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Once again, about a week removed, I find myself in strong disagreement with a WhoWhatWhy colleague whom I hold in the highest regard, and with whose views I’m generally aligned. Having disagreed with Claire Berlinksi about how Kamala Harris should present herself to American voters in the course of her campaign, I now disagree with Klaus Marre about how Harris did present herself in her Tuesday debate with Donald Trump.
The common denominator is, of course, Kamala, and once again I find myself coming to her defense, believing both Berlinski’s counsel and Marre’s critique to be misplaced.
Berlinski’s advice, very boiled down, was for Harris to run well to the right of her natural inclinations and speak to the voters, especially about the dangers of Trump — as if they were “adults.” I found the first pill in that prescription too cynical and the second too idealistic, at least for this moment. I noted the dangers of trying on new political clothes. And argued that, like it or not, the days of FDR and his long-drawn fireside chats are far behind us and the texture of political discourse has been simplified — OK, dumbed down — to match our evolving, social media-shortened attention spans.
Marre’s take on the debate is that Trump lost but Harris missed a golden opportunity by failing to effectively “introduce herself” to the sizable swath of voters who don’t yet know just what she stands for or how her presidency would help them.
In his view, Harris bobbed and weaved and jabbed at Trump instead of directly answering questions about her own positions, especially where — as in the case of issues like “fracking, an assault weapon buyback program, or decriminalizing border crossings” — her positions had changed between her last presidential campaign, in 2019, and this one.
Fair enough, but I think it is a case of letting the perfect become the enemy of the very, very, very good. Marre acknowledges that the pundits out there, including even some on the right, graded Harris very high — magna, if not summa, cum laude.
But he questions whether Harris made a similarly spectacular, and needle-moving, impression on millions of potential voters, whom he envisioned tuning in to find out more about her. After all, there aren’t enough pundits in Christendom to swing a single swing state, even if they all moved there and voted the same way.
The polls over the next week or so, flawed as we both acknowledge them to be, may settle our dispute on that score. All year they have shown how just about everyone has been impervious to just about everything, with barely a sliver “persuadable” and most of those people seeming to relish their position on the fence.
But my sense is that a very modest “debate bump” was, realistically, always Harris’s best-case scenario. After all, if shooting up Fifth Avenue isn’t going to lose Trump any votes, it’s hard to see even a godawful debate performance having a major impact.
Here’s why I think Harris’s debate win will ultimately translate into the votes she needs and why I think she got it very right.
This election is all about mood (joyful, hopeful, proud versus enraged, bitter, vengeful), direction (forward versus backward), and focus (the public good versus personal interest and grievance). Trump is on the wrong side of each of those lines. Harris’s campaign has been about showing that and her primary goal for the debate was to crystallize it, drive it home. That meant taking care not to dilute or distract from the impression, not to get lost in any Elizabeth Warrenesque plans or weeds.
The KISS principle applied bigly. The pre-debate media touted Trump’s debating skills and asked, reasonably, how any opponent could counter his Gish galloping spew of lies, insults, and inanities. Harris knew, going in, that she was stepping into the ring with a heavyweight who counts on establishing dominance and control. And she had no reason to expect the ABC moderators to be any more willing to call out Trump’s lies and low blows than the CNN moderators had been when Trump lied his way through the Biden debate (it turned out that Trump was fact-checked on five occasions Tuesday night).
But Harris also knew that Trump’s self-control is not far above toddler level and that he has a particular allergy to strong, assertive women. And no tolerance at all for condescension or mockery from anyone. But from a woman? That would be all but guaranteed to make his head explode.
So Harris understood and accepted her mission, and recognized that it left little or no room for what The New York Times referred to as “the fine print” that the undecided voters they questioned apparently found lacking. According to both the Times and Marre, Harris did an underwhelming job of introducing herself to these voters – voters who purportedly want to know, in detail, where Harris stands on various issues before making up their minds.
