Harris Had a Theory of Trump, and It Was Right

[Music] from New York Times opinion this is the Ezra Klein [Music] show it is Wednesday September 11th last night was the first maybe the only presidential debate between vice president kamla Harris and former president Donald Trump and I think to understand what happened at that debate it's worth going back to a criticism of trump you could maybe say an observation about Trump that Harris and other Democrats made repeatedly in their speeches at the Democratic National Convention here's Harris I will not close it up to tyrants and dictators like Kim Jong-un who are rooting for Trump who are rooting for Trump because you know they know they know he is easy to manipulate with flattery and favors that isn't just an attack line Democrats use on Donald Trump at the high levels of power among the people in the Democratic party who have governing and particularly who have presidential experience this is what they believe about him that Donald Trump is easily manipulated that he is distractable he is undisciplined he's egotistical he is interested Above All in One topic and that topic is himself it's why it was such a big theme in the speeches of the former presidents over that couple of days here's Barack Obama from the DNC here's a 78-year-old billionaire who has not stopped whining about his problems since he wrote down his golden escalator 9 years ago it has been a constant stream of of gripes and grievances that that's actually been getting worse now that he's afraid of losing to Comm there's the childish nicknames the crazy conspiracy theories this weird obsession with crowd sizes [Applause] I it just goes on and on and on here's Bill Clinton from the DNC I mean look what does her opponent do with his voice he mostly talks about himself right so the next time you hear him don't count the lies count the eyes hey eyes his vendettas his Vengeance his complaints his conspiracies he's like one of those teners opening up before he walks out on stage like I did trying to get his lungs open by saying me me me me me me what KLA Harris did at the debate on Tuesday night was to turn this attack line into a debate strategy to show that Trump is like this rather than just say Trump is like this the key moment the key turn in the debate came in the section on immigration David me one of the moderators asked teris a good and a tough question we know that illegal border crossings reached a record high in the Biden Administration this past June President Biden imposed tough new Asylum restrictions we know the numbers since then have dropped significantly but my question to you tonight is why did the administration wait until 6 months before the election to act and would you have done anything differently from President Biden on this haris doesn't quite answer that question she talks instead about the bipartisan border bill that was negotiated in the fall of 2023 and then scuttled by Trump so that does move the clock backwards a bit and it moves the blame onto Trump a bit but but it it leaves open the underlying question and criticism you hear of the Biden Administration here why did they wait until the fall of 2023 to do something substantial On the Border but Harris doesn't even try to explain that instead she uncorks a line that was clearly prepared clearly she walked in with this one and when I first heard her say it it felt like it had been dropped into the wrong section of the debate and I'll tell you something he's going to talk about immigration a lot tonight even when it's not the subject that is being raised and I'm going to actually do something really unusual and I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies cuz it's a really interesting thing to watch you will see during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter he will talk about windmills cause cancer and what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom and I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you what Harris is doing here is unleashing a test of these democratic ious about Donald Trump she says Donald Trump is easily manipulated and she is here on National Television at the debate manipulating him in an obvious and even clunky way Obama says Trump is obsessed with conspiracy theories and crowd size and so here is Harris baiting him on crowd size and conspiracy theories Clinton says Trump can't resist talking about himself and so Harris is turning a question about immigration into a question about Donald Trump whether he's interesting enough to keep people compelled during his rallies so Harris dangles this bait in front of trump she does it in the section of the debate that should be Trump's strongest the section where her record is hardest to defend the section where Trump is most personally interested in the underlying issue and Trump could easily have just ignored the bait ignored the jab about his board crowds told Americans that Harris is trying to distract them from a failed record on the border by using some pre-cook debate line about crowd sizes if Trump had the presence of mind the discipline to do that I think that would have gone quite badly for Harris instead he does this first let me respond is to the rallies she said people start leaving people don't go to her rallies there's no reason to go and the people that do go she's busting them in and paying them to be there and then showing them in a different light so she can't talk about that people don't leave my rallies we have the biggest rallies the most incredible rallies in the history of politics that's because people want to take their country back our country is being lost we're a failing nation and it happened three and a half years ago and what what's going on here you're going to end up in World War I just to go into another subject what they have done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of people to come into our country and look at what's happening to the towns all over the United States and a lot of towns don't want to talk not going to be Aurora or Springfield a lot of towns don't want to talk about it because they're so embarrassed by it in Springfield