The Things She Didn't Say
Kamala Harris won the debate — but missed a critical opportunity.
In 90 minutes, she methodically cleaned his clock. The media and the public were as one on this. “Donald Trump’s freewheeling approach spun wildly out of control in the first presidential debate as he was forced on the defensive during a chaotic clash with Kamala Harris.” Only 24 percent of the viewers said he won.
Josh Barro noted: “A CNN panelist who gave the win to Harris noted, approvingly, that she ‘took control of the situation.’ This is true.” Karen Tumulty observed: “Trump appeared thrown off balance by Harris’ frequent needling, and at times he shouted back at her. But she persisted, baiting the real estate mogul again and again.” The polling was unanimous: “The CBS undecided voter focus group, run by Frank Luntz, gave it to Harris by a margin of 16 to six; CNN’s gave it to her by 18 to two.”
Josh Marshall wrote: “Harris was poised and unflappable ... Trump was scattered, swaggering and stumbling. He lied a lot and repeatedly refused to answer big questions in a way that was fairly obvious and transparent.” Jon Chait, also in campaign mode, noted: “The contrast between an obviously and eminently qualified public servant and a ranting bully was as stark as any presidential debate in American history.” Ezra: “The debate was a collision between Donald Trump’s politics of dominance and Kamala Harris’ politics of preparation. Harris’ politics of preparation won.”
You might have guessed by now that all of the above quotes are taken in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s first debate with Hillary Clinton in 2016. I just switched out “Clinton” with “Harris”. In fact, Clinton in 2016 won every debate handily. She was very narrowly ahead of Trump in the polls before the first debate and then opened up a comfortable lead by mid-October. She never polled lower than the man who ultimately beat her.
I mention the 2016 debate example not because the debate this week is destined to be as irrelevant as it was eight years ago. Who knows? I mention it because Trump has never been a good debater — that requires logic and evidence, not stream-of-consciousness insanity. And Clinton’s serial devastation of Trump could not overcome her deeper vulnerabilities: her weakness among the white working class, her polarizing decades in public life, and her inability to grasp the salience of mass immigration and free trade.
To my mind, Harris has three bigger policy vulnerabilities as an actual incumbent: she presided over a collapse of the southern border, admitting millions of illegal immigrants, almost all of whom will never leave; she was in power when we had a spike in inflation worse than anything since the 1970s; and, unlike Clinton or Biden, she has a political record on the far left. On Tuesday, for all her debating chops, she did nothing to dispel public worries about all three.
Yes, she focused on Trump, making him the star of the show in many ways. But was he revealed as something different than we’ve seen in the past? Not so much. This was classic Trump. Exposing him this way has never worked before. Most people responded to some of his cray-cray by bursting out laughing.
And the focus on Trump took attention away from Harris. And she needs that attention. She needed those 90 minutes to rebut the critiques of her past opportunism, to introduce herself clearly, to spell out how she will grow the economy, keep inflation under control and stop illegal immigration. And, by and large, she failed.
She dodged question after question with scant follow-up. On the single area she was pressed, fracking, she had a chance to explain why she had said, in 2019, “There’s no question I’m in favor of banning fracking, and starting with what we can do on Day 1 around public lands” — about as definitive a statement as it is possible to make — only to reverse herself when she became the veep nominee. The honest answer for the change is that Biden forced it. A good answer would be that she learned we didn’t need to ban fracking to control climate change. But she didn’t say that either. She just repeated her view that her “values haven’t changed.” I believe her. Pennsylvanians might too.
Immigration? She touted the Lankford bill that Biden supported after three-and-a-half years of Harris gaslighting us that “the border is secure.” Here’s a question the press should and won’t ask: Why won’t she simply extend the administration’s recent executive order that is now reducing illegal immigration to lower levels than Lankford ever would? (To his credit, Ezra exposed Mayorkas on this today.) That’s because Lankford is designed to expedite the processing of illegal immigration, not stop it.
