Will Kamala Harris’s Debate Win Be Enough to Move the Needle?
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The first and likely only debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump was a fierce showdown. Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison. Not everybody got handed $400 million on a silver platter and then filed bankruptcy six times. 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. Donald Trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. And now I'm here with New Yorker staff writers Claire Malone and Vincent Cunningham. We went straight from live-blogging the debate to the studio to unpack whether Harris' strong performance against Trump was enough to move the needle.

You're listening to The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett, and I'm a senior editor at The New Yorker.

Hey, Claire. Hey, Vincent. Hey. Thanks so much for being here. Of course. So you guys just finished live blogging this whole debate together. What are your, like in a couple sentences, what would you say your takeaways are from tonight? You know, it's funny. As I was watching the debate, I kind of felt this feeling that I used to have when I watched debates, which is like, okay, is this going to move the needle that much? Like that's kind of my takeaway, which is Trump wasn't

bananas in the way that Trump can be bananas. He didn't like interrupt or kind of call her comrade Kamala to her face. He didn't use the phrase at all, right? Yeah. And Harris was really competent. And I think very, you know, her idea was to introduce herself to people. And so I kind of think it was in some sense, if I'm thinking about like who are the undecided voters,

Yeah, I just kind of said like, oh, okay, well, this is sort of like a thing that's checked off on the campaign timeline and on to the next one. But I'm curious if that's just me being like reverting to like cynical political reporter brain where it's like, does it matter? Yeah. Because the last debate was so consequential, obviously. Yeah, it is weird. On the one hand, as you say, it did feel just kind of like a bit of business in a way that nothing – I mean –

It's a few months ago that Trump was shot. It's like a lot of things have happened, so it's just weird to have just like, oh, they showed up and they spoke or whatever. It seemed to me that they were both themselves for good or ill, right? Like they...

showed the parts of themselves that they are, the people that are there, let's say, not just voters, but fans probably already think, you know, probably already take for granted and admire or whatever. One thing that I think that gives Harris a slight advantage is that she did do some work of, like, pulling out more facets of Trump. She was like, yes, he can be himself, but let me...

invite him to be himself in this way when she's like, you know, like people are leaving your campaign events in droves or whatever, putting him on the defensive. She knows that he's going to come back. He cannot let that go undefended, that kind of statement. So it seemed to me that she kind of showed a little bit or was able to bring out some of the kookier aspects of his character. I think that's right. It did feel – and like, you know, it's interesting, that idea of like –

fan service almost. Yes. Politics has become. I think you're right. Like Kamala Harris fans could say like this is almost like her best vintage like Senate confirmation hearings where she's grilling people. Yeah. She had the most active face ever. Right. That split screen was split screening like she was kind of pursing her lips doing the really and she's like a really good

expressive face. And so she was kind of doing like, you know, that fan service. I love when you could see her laugh, but you couldn't hear her laugh because the mics were muted. No hot mics. Yeah. And Trump was kind of doing the like, you know, down the garden path of like internet conspiracies about the grimy stuff that is now, that eight years ago

this whole podcast would have been like, can you believe he said that stuff? And now I do feel like the need to acknowledge, like I just called it like, yeah, pretty like run-of-the-mill debate. I mean, he said some pretty shocking stuff. He said that like, you know, what was the line about executing babies? Like he had some of those lines said

For the fans. Right. But again, to go back to like inhabiting the brain of the undecided voter, like what did like what did it that's that's kind of what I kept. It's so hard when you're so like in it. Right. When you when you are one of those people that's like I'm on the Internet all the time reading about all this stuff.

But like if you're someone who's, you know, under-informed about the election, and I don't mean that as a shady thing. I mean it as like you're living your life. And you haven't seen memes about dogs being eaten and whatnot. I think one of my final thoughts as the debate closed out was I really was surprised that the candidates didn't talk more about pocketbook issues, to use the sort of trade political phrase. Like inflation is such a huge issue.

thing with people right now. It felt like an obvious area for Trump to attack Harris on. Like, I just feel like Trump actually missed a lot of, like, easy ways to attack Harris, which is why I think probably if, like, I was going to call a winner, I'd say, like, Harris won because Trump didn't really go after her a lot on immigration in a way that he really could have. And, like, he really could have gone after in a more substantial way,

All those kind of like cost of living things that people really feel. So-called Bidenomics. Exactly. Did anyone say Bidenomics? Nobody said Bidenomics. Biden was invoked, but not Bidenomics. Yeah. I'm so sorry to interrupt, but it looks like Taylor Swift just endorsed Trump.