they're eating the dogs the people that came in they're eating the cats they're eating they're eating the pets of the people that live there and this is what's happening in our country and it's a shame and after that Trump never really recovers the whole rest of the debate he's red-faced pissed off free associating conspiratorial not the guy you'd want sitting behind the Resolute desk in a crisis not a guy you'd want at your dinner table not a guy you wouldd want at the next table over when you were having dinner this was more than just debate strategy for Harris it is an actual point about Donald Trump about the way he thinks and acts and governs he is easy to manipulate he is unfocused he is obsessed with grievance and flattery and criticism and yeah crowd siiz he couldn't hold it together for 90 minutes 90 minutes in a debate he had weeks to prepare for on the issue he is best prepped to handle so why should anyone watching that think he can handle a presidential crisis you think Putin doesn't know how to flatter him or that oil company Executives can't get a briefing on how to butter him up or that he'll have reserves of focus and perspective and groundedness on day three of little to no sleep when everyone is yelling at him when people aren't being relentlessly polite to him when the stakes are high when he has antagonist with real power you think he will then have this focus and perspective and grend this that he could not summon here this was not in my view a perfect debate for Harris she was much stronger at disqualifying Donald Trump than making the case for her own candidacy if your theory of the election is that Americans needed reminding of Trump's chaotic conspiratorial childish temperament then she did the job and then some if you think the problem is they don't know about her that they're unhappy with what the country feels like under Joe Biden and they want something different and they don't know or don't trust that Joe Biden's vice president will offer that I'm not sure she did all that much to reassure them her canned answers seemed canned she's not the kind of light-footed debater who can sidestep a tricky question while appearing to answer it when she got questions she didn't like she just didn't answer them obviously didn't answer them but that leaves those questions like why the Biden Administration didn't LIF the Trump ter of Sun China or whether she would have done anything different in the Afghanistan withdrawal that leaves them lingering in voters Minds given a number of opportunities to distance herself from Biden to say the way she would actually be different or have done something different she took none of them that might be respectful towards Joe Biden it may not be good political strategy but as Joe Biden used to say you don't compare candidates to the almighty you compare them to the the alternative and what Harris did last night was create a contrast create an alternative she turned Trump into his worst self you might say his true self reminding Americans who haven't seen that guy for a while what he looks and feels like how he thinks how he acts and she showed her ability to master a moment to perform Under Pressure to do the very thing Donald Trump could not do which is prepare a strategy execute it when it mattered and remain focused and consistent Under Pressure those aren't just skills you need to win a debate those are skills you need to be president I'm joined Now by our senior editor Clare Gordon to talk through more moments from the night CLA hi great to be here it really seemed like Harris's theory of this debate was to remind people of the worst of trump and it seemed like Trump's theory of this debate was the border the border the Border he pivoted to it and many of his answers when it wasn't the question do you think that despite his weak and wild performance in other ways that there could actually be validity to that theory it was the theory in 2016 and to the surprise of many liberals it was effective and the crisis of the Border has only gotten worse since then this feels appropriate as an analogy given the day on which we're talking which is September 11th in the 2008 primary Joe Biden best line of that whole primary and you got to think back to a period in time when Rudy Giuliani seemed like a significant political force in American life but Rudy J was running for president and Biden who was of the Democrats the best at talking about National Security and meeting Republican weakness baiting with his own very specific brand of condescension had this devastating line where he said that for Rudy Giuliani a sentence is a noun a verb in 911 and for Donald Trump a sentence is sometimes a noun a verb and the border that it is his sort of unified field Theory of Everything and he can lay claim to at least under his version of this some success if you look and and we've been preparing for an episode on the border so I've been kind of deep in this data if you look at border encounters which is the way we track the the migrant flow to the southwestern border as soon as Joe Biden takes office they spike it goes from around and often below 50,000 a month I think it was under Trump to as high as 300,000 in I think it's December of 2023 the problem for Donald Trump is that he's not really making a policy case about the Border he's making an expressive case about the Border that's also why it's significant that he repeated these sort of social media seems to be largely story about Haitian immigrants eating dogs and cats that he's motivated by dislike of immigrants he's motivated by desire to not have them in this country there is some position nearer to his than Democrats would like to admit that it's become quite popular and you see it in how far right Democrats have moved what was KLA Harris's pitch on the border not comprehensive immigration reform not more Humane treatment of immigrants but a quite farri border security bill that would actually be about stopping this flow right Democrats have moved moved quite a bit further to the sort of policy positions you might have associated with Donald Trump or someone more from his side of things