so abortion was mentioned a total of one time during the first debate and I think that was used as evidence that Biden was incapable of sort of pivoting the conversation towards Democrats strengths whereas this time around it was mentioned eight times either abortion or reproductive care and I think Harris's response to that question where she detailed the circumstances under which somebody might need an abortion were one of the most star moments of the debate in total yeah I mean she I think that abortion exchange coming so early in the night and I think really establishing the tone like was was really what uh kind of grabbed my attention like I think she had some of her strongest lines she's clearly more comfortable talking about it than Biden was and like you mentioned this Mary in in some of our internal slack chats is that like Trump wouldn't let it go like this is not a topic that Donald Trump should want to be talking about it's literally of all we at ABC News and ipsos asked a question like on like 11 different issues would who do you trust more Harris or Trump on 11 different issues abortion was the issue that had the biggest Gap in favor of Democrats and so that is an issue that Trump should want to move on from as quickly as possible but he kept on like bringing it back up and like doubling down and like defended the Supreme Court which is also not popular and it was just a very bad strategic decision uh from him so I thought that was a really um bad exchange for Trump and kind of set the tone of him being on the defensive throughout the rest of the night I think related to that gayen what I think you what I thought you were going to say about that first debate with respect to the economy was that you saw very disciplined Trump in that first debate where he he kept on bringing everything back to either the economy or immigration and this time around he was kind of taking the punches and like reacting rather than being in control of the narrative and pivoting things around and I think that is kind of maybe the one biggest difference between these two debates although that sounds silly because I think the one biggest difference between the two debates was that Joe Biden wasn't there um being extremely incoherent scan this QR code to go to the apple and Spotify podcast apps to download the full 538 politics podcast