On the economy — another serious weakness for Harris — we had price controls for alleged price-gouging, subsidies for home ownership and child care, and an “opportunity economy,” whatever that means. This is, well, underwhelming. Trump’s biggest advantage is that Americans feel poorer today than they felt in the Trump boom years. Harris had to persuade them that her policies are not Biden’s, will make the economy soar, and that they’ll feel better off in four years’ time. She didn’t. She can’t.
My favorite moment was when you saw the gulf between reality and the press bubble. At one point, Trump accused Harris of wanting “to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.” The woke media guffawed in unison. Here’s Susan Glasser of The New Yorker (unwittingly echoing Pauline Kael on Nixon):
[Trump’s] line about how the Vice-President “wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison” was pretty memorable, too. What the hell was he talking about? No one knows, which was, of course, exactly Harris’s point.
Lots of people do know, actually. This fact has been everywhere — apart from the “rather special world” of the New Yorker. Harris told the ACLU as recently as 2019:
I support policies ensuring that federal prisoners and detainees are able to obtain medically necessary care for gender transition, including surgical care, while incarcerated or detained.
More to the point, Glasser surely supports this too! But she called it as insane as the dog-eating rumors in Springfield! And no correction, of course.
Harris also told the ACLU in the same 2019 questionnaire that she backs amnesty for 11 million illegal immigrants, and the end of any detention for illegal immigrants. Are those still her positions? She didn’t tell us. She supported donating bail for rioters in 2020. Does she regret that? We don’t know. She backs medical experiments on gay, autistic and transgender children. Has she absorbed the Cass Report, which debunked these experiments? We don’t know. She believes in systemic public and private discrimination against whites, Asians, Jews, and men. Is that still the case? Again: no answer. Has any candidate refused to answer so many basic questions as late as this before? None that I recall. Harris didn’t even have a single policy on her website until the day of the debate.
The MSM, of course, can’t help themselves. They cheered Clinton at every opportunity in 2016; they didn’t criticize her execrable campaign exactly the way they are protecting Harris now. But the fact remains that Harris is still a blank space for many Americans; they want to know more about her and she doesn’t want to tell them — because the more they know about her past positions, the worse she’ll do. Hence a deeply cynical and vague campaign, still based more on vibes and Trump than on Harris’ policies or vision.
In an interesting column today, David Brooks hopes that Kamala’s “joy” is more compatible with a culture shift than Trump’s anger. But to many, including me, Kamala is more easily defined as representing the current dominant culture, the elite status quo, an icon of the ruling class’s wokeness, a docile product of every Gen-Z-run interest group the Dems bow down to. She is the left-establishment that is already in power, the foreign policy blob. Trump is still the culture shift against it.
Many voters will be picking between the devil they know (Trump) and the devil they don’t (Harris) this fall. She had a chance to fill in the blanks on Tuesday night; and, by and large, she didn’t. We’ll now see if others more competent than Trump and more willing than the MSM can begin to reveal who she really is and what she’d really do in office. And if that’s what the swing voters in Pennsylvania are truly looking for.
(Note to readers: This is an excerpt of The Weekly Dish. If you’re already a paid subscriber, click here to read the full version. This week’s issue also includes: my take on the dog-and-cat-eating thing; a political and spiritual convo with Rod Dreher; continued reader dissent over the presidential race; eight notable quotes from the week in news; 18 pieces on Substack we recommend on a variety of topics; a Mental Health Break of a classic mashup artist; a sunny window from Alabama; and, of course, the results of the View From Your Window contest — with a new challenge. Subscribe for the full Dish experience!)
A new subscriber writes, “I am a retired sociologist who has liberal and progressive ideas, but I like the balanced and reasonable approach of the Dish.” Another:
I’ve been a Dish reader since before Obama. I’ve been a subscriber in the past and thought I still was, and honestly I blame having way too many children (four — but dear God, each of them is A LOT). But in any event, this election is a fucking nightmare and I need to know what you’re saying about it. Because yikes.
“They’re Eating The Dogs!”
It was hilarious, of course, and an instant meme. But the way in which the troubles of Springfield, Ohio have been discussed this past week is a near perfect example of our political dysfunction. There is no evidence whatsoever that cats and dogs are being eaten by Haitian immigrants, as Trump recklessly claimed. But there is plenty of evidence that what Springfield has been experiencing the last few years is madness.