a couple of years ago and they've had to do that because under Biden and under their their both their policies and their sort of expressive governance they lost credibility On the Border the situation got much much worse the flow got much higher it actually became a policy problem not just an invented Fox News thing and now they're trying to win back credibility on deterrence they're trying to win back credibilities people can manage orderly border and you got to you got to have that credibility before you can do anything else I don't know that it is helpful to Donald Trump who scuttled that bipartisan Bill to just seem like a guy who is monom maniacally obsessed with the Border because most people don't think the border is everything and Donald Trump I think at this point is not doing a good job explaining aside from the signal that that he would be somebody who immigrants would understand would not want them here and he would try to do things to make their lives miserable and hassle them and Deport them there's not a lot there Beyond it and so the the the effort to kind of connect everything else to it I don't know at least for me it it falls flat you could imagine a better candidate making it work but he was at least not that candidate on Tuesday night and but you said is expressive and I think that people and for good reason trust that he would shut down the Border he means it I'm actually writing a column about this I think a lot about this line from Mark Schmidt who's at the new America Foundation but but is an old political mentor of mine and he used to say that it's not what you say about the issues it is what the issues say about you the reason policy communication matters is not because every voter is a policy expert with a highly detailed sense in their mind of whether or not they believe in the taxation of unrealized capital gains it is because policy is a way of communicating who you are and what you think is important and Trump who is very scattered on policy is a master of this kind of communication the way he communicates about immigration communicates something very true about him he does not like immigration he thinks there are too many immigrants here he does not want more coming that if you elect Trump you are electing somebody who will look at the immigration situation and will try to think of ways to lock down the Border try to think of ways to make the lives of immigrants worse try to think of ways anything he can to keep people from coming to this country I actually think this is a place where on a lot of issues Harris I mean Democrats more broadly but Harris in particular struggles she talks about policy in a clear way like she will describe her policies correctly um she does not fall into the word salad that Donald Trump falls into but they don't feel like they are saying that much about her at her core level what is Kam Harris's belief about immigration at our core level what is Kam Harris's belief about fracking the problem is that the the signal for many people is muddled about what it is saying about her compare that to the way she talks about something like abortion where you can feel that the policy communication is a value communication she's been steady on the issue her whole career and when she talks about it you you get an immediate sense right if you were a voter watching that on Tuesday and you looked at this Donald Trump is kind of all over the place he's not really saying what he clearly thinks kamla Harris wants to restore abortion predictions you would walk away with no doubt about that at all and that would be a true statement about her whereas what does Donald Trump actually want to see happen on abortion unclear so that's a place where he's communicating policy a bit right return it to the States but without communicating what the policy says about him because there actually is a disconnect between the policy and and what he seems to believe [Music] [Music] so let's talk about Trump's abortion policy because this was a pretty interesting moment I thought in the debate where Trump says that he doesn't support a federal abortion ban but then he's specifically asked whether if that came to his desk he would veto it he doesn't answer and then he's asked directly but if I could just get a yes or no because your running mate J JD Vance has said that you would veto if you did come to your desk and this is what he said I didn't discuss it with JD in all fairness uh JD and I I don't mind if he has a certain view but I think he was speaking for me but I really didn't look we don't have to discuss it because she'd never be able to get it just like she couldn't get student loans they couldn't get student loans they didn't even come close to getting student loans they taunted young people and a lot of other people that had loans they can never get this approved so it doesn't matter what she says about going to Congress so wonderful let's go to Congress do it but the fact is that for years they wanted to get it out of Congress and out of the federal government and we did something that everybody said couldn't be done and now you have a vote of the people on abortion so Trump has already said in this debate that he's against an abortion ban JD Vance said he would veto it why wouldn't Trump just say he would veto it I think that is one of the good questions of the debate and Trump's unwillingness to Simply say no I will not sign I would indeed veto a six- week a 12-week abortion ban spoke volumes what he does here is very strange he tries to move off of abortion he's so uncomfortable talking about abortion he begins inserting student loans as the example to talk about instead of the thing that he's actually talking about and the argument he goes on to make both about him and about Harris is if I'm being generous to it this argument is in a way correct neither of them under the current rules of the Senate are going to be sent an abortion bill of any size that right now you can't run abortion through budget reconciliation so it is subject to the filibuster neither party is going to have 60 votes in the Senate so Harris always phrases this very carefully she