Really? Donald Trump appointed the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade and refuses to say he would veto a national abortion ban; Donald Trump embraces the likes of Viktor Orban and Vladimir Putin, and has yet to meet a dictator he doesn’t love or a crackpot conspiracy theory he can’t try to put to political use; Donald Trump’s “plan” for a second term centers on the reactionary power grab that is Project 2025 (which he has unconvincingly attempted to disown) and “drill, drill, drill.” Donald Trump is an unapologetic authoritarian, a convicted felon, a lie-firing assault weapon, and a huckster selling sneakers, trading cards, and tiny pieces of his June debate suit.
With all that and plenty more in the pot for that crucial, mystical undecided voter out there in some swing state, is Harris’s position on the child tax credit or home-buyers’ assistance seriously going to make the sale? The media in general, and the Times in particular, have, to borrow left-wing commentator Steven Beschloss’s term, “fetishized” these undecided voters as the grand prize to be won, the key to electoral victory.
Strange, then, that neither campaign is playing to them! This is in part because there are far fewer undecided and persuadable voters than in past elections. But it’s also because Trump and his MAGA movement have been so successful in dividing the country, making the choice of futures a very clear and stark one. Swing states are not swing states because they are filled with persuadable voters; they are swing states because they are filled with virtually equal numbers of red and blue voters.
What this means is that Election 2024 is, to a much greater degree than its predecessors, all about turnout — getting “your” voters to vote. It comes down to simple math: The number of “base,” or committed, voters so dwarfs the sliver of undecideds that getting, say, 10 percent more of your base to turn out will have greater impact on your bottom line vote total, both nationally and in swing states, than would winning every undecided voter — which, of course, is impossible.
Willie Sutton famously said he robbed banks because that’s where they keep the money. Both the Trump and Harris campaigns are playing to their bases because that’s where they keep the votes. The elevation of the undecideds to decisive, brass ring status is a misleading media construct.
Turnout is not easy to predict but the best predictor, from a polling standpoint, is probably the measure of voter “enthusiasm.” During Joe Biden’s candidacy, Democratic voters trailed Republicans when asked how enthusiastic they were about the election (Gallup last polled the question in March; after Biden’s debate performance, we didn’t need a poll to tell us the relative levels of enthusiasm among Democrats and Republicans). When Harris replaced Biden, Democrats’ enthusiasm shot up 23 percent to a whopping 78 percent, and a +14 point enthusiasm margin over Republicans.
The key for Harris in her debate was to maintain or expand that enthusiasm gap. And that was all about making an impression, which in turn was all about keeping it simple, uncluttered, undiluted. It is said you get only one chance to make a good first impression. Harris took that chance, in a way that reminded me of the haymaker landed more than 40 years ago by Ronald Reagan.
Reagan was a mediocre actor and not universally popular governor of California. He did not introduce himself with a bunch of policies or positions. He introduced himself in one half-turn and the mildly delivered punchline: “There you go again…” That was it. Jimmy Carter was, for all intents and purposes, toast. Reagan introduced himself with a gesture that said he was calmly superior, unflappable, alpha without even having to bare his teeth.
Harris did that and a lot more (in part because Trump is no Carter): She passed the “presidential” test and, I think just as critical, she was alpha. She made Trump look small and threw him off almost all of his own points; she was in control — and that has always been his big selling point.
Yes, as Marre notes, voters already knew Trump — they know he’s a liar and his voters don’t seem to care; they know he’s a bully, and embrace him as their bully.
But they didn’t know he could be owned by a woman, shrunk and shriveled and left red-faced and impotently raging. That may make an impression on many “average Americans.” It may even cause some MAGAs to begin to question their allegiance. And at least as important, it delighted the Democratic base, likely driving the already high enthusiasm level even higher.
It certainly made an impression on Trump, who has thrown in the towel on a rematch — while claiming victory (of course). Such delusion — a CNN poll had Harris the 63-37 winner — is part of what California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D) shrewdly predicted would be days or weeks of self-damaging reaction from Trump. A bonus prize for Harris, though an ominous harbinger of post-election tumult should Trump lose that one too.
Harris “introduced herself” as a woman strong enough to dominate the preeminent bully of our time. She didn’t have time for everything; her team wisely went for KISS — which meant staying on one beam. Trump wound up in the spin room going homina homina homina. I’m not sure what more a Harris fan could want.