(Read that rest of that piece here, for paid subscribers)
Back On The Dishcast: Rod Dreher
Rod is an old-school blogger and author living in Budapest. He’s a contributing editor at The American Conservative and has written several bestsellers, including The Benedict Option and Live Not by Lies. His forthcoming book is Living in Wonder: Finding Mystery and Meaning in a Secular Age, which you can pre-order on Amazon. And check out his raw and honest writing on Substack, “Rod Dreher’s Diary.”
Listen to the episode here. There you can find two clips of our convo — on what red-pilled JD Vance, and embracing the mystery of Christianity. That link also takes you to commentary on last week’s episode with Eric Kaufmann on liberal overreach, as well as continued reader debate over the rollercoaster election.
Browse the Dishcast archive for an episode you might enjoy (the first 102 are free in their entirety — subscribe to get everything else). Coming up: Michelle Goldberg on Harris, David Frum on Trump, Bill Wasik and Monica Murphy on the history of animal cruelty, Mary Matalin on life, Anderson Cooper on loss and grief, John Gray on, well, everything, and Sam Harris for our quadrennial chat before Election Day. Please send any guest recs, dissents, and other comments to dish@andrewsullivan.com.
Dissents Of The Week
A reader writes:
You remain obsessed with what candidates say — not what they do. The latter is my primary concern. Your column on Trump’s sane-washing is a great example. It was filled with all sorts of inanities that Trump has said, but little focus on what he did as president in relation to those inanities — other than the reference to January 6. It is far more important what politicians do than what they say.
I get it, words matter. But only to a point. Biden was elected on the explicit promise of being “regular Joe.” He then governed — or his staff governed, really — in a reckless, left-wing fashion that has really hurt the country. Kamala? Every indication is that she would be the same. Trump? A total nut-job who drove people crazy with the shit he said, but he governed the country in a very vanilla fashion.
Read more dissents here, with my replies, and more still on the pod page. As always, keep the criticism coming: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
In The ‘Stacks
This is a feature in the paid version of the Dish spotlighting about 20 of our favorite pieces from other Substackers every week. This week’s selection covers subjects such as the Trump-Harris debate, her weaknesses with voters, and dating apps. Below are a few examples, followed by a new podcast:
Trudeau, like Biden, is moving right on immigration.
MSM veteran Chris Cillizza embraces the individualism of being on Substack.
Anne Applebaum launches a pod, “Autocracy in America.”
Here’s a list of the substacks we recommend in general — call it a blogroll. If you have any suggestions for “In the ‘Stacks,” especially ones from emerging writers, please let us know: dish@andrewsullivan.com.
The View From Your Window Contest
Where do you think it’s located? (The cartoon beagle is hiding an obvious clue.) Email your guess to contest@andrewsullivan.com. Please put the location — city and/or state first, then country — in the subject line. Proximity counts if no one gets the exact spot. Bonus points for fun facts and stories. The deadline for entries is Wednesday night at midnight (PST). The winner gets the choice of a VFYW book or two annual Dish subscriptions. If you are not a subscriber, please indicate that status in your entry and we will give you a free month subscription if we select your entry for the contest results (example here if you’re new to the contest). Contest archive is here. Happy sleuthing!
The results for this week’s window are coming in a separate email to paid subscribers later today. One of the forthcoming entries:
Since the Iceland contest is still fresh, I’m feeling there is a bit more to say on the music front there. First off, Sigur Rós! The atmospheric post-rock Icelandic band is known for lyrics in a made-up language, and it’s one of the more unlikely bands to be huge enough to headline Madison Square Garden.
And then there’s the Icelandic composer Jóhann Jóhannsson, who sadly passed away at the age of 48 in 2018. He was a two-time Oscar nominee for his brilliant scores for Sicario and The Theory of Everything, but I especially love his haunting score for the Nicolas Cage cult classic, Mandy.
Jóhannsson also wrote / directed / scored a fascinating adaptation of Last and First Men by the great British sci-fi novelist Olaf Stapledon. Truly one of the more tragic losses in recent years in the arts.
See you next Friday.