says if and when Congress sends me a bill codifying roie Wade I will sign it proudly she doesn't say she will be able to do that she says if she's given that bill she will sign it what Trump says is she won't be given that bill what he is kind of saying repeatedly when he has pushed on this is he won't be given the bill either I think there are two problems here one is that one of them might be given the bill we were not that far in 2021 from seeing the filibuster opened up there's already been significant talk of carving out an exception to the filibuster and there are exceptions to the filibuster including by the way for nominating Supreme Court Justices which is how Trump was able to get get these people on the court in the first place but there are exceptions to the filibuster and there are um people in both parties who want to make abortion one of them and so if that happened if Republicans had 53 votes Or democrats had 52 votes and they carve at an exception either president Harris or president Trump could indeed get one of these bills and what Harris has said is that she will sign a bill codifying roie Wade and it's worth noting that that is actually a climb down for Democrats that is her taking a more moderate position than what the Democratic party has taken recently what Democrats wanted to do around the do's decision was passed something called The Women's Health protection act it banned all kinds of things that red states were doing when row is still in force to make abortion harder to access in saying that she will sign the protections of row back into law she is very notably not saying that she will sign the Women's Health protection act into law maybe she would if it if for got to her but her actual position is row and Trump I suspect because he does not want to actually make pro-life voters angry at him is refusing to take the other side of this now he has said in his platform that the states should decide what he has not said is if he gets a republican Congress and they send him an abortion ban that he would veto it and I think you should take that seriously it may not be literally his position soly not his position in the campaign but he's a pro-life politician who appointed a pro-life majority to the Supreme Court who governs in a pro-life Coalition and he also did not say in a way I think was telling that the states that if passy severe Bans are doing in his view something wrong but he seemed comfortable upsetting the pro-life voters in the past what changed I think there are red lines in his mind and possibly actually in politics that he cannot cross I think a lot of pro-life voters understand that he is trying to win an election and they're not happy with his repositioning here but they are accepting of it making a clear promise about the future to oppose the single thing pro-life movement voters want more than anything else is different a bit of pandering during the campaign is different than a commitment to oppose this and by the way a commitment to oppose it that would then be used against any other Republican if Donald Trump made that commitment in debate and he loses in 20244 well then in 2028 when you know Marco Rubio and Nikki Haley and Ronda santis and JD Vance and so on are running for the the Republican nomination they'll all be confronted with Donald Trump's position and they'll say well do you agree with Donald Trump your former standard Bearer that you would veto a National Abortion ban so for him to make that step is to betray or at the very least oppose the pro-life movement in a much more substantial way than simply saying not that much about it in his platform so talking about another policy piece Trump's tariffs and KL Harris has been attacking Trump for the Tariff saying there are sales tax my opponent has a plan that I call the Trump sales tax which would be a 20% tax on everyday Goods that you rely on to get through the month economists have said that that Trump sales tax would actually result for middle class families and about $4,000 more a year because of his policies and his ideas about what should be the backs of middle class people paying for tax cuts for billionaires and Trump pointed out in his answer on that that the Biden Administration has kept some of his Chinese tariffs in place in fact they never took the Tariff off because it was so much money they can't it would totally destroy everything that they've set out to do they're taken in billions of dollars from China and other places they've left the tariffs on and then KLA Harris was directly asked about that by the moderator and uh let's just play that clip vice president Harris I do want to ask for your response and you heard what the president said there because the Biden Administration did keep a number of the Trump tariffs in place so how do you respond well let's be clear that the Trump Administration resulted in a trade deficit one of the highest we've ever seen in the history of America he invited trade Wars you want to talk about his deal with China what he ended up doing is under Donald Trump's presidency he ended up selling American chips to China to help them improve and modernize their military basically sold us out when a policy about China should be in making sure the United States of America wins the competition for the 21st century can you read the tea leaves there on what her trade policy would be what she believes on trade and why wouldn't she want to answer that question more clearly here's what I wish KLA Harris would have said here what I think is actually true I wish you would have said something like Donald Trump has a lot of bad ideas but I'm a big enough person to say he has some ideas that have had kernels of Truth in them and when he ran in 2016 on a much more skeptical position towards China he was right and one of the things we did in the Biden her Administration is to not change things where we thought Donald Trump had a point we changed things where he didn't have a point but not where he did so yes we kept his relatively modest tariffs on Chinese Goods that is a different policy than putting a 10 or 20% tariff on anything that any country including