his true believers or fence sitters since it was more of the same. Harris held her own , easily , and given that she had more to lose , you could say she “won”.
Trumps ability to lie shamelessly (and the lack of value for truth in his supporters) makes him almost invincible in a debate -- If he tells Harris why hasn’t she done the stuff she is promising in 3.5 years , she cant really counter with we got way more stuff done than you who only passed a tax cut for corporations (and we are still waiting for Mexico to transfer funds) -- he’ll just simply say his presidency was the greatest ever blah blah. he can repeat 2 contradictory statements without skipping a beat (The pandemic was the reason for the unemployment rate -- we did great in the pandemic)
My kids did also watch some of the debate -- their main question was why does he look so angry ?
I listened to it all. I can’t say I watched it. It was playing in the background for much of the time it was on.
Trump really just sounded like Trump to me. He did lose it when Harris suggested his rally crowds got bored and left early. That’s when he went off about immigrants stealing and eating pet dogs. But I feel like the pundits saw him get clobbered and I just saw the same bitter old fool.
If someone’s disinterested in politics to the extent that they haven’t made up their mind about Trump by now, after he’s gone to such extreme effort for years to put himself out there, then I don’t know that they’d bother watching a debate. So maybe the headlines saying he got clobbered will help.
Of course, the echo chamber isn’t saying that at all. Their story is about how the moderaters were against Trump (because he should be free to lie his ass off without any fact checking whatsoever), Harris was fake and running away from her positions (fracking) to try to be like Trump, Harris lied about project 2025 and it’s actually her radical agenda not Trump’s. Along with some fantasy about the magical time Trump was president. But mostly they were trying to make it about fracking. Oh, and Jesse Waters promised a trip to Springfield on Monday to see if they are, in fact, eating dogs and cats there. I’m sure they’ll find something to point at and suggest terrible things are happening.
Personally I think Trump did almost as poorly as the clips of Biden in the last debate that I’ve seen. But that doesn’t matter because MAGA voters are not concerned about the same things democratic voters are. They elected Trump the first time knowing he was a bigoted entertainer at best, a fraud and thief for sale to the highest bidder at worst. It’s kind of hard to get someone to change their mind when they won’t admit to why they made their choice in the first place and they just want to see the show & be entertained.
If fundraising is any indication of who won, as of this morning the Harris campaign has raised over 1 billion dollars in the 50 some days since it began.
Trump knows he did badly. Kamala shook his hand again this morning at the 911 memorial, and the expression on his face in that photo is somewhere between clenched smile and having a seizure.
I watched bits of the debate.
Orange creepoid did better than I expected* and Harris disappointed me. She occasionally stumbled over words and was clearly courting the right, not the left. But regardless, I don’t know why anyone would vote for Trump -- my best guess is that it’s a cultural thing? I would choose a complete unknown over Trump. If Harris was standing for the Republicans (I can imagine this) and Trump for the Democrats (but I can’t imagine that!), I would still choose Harris.
Of the Guardian panel on the debate, the opinion I most relate to is Bhaskar Sunkara‘s.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/article/2024/sep/11/who-won-harris-trump-debate
One element I didn’t like about the debate format was the way both candidates were always shown even though they spoke one at a time. I couldn’t stop being distracted by the face of whoever wasn’t speaking, meaning my attention often wandered away from what was being said. Having said that, what I did hear was worth very little.
*low bar
*whomever
One of the best things about Harris were her expressions. he didn’t need to call him weird out loud, her face said it all. Especially when he spouted that racist lie about immigrants eating pets.
“Kamala shook his hand again this morning at the 911 memorial…” Not only that, but he tried that weird yank he does when he tries to show dominance when shaking hands and she was having none of it.