Harris. I think. Yeah. Harris. I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 presidential election. And she starts, like many of you, I watched the debate tonight. If you haven't already, now is a great time to do your research on the issues at hand and the stances these candidates take on the topics that matter to you the most, like dogs being eaten and friendship with Brittany Mahomes over now? I don't know. So what you're saying is this debate did pull uncommitted voter votes.

Taylor Swift. Off of the sidelines and into the fray. Although she did endorse. Look what this made her do.

Is that a thing? I'm sorry. I really apologize. It's late. So, yeah, I mean, we could easily do another podcast just entirely about Taylor Swift. But going back to the debate, it seems like one of the things that voters were interested in going into tonight, just based on polling that came out over the weekend, was hearing more about who Harris is. It's like more of them are interested in hearing who Harris is. Everyone kind of knows who Trump is. That seemed to be what the numbers indicated. And it makes sense.

Do you think that Harris actually revealed anything new about herself to voters? Do we know more about her identity now than we did before? I think people who watch as much of this stuff as we do probably did not learn that much about her. But it's always good to step back and admit to ourselves that that describes fewer people than we would imagine. And there are a lot of people probably that have not heard about her mother, Sharmila, or those other sort of impactful people in her life before.

So I think she probably did do a little bit of that work. And you could see Trump also trying to fill in gaps as well, talking about her, Donald Harris, her Marxist economist father and other things that might read as a little bit more sort of exotic or ominous about her past. So it was a sort of dueling attempt to define her.

Yeah. And I do think the fact that what she led with was, I think one of her first lines was, you know, I was raised a middle class kid and then sort of immediately sets up the contrast with Trump where he got, you know, millions of dollars in loans from his father to get a head up, a step up in life. And I think she used that middle class kid line twice in the debate. So, like, that's obvious evidence.

It was obvious, like, that's what she wants voters to take away. I mean, the other thing, the moderators asked her about Trump's comments about her racial identity. And as you pointed out, Vincent, you know, like, she kind of did, you know, there's this sort of dance that she's doing with, well, let's turn it into something.

Let's turn it back to Trump and what has Trump said about race. And, you know, let's speak to certain constituencies of voters who might be offended by what Trump has said about race. She mentions the Central Park Five, the birther lie about Obama. Yeah. But then turns it around and is like – and also this is a distraction like – Exactly. This is not really what we want to be talking about. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that's like probably what undecided voters would prefer, right? They don't want – I don't know. Maybe. I don't know. Like who is the undecided voter for Harris? That wants like a true – I don't think there is one that also just wants like a truly like race salient election. The Polish people in Pennsylvania, remember? That's what she's pointing out. So I don't know. I feel like, yeah, we didn't learn anything new about her. But even just her presence on the stage, right, as like –

competent. She's a pretty good debater, I think. And so just like just that visual of, you know, telegenic, competent person, not the bumbling like hyena laugh caricature of like the Trump campaign's ads against her. We're going to take a quick break. You'll hear more of the political scene from The New Yorker in just a moment.

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One of the things that Harris needed to do tonight was to, you know, basically just answer for her positions on issues like fracking, which Trump has accused her of flip-flopping on, saying that she's going to ban fracking as soon as she gets in office, and immigration. You know, I think Trump called her the border czar at least once during the debate. Do you think that Harris was successfully able to combat the idea that she is this flip-flopping San Francisco liberal? I think that she...

has always tried, in the way that Biden has always tried to sort of embody the center, not of the political fray, but the center of the Democratic Party. The generic Democrat. Yeah. And so I think she did that again tonight.

Yeah, sure. She did seem like somebody who has changed her positions. I mean, it's a plain fact that she has done that. But it didn't seem to be the kind of flip-flopping that hides some deeper sort of communism or whatever. You know what I mean? Instead, it's like the sort of the occupational flip-flopping of the professional politician. And what do you think of like the way in which she framed Trump on the debate stage? Like, do you think she was trying to make him look like

Weird, extremist, out of touch. That's a good question. You know, again, a couple of times the lines that she seemed to want to push were, you're going to hear lies from this guy, right? And she said that a few times. And I think that's probably her, their strategy is to make, is to remind you of this.

his criminal convictions, to remind you of January 6th, to remind you that like the things he's saying here are outre and not in the mainstream. But it's hard, I think, because Trump has such, everyone has an opinion about him, right? Like no one is, no one doesn't have an opinion about Trump. Waiting to define him in their own mind or whatever. Right. So it's almost like an impossible task, you know, like it's just like,

He is what he is. And it was one of his great electoral strengths in 2016 was it was like, he's just a guy who's always been in the air. Right. And like now he's here. Isn't that weird? Yeah. So it's almost like, yeah, I just think the debate was really kind of all about her and how she.