Canada or Ireland might export to the US and Trump's presentation on his own policies here that people are not going to pay this the countries will pay it it's going to be eaten up we know how tariffs work of course it gets passed on of course it does but this is a place I think people think so much about the way Trump lies that they don't think that much or talk that much about the places where he just has a misguided view of how economics for the world works you might want to put a tariff on a very particular kind of good where you're trying to either stop unfair competition from elsewhere or nurture in a very specific way a domestic industry right you might say we want America to be the leading semiconductor man ufacturer so we're going to put a tariff on semiconductors from other countries there reasons you may not want to do that but that's a kind of theory you would do you don't put a tariff on fruit that you import from other countries and you have neither the climate nor the intention of growing here that's stupid that's just raising costs for no reason and Trump's policy here is stupid but on China it is a surprising and very important fact about the Biden Administration that they were to Trump's right on China they went further than he did they didn't just keep his tffs on China they went further they gated Technologies they've done a whole number of things they've done more in terms of alliances than he was ever able to do the critique they can make of trump on China is that they've been harsher China Hawks than he has and she did kind of communicate that she uh challenged him on on chips but I think without admitting again this is where I think it's important to admit what people already sense they believe Trump is tough on China telling he isn't is not going to work because it's also not true Trump occasioned a huge shift in how American politics thinks about China and that is his victory you can say that he did something's wrong whatever but but the the unwillingness to sort of admit that things have moved and then build on that right which I think is a more convincing presentation is weaker so I thought she didn't do a good job I thought he did a bad job I thought she didn't do a very good job of separating out what was going on here that there's a set of china policies and then this Universal tariff [Music] [Music] policy another policy in the debate which I just have to ask you about because this has been your bread and butter for a long time was the healthcare section and it was the most incredible flashback to 2016 having the moderator ask about whether Trump had a plan if he were to repeal Obamacare I had a choice to make do I save it and make it as good as it can be or do I let it rot and I saved it I did the right thing but it's still never going to be great and it's too expensive iive for people and what we will do is we're looking at different plans if we can come up with a plan that's going to cost our people our population less money and be better health care than Obamacare then I would absolutely do it but until then I'd run it as good as it can be run so just yes or no you still do not have a plan I have concepts of a plan I'm not president right now but if we come up with something I would only change it if we come up with something something that's better and less expensive and there are Concepts and options we we have to do that and you'll be hearing about it in the not too distant future were you surprised to hear that Trump saved Obamacare yeah I I was surprised to hear that Donald Trump saved the Affordable Care Act though obviously I I thank him for his service I thought a lot of things were interesting in this that Obamacare is a lot of imperfection to it right there are many things many of us would do differently but actually beating it is not easy there isn't a plan that just like tastes great is more filling costs less money induces less disruption than than Obamacare and so for Trump now to take partial ownership of Obamacare right that is political Victory but I also think this speaks to a genuine weakness of him as a candidate look Harris's policy bucket is a little unfilled right now because she didn't go through a primary which would have been a long period of time in which her policy teams could be working and meeting with her and testing things out and talking to experts and talking to groups policy development takes time but Donald Trump was President he has been running this whole time and he still has nothing the concept of a plan it's not that that's like a crazy thing to say on some level that you know he's not done his plan yet but you do have to ask why what have you been doing that was so much more than coming up with a good healthare plan why don't you have anything here and the truth is like it reflects something else among Republicans now which is that they have given up on Healthcare there isn't a good plan that has adherence in the Republican caucus and also has some political Savvy to it that Trump can take down off of a shelf the Obamacare appeal effort failed and that has sort of left Republican Healthcare wonery in a state of rough devastation they don't want to go back into the dark room where the bad thing happened and you see that here right the trumpists don't know what they want to do on Healthcare the GOP broadly doesn't know what it wants to do on Healthcare so Donald Trump doesn't know what he wants to do on healthare and so he fumbled around and what Harris's position in healthcare was which you didn't go into in any detail but has been what you saw with Joe Biden is like yeah we're going to keep tweaking the Affordable Care Act make it a bit bigger make it more generous make it more expansive we're going to negotiate down Medicare prescription drug prices there actually is like a Playbook Democrats know how to run now and Republicans like not just Donald Trump are kind of nowhere on this issue I know you wish we lived in a world where this was all a policy debate but the differences in tariff policy in healthcare policy how much is the election at all about that how much does any of that stuff matter I never