American Voters Still in the Dark

By Business Pics @Adobe Stock

A Night to Forget

Regardless of whom you wanted to win last night’s presidential debate, it’s hard to miss that Kamala Harris was able to evade answering everything, especially on the Biden-Harris dismal record. Also not missed is that Donald Trump had a bad night.

Members of the WSJ’s editorial board weigh in on last night’s debate:

Read It and Weep

Kimberley Strassel: 

Ms. Harris deftly changed the subject on nearly every direct question she was asked, and neither the moderators nor Donald Trump pressed her on the omissions.

Queried about recent policy reversals, she promised to address several, then tackled only one by dodging her 2019 support for a fracking ban and pivoting to a story about her upbringing and her support for Social Security. Did she bear any responsibility for the horrific Afghanistan withdrawal? Ms. Harris ignored the question and said she agreed with Mr. Biden’s decision to get out.

Mr. Trump did a poor job of calling her out on these pivots and omissions, which would have been as easy as challenging her to answer the original question asked. But the result remains that many Americans remain in the dark as to Ms. Harris’s policies, past and future.

William McGurn: 

The hype beforehand for the Fight in Philly was on the same scale as the Thrill in Manila, the third and final heavyweight boxing match between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier, which ended in victory for Ali. Presidential debate.

Though Donald Trump threw some good punches, Philadelphia was an upset victory for Kamala Harris.

Mr. Trump’s fans will complain about media bias, particularly in how the moderators felt free to “fact check” the former president’s claims while letting Ms. Harris off scot-free. And they would be right. The most egregious was probably when Ms. Harris resurrected the false claim that Mr. Trump called the neo-Nazis who marched in Charlottesville “very fine people.” 

Unfairness Doesn’t Change Facts 

Kamala Harris “baited Donald Trump,” continues McGurn.

The result was that he appeared angry and defensive most of the night, while she remained calm and cool and smiling. It worked. Decision for the vice president.

Barton Swain: 

Mr. Swain thinks Donald Trump’s presentation was “terrible.”

Trump let Kamala Harris provoke him to anger, ranted about the 2020 election, constantly interrupted his own assertions, and failed to capitalize on obvious vulnerabilities.

Mr. Trump was handed an opportunity to call attention to Ms. Harris’s many and dramatic policy reversals, but he spoke in circumlocutionary fragments. When Ms. Harris brought up Charlottesville and Mr. Trump’s supposed inability to condemn white supremacists there, he might easily have brought up her—and Mr. Biden’s—failure to condemn the infinitely more widespread phenomenon of campus antisemitism. He only rambled.

Ms. Harris offered a defense of her policy U-turns and came up with a characteristic word salad. But she mostly remained polished, while saying very little.

The good news for Mr. Trump is that most ordinary voters either didn’t watch or, if they did, won’t remember what they saw a week from now.

Allysia Finley:

Kamala Harris spent the debate bobbing and weaving, while Donald Trump mostly shadow-boxed. Are Americans better off than they were four years ago? Ms. Harris side-stepped the question, blaming Mr. Trump for the Covid pandemic and its consequent economic damage. Why hasn’t the Biden administration removed Mr. Trump’s tariffs? She answered by accusing him of increasing the trade deficit with China.

Why did she reverse her 2019 support for a fracking ban? She didn’t explain. Instead, she boasted about providing the tie-breaking vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, which she said increased leases for fracking. That’s false, but Mr. Trump didn’t nail her on it. He let too many of her whoppers go unrebutted, as he ran off on tangents and relitigated the 2020 election.

Mr. Trump landed some powerful punches, such as noting how the Biden administration’s relaxation of oil sanctions against Iran enabled the mullahs to arm Hamas. He also highlighted the contradiction between the administration’s cancelation of the Keystone XL pipeline and its waiving of sanctions on Russia’s Nord Stream 2 pipeline. The former would have boosted U.S. and Canadian energy, while the latter sought to make Europe more dependent on Russian gas.

Kyle Peterson: 

As Kamala Harris invited viewers to experience for themselves the exhaustion and boredom at a Trump rally, Kamala almost looked “giddy.”

Ms. Harris … sounded practiced in addressing her big vulnerability, which is that her record is seriously to the left of the median voter.

• Didn’t she want to ban fracking as recently as five years ago? Well, yes. “I will not ban fracking,” she said Tuesday night.

• Didn’t she call in 2019 for “a mandatory gun buyback program”? Again, yes. She addressed that with two declarative sentences: “Tim Walz and I are both gun owners. We’re not taking anybody’s guns away.”

• What about Medicare for All? “Well, first of all, I absolutely support, and over the last four years as vice president, private healthcare options.”

This isn’t convincing as a change of heart. But it also isn’t the debate moment that’s likely to stick.

Where Was Kamala

One problem was that Trump sounded too much like … well, like Donald Trump. He missed major opportunities to set the record straight. One thing Trump did get straight was a question he asked in his closing arguments, a question the media is refusing to ask:

She’s been there for 3 1/2 years. They’ve had 3 1/2 years to fix the border. They’ve had 3 1/2 years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn’t she done it?”

Last night’s debate was not a good night for Donald Trump or for America.