The second Presidential debate happened on September 10th, 2024, however, with a different Democrat running for President, current Vice President Kamala Harris who fell victim to playing a role in the “Trump Show” rather than educating anyone on her plans or policy.
The Good
Let’s start with the good. Both candidates, for the most part, behaved themselves.
The moderators were also tolerant and kept things under control, although they fact checked Trump and didn’t fact check Harris.
Gone was the Trump of past debates where he relied on humor and overtalking to get his points across, this Trump was serious from the beginning and almost angry at times when he discussed the economy and immigration.
Kamala Harris was slightly better than in the past, but sounded overly rehearsed sometimes repeating the same rehearsed segments throughout the debate. She spent a good deal of time making faces when she wasn’t talking about Trump, which was mostly what she talked about.
She did manage to offer one point of her platform (which didn’t exist until today) regarding new homeowners that’s worthy of a good mark.
The Bad
Trump talk about Trump. Harris talked about Trump. The moderators talked about Trump. It turned into the “Trump Show” rather than a debate.
It’s as if Harris was following a script written by the Trump campaign and read it mostly word for word. While there were a couple times she successfully baited Trump, she spent most of her time, including the baiting, talking about Trump. Question after question, rather than putting forth policy, Harris just attacked Trump while Trump mostly stuck to the issues.
Immigration and the economy saturated the entire debate, Trump continuously began answering a question and somehow made it all about the economy or immigration. Other times he directly pivoted to either topic.
Both candidates would have been better off not bringing up the abortion topic. They each started out well supporting their individual positions, but the both got stuck on questions of the extreme and neither would answer, Trump did provide an answer which allowed him not to have to answer, but it was still a dodge. Harris flat out refused to answer. However, this was a stronger showing for Harris than Trump.
Neither side did well at presenting new policy or their plans, but Trump has an advantage here in that he’s been running for two years, so most people already know his position and plans. Until today, nobody had seen a single bullet point from Harris.
Her website was updated in the wee hours of the night and for the first time, had some bullet points of what her platform is. Almost none of that was discussed during the debate with the exception of extending the $6,000 child tax-credit, which everybody likely agrees with, helping start-ups (which is hard to believe when she support raising taxes on those making over $400,000 and killing the long term tax advantage since that’s where the money comes from to help these startups), and offering 1st time home buyers $25,000 towards their down payment which is actually a great idea as previously noted.
The Ugly
Trump’s story about immigrants eating dogs and cats would have been the weirdest statement of the evening until moderator David Muir stated that they had spoken with a city manager who claimed there was no evidence of such a thing. Meaning that it wasn’t just a wacky thing Trump made up, ABC had actually investigated it to a degree. Thus, one must assume there’s something to it. It’s too wild to just be made up.
The Canton, OH police said it wasn’t on their “radar” and the city manager said there wasn’t any credible evidence of anything like this going on and ABC considered the rumor debunked. However, as wild as it may seem, there indeed was an arrest in August, 2024 of one Alexis Telia Ferrell in Canton, OH for … wait for it … killing and eating a pet cat.
It’s unclear if she was an immigrant, but the point is that there’s actual substance and truth to the story unlike what the media would have you believe, that this was an absurd and completely made-up story. It wasn’t.
Moving on, clearly Kamala Harris prepared for this debate with the expectation that she was going to debate the pre-assassination attempt version of Trump where name calling and other antics were predominant. On two occasions she awkwardly gave the same over rehearsed speech about “stopping with the name calling” and personal attacks and focus on policy, change, and let’s “Turn the Page” which came out of the blue and unprovoked by Trump.
Trump didn’t call her a single name, the only personal attacks were from Harris, and she’s the Vice President speaking as though Trump is responsible for the past four dismal years where in fact, it is policies and performance the Biden administration of which she is second in command that has brought us to this point.
The “turn the page” rhetoric was especially confusing considering she’s the one in the White House.
The biggest blunder on the Kamala Harris side was attacking Trump on his conviction and indictments and gave Trump the floor to respond without interruption which led to him appearing as a victim of what most Americans agree with, that his court cases are politically motivated. After all, in every single state case, there is an elected Democrat who brought legal theory based charges never before brought in a manner in which they were brought, in a court presided over by an elected Democrat.
This just makes it look even more political and makes Trump look like a victim.
Furthermore, these are not issues anyone cares about. I don’t care about Trump’s legal troubles, I couldn’t care less.
The point is, but while Trump seemed to be speaking to issues and to independents, Kamala seemed to be speaking to Democrats and hatred of Trump. That’s not what I showed up for.
An Independents View
Who won the debate? I’m sure Republicans think Trump did and Democrats think Kamala did. The media will report Kamala did tomorrow as they always do (remember many of them said Biden won the last debate).
Personally, I don’t think there was a winner, I don’t think this debate could even be won. The moderators didn’t do a very good job with the questioning. Instead of putting up issues to discuss, they mostly questioned each candidate on Trump’s performance, previous positions, and statements. When they did question Harris, she dodged the question. They also seemed to be the second and third in the debate against Trump and aided Harris on multiple occasions.
They were quick to call out any fact check against Trump, but didn’t call out Harris a single time despite the multiple falsehoods she presented. That didn’t look good. It looked like a 3 against 1 debate.
Harris dropped the ball with the ongoing personal attacks on Trump to the point it become annoying and petty and just made Trump look more like a victim
This was not the slaughter Democrats have been predicting leading up to the debate. Moreover, winning isn’t what either candidate needed to do. Trump just needed to be Trump, which he managed to do, and Harris need to introduce her platform to America, which she failed to do.
Given the foregoing, I suspect nobody changed their minds, but if they did, they likely were not in favor of Harris.
At the end of the day, when the debate ended, I still don’t know who Kamala Harris is or what she’s running on. I felt that Trump did not do poorly and Harris did not do well.
Overall Performance
I guess if I had to break it down by the issues here’s how I felt the score went.
In all honesty, all Trump really needs to do, is just continue being Trump.
On the Harris side, “I’m not Trump” isn’t going to work. They need to get Harris focused on a platform that people can rally around and support and they need to educate the entire country in only 56 days. I don’t know if that is possible.
That said, there is still another debate or two coming up and there is 56 days left, so maybe some amazing things start happening for Harris. Thus far, it’s just been depressing.