know how to answer this question because I think the way polic communication works is a little tricky what I will say is that if you watched KLA Harris on that stage what you saw was a candidate who does think policy positioning is Meaningful and it goes back again to this point that that the point is not the policies per se but policy is one way and record is another that voters Intuit it who a politician is and she is trying to Signal who she is to the electorate which does not know her very well and so is Donald Trump and what she did last night was bait Donald Trump into reminding the elector to something much of it already believes about him which is that there is a crazed side to the man that while he might be right about some things you can't trust this guy he's not normal on some fundamental level he doesn't have it together and she tried to offer I think a pretty straightforward view of who she is in a way I thought that the kamla Harris presentation on Tuesday was a huge victory for Joe mansion on abortion her position is not what the Democratic Senate caucus position was it was Joe mansion's position he did not vote for the bill Democrats supported and said no no no what we should do is just roie weight if you heard her on fracking she got pushed a few times well didn't you say you had banned fracking and she did say that or a version of that and she has flipped on that and she said look I'm here in Pennsylvania everybody here cares a lot about tring and I'm here to tell you that we've never had more domestic natural gas production than we have under the Biden and Harris Administration and not only that in the inflation reduction act we opened up new leases for fracking and I was a tiebreaking vote on that why was that in the IR partially Joe Mansion significantly Joe Mansion she didn't brag about the climate Investments of the IRA at any length she bragged about opening up new lands for fracking on immigration what did she say she didn't say she was going to restart a big comprehensive immigration reform process because we need to balance the humanity of how we treat immigrants with the national interest with an orderly border she said the bipartisan Senate border deal negotiated with James lenford that she would sign that bill this was on policy an extremely Centrist presentation her economic ideas right now are fairly modest she talks about building more homes but is not specific about how to do that talks about an expanded child tax credit which is a great idea and I hope does pass talks about the this boost to small businesses but there isn't a kind of uniting theory of it what you're seeing here is a lot of policy communication meant to communicate to wavering voters in Pennsylvania that she is not too far left for them that she is a kind of moderate Democrat of a type they recognize maybe the vibe they associated with Joe Biden in 2020 even if in practice Joe Biden governed to the left of that as president so I think that was the message of a lot of what was happening there do you think she successfully fended off the attack at least from Trump or the attempt to Define her as a dangerously liberal Marxist who wants to give transgender surgeries to illegal aliens in prisons man Trump did her so many favors in that I don't even think he tried very hard to make this argument everybody in the Republican party is begging Donald Trump to focus on positions from 2020 and he's just not disciplined enough to do it now I don't think she totally allayed concerns right you know these were things the moderators were pressing her on and she'd often just sort of Dodge them the problem right now for Harris in my view or the work that is left undone is Harris is sort of dragging around two anchors in terms of her self-definition which is she's dragging around the 2020 primary which is the only time people really saw her on the national stage under her own definition and she went way to the left way further left than her reputation was in California and so now she's pivoting away from these positions but without a very clear explanation of well these are all dumb why did you adopt them in 2020 and I think it's hard for to say like well we all slightly lost our mind in that primary because we were terrified that we lose to Bernie Sanders and so we tried to co-opt his positions but we were never going to do any of that right like that's the actual answer to that question but it doesn't really work and then the other is the Biden Administration and she could do a few things she could try to forthrightly defend their record say this has been a much better presidency than you give a credit for but she's not doing that they're probably wise not to do that because people's views of that are are pretty stable and they don't like the Biden presidency they just don't like how things have gone so saying I am running as the proud heir to this wildly successful presidency is not going to work but nor is she exactly separating herself from it so the Administration is also kind of an anchor she's dragging around so she's sort of defined around the 2020 primary to extent she's self-definition defined around the unpopular Biden Administration to the extent she is National you know vice presidential definition and what they've done is sort of try to sand the edges off of both of those things but without creating I think in a clear way a new definition for her separate from just being the prosecutor who will prosecute the case against Donald Trump so I think she wiped the floor with Donald Trump in this debate but that was the Donald Trump part of the debate I think the the KL Harris part of this is still a little bit of an open question and the focus groups I was seeing of undecided voters sort of reflected that too like they didn't like Donald Trump they thought she was better but they didn't really feel like they left knowing her what is the thing she is trying to say that Kay Harris cares about most and if you vote for her this is what you're going to get in terms of her own record she's not been a politician driven by economics but there are things that drive her like for any president or candidate and things that are a little bit more distant from her core and I don't think she's managed to collapse the distance I don't you know she doesn't burn with it in a way that I think you kind of need to in the way that Bernie Sanders did with Medicare for all in the way that Elizabeth Warren does on corporate power in the way that Donald Trump does on immigration and the economy is Big right like that's like the first thing often on on people's minds so I am extremely sympathetic to where they are in this I mean again they have not had any of the normal time a candidacy at this level would have to figure all this out they are trying to do everything all at once at warp speed with really only weeks to go until the election itself and still she is lucky that Trump has not been doing a good job defining her she's lucky that he is undisciplined and chaotic so how do you replace place the vague impression people have of KLA Harris maybe impressed by her as a performer think she seems better than they had heard but they still don't really know who she is with they do feel like they know who she is and what are the fights you can pick that like give you a sense of her core commitments I think that's their their sort of Unsolved problem and I just want to end by playing the moment of the debate that if there is any spark that animates the anti-m Maga coalition this would be it Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people so let's be clear about that and clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that but we cannot afford to have a president of the United States who attempts as he did in the past to upend the will of the voters in a free and fair election and I'm going to tell you that I I have traveled the world as vice president United States and world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump I have talked with military leaders some of whom worked with you and they say you're a disgrace and when you then talk in this way in a presidential debate and deny what over and over again are court cases you have lost because you did in fact lose that election it leads one to believe that perhaps we do not have in the candidate to my right the temperament or or the ability to not be confused about fact that's deeply troubling and the American people deserve better I thought that was her best answer of the debate after a while of baiting him that was when she delivered a a roundhouse and the thing she did beautifully there and correctly not just a debate tactic but this whole sort of strategy they were playing out over that night was to take something that was performance and make it indictment what she is saying about Trump here that the move she makes so adroitly is that on the one hand yeah Donald Trump is lying about the election he did not allow or try not to allow the peaceful transfer of power he has made us look terrible in front of the world but that gets to something fundamental about him he's not able to process something like losing the election he is actually confused or has confused himself about the facts of the election this guy does not keep facts straight in his head he does not know what to believe he's like all up in his own Grievances and personal narrative and conspiracies and whatever else you think about him whether you like his position on China or the Border or tariffs whether you like the Donald Trump economy or not this is not the guy you trust with power at the absolute core of this election is can you trust Donald Trump to be president again given what happened and what he did last time he was president and also what happened last time he lost as president and turning this not just into a question of who won the election but of Donald Trump's cognitive Fitness not that you can't trust Donald Trump here because he's undemocratic but because when you talk in this way in a presidential debate and deny what over and over again or core cases you have lost it leads one to believe that perhaps we do not have in the candidate to my right the temperament or the ability to not be confused about fact that's getting it the fundamental thing here I don't think the guy you saw up there on Tuesday seemed like he could do the job I don't think you would want that guy in a negotiation with Congressional leaders to say nothing of a negotiation with Putin or Netanyahu or Kim Jong-un in any set of directions he was not cognitively strong he did not have high levels of um executive function after the first debate Democrats looked at the candidates and said we are not drawing the fitness contrast we want to be drawing they did something very difficult persuaded Joe Biden to step aside they United around Harris and they basically tried to redraw the contrast and I think they were pretty successful at that overnight debates don't just matter because of what happens that night they matter because of the stories they create in American politics and the way people respond to them and it's not that I think this debate will end the Trump candidacy but even if you watched how Republicans are responding which is largely complaining about the ABC moderators you saw their own dispiritedness Donald Trump did not perform he had a job to do and he didn't do it and that that sentiment in American politics the The Vibes I guess we now called momentum all that really does matter and this is what I think Harris did to win the debate that she fundamentally made Donald Trump look like he wasn't up to the job and she got Donald Trump to make Donald Trump look like he wasn't up to the job and she had her own weaknesses or imp Perfections in that but she looked like she was and that was a fundamental contrast [Music] this episode of the E Clin show is produced by Clare Gordon factchecking by Michelle Harris with Kate Sinclair and Jack mccordic our senior engineer is Jeff galb our senior editor is Clare Gordon the show's production team also includes Annie Galvin Roland who Elias iswith Kristen Lynn and Aman sahota original music by Isaac Jones audience strategy by Christina Sami and Shannon Busta the executive producer of New York Times opinion audio is Annie Rose ster [Music]