She introduced herself to the world. But I do think, like, the facial expressions... Sorry, I keep on going back to those. They matter. Those did so much work. Yeah. Like... And I saw... There's this guy, Frank Luntz, who's sort of this infamous... Not infamous. Well-known. He's the pole god. Sometimes derided pole... You know, pole... Pole father. Yeah. And he runs these focus groups. And he had this...

this comment that predictably got a lot of reaction saying that her facial expressions would turn off undecided voters because they leaned into like feminine stereotypes. So I'm just going to leave that there that apparently there's – so there's – people are already spinning or interpreting what

what the facial expressions will mean to undecided voters. It's a very divorced thing to say. Like, you know, she looks like a lady who doesn't like what you're saying. It's a very divorced dad observation. I don't know. One of the issues that Harris is sort of known for at this point is abortion. Voters really like her position on abortion. She's much stronger talking about abortion than Trump is. And I'm curious what you guys thought of the exchange during the debate on abortion. I think...

Harris's position on abortion is just really like coherent. It is the position that most Americans have been used to. It is, you know, Roe v. Wade was, as they say, the law of the land for 50 years. And Trump has a very, you know, his language is comically theatrical about executing babies. I mean, that's not like normal stuff. So I think that rings to voters as odd.

And I will also say, like, for people who are paying attention, I mean, he was sort of dwelling and getting, I think, a little bit, like, exercised during that part of the debate because he's kind of flip-flopped weirdly in the past, like, three weeks on abortion by sort of giving a weird answer about, like, well, I don't know about that six-week ban in Florida. Maybe I'm not for that. And then his campaign made him walk it back. And I do think he is really attentive to the issue of abortion, even though he appointed all these Supreme Court justices that overturned Roe.

He's attentive to this idea that like people view him as a moderate. And I do think like I think I said this in a live blog post. His disavowal of Project 2025 and his weirdness about, well, like, I don't know, abortion. Like I'm not extreme about this. You know, he's trying to paint himself as a moderate to certain voters.

even if his record doesn't say that. And I just think she gave a much more coherent and kind of clear answer that is, frankly, what a lot of Americans actually think about abortion, given its sort of embeddedness in American culture, let alone American law for so long. It's a weird issue where Trump is on some level the victim of his own successes, where the Democrats are a straightforwardly

pro-choice party. There is one line and all you have to do is deliver it with feeling, which Harris is very good at doing. Trump, however, has changed the character of the Republican Party such that there are so many more of these sort of non-churchgoing, non-ideological, specifically about this issue, a lot more voters like that have become like sort of the face and character of this party. And so there is actual ideological ferment in the party about abortion. And so he's like

He is like riding a line that has been sort of driven through this suddenly more diverse party on this issue. And there's to the extent that he kind of lost on that issue. It's not about sort of seeming extreme to Democrats. It's about like actually potentially polarizing his own party in a way that Harris will never have to worry about doing, at least on this issue. Yeah, it's a good point. Like the big tentedness of Trump's Republican Party is a strange thing.

It's a problem sometimes, which is weird. Yeah, totally. Do you think that the big-tentedness will be a problem when it comes to immigration? I'm just thinking about Trump bringing up this idea that migrants have been eating the pets of local families in Ohio, what we were talking about earlier, and whether that is something that might turn off Republicans. Yeah.

The cat thing? I mean, I think, like, you know, actually Trump is really strong on immigration broadly for the electorate. Like, people... Democrats, like, I think, you know, to go back to the idea of, like, a generic Democrat, I think a lot of Americans are unhappy with immigration policy. His immigration policy is...

is obviously extreme in certain points, and also nonsensical in other points. One of his solutions to fixing the housing crisis is, well, we're going to deport massive numbers of migrants, therefore housing costs will go down. Freeing up housing costs. I mean, so that stuff is really extreme. But I actually think broadly, this goes back to, it was surprising to me that he didn't sort of

hammer Harris more on the border stuff because I actually think if you're talking about issues, the economy and immigration are where voters see him as being more competent than Biden was or Harris is. But yeah, the cat stuff, like the internet meme stuff, which he and J.D. Vance are leaning into, I mean, that is...

I would guess that's a turn off to hope. Yeah. Well, it's like truly, I mean, it's truly, you know, when people argue over the question of whether Trump's movement can be called fascist, this is one of those things that she would talk about, right? Yeah. This is like pogrom inciting language of like, these people are bloodthirsty. They're going through our neighborhood, stealing your cat and eating it. This like frankly racist thing about Haitian immigrants, etc.,

It's like truly disgusting stuff. But again, I think this is a weird way in which like Trump's work has already been – maybe it's the opposite of the abortion thing where like every Republican who is turned off by that has already left the Republican Party. Right. Like it's like – Like this is Trump's party and like they're already like the Colin Powell style like dissidents. Yes. I'm not sure there's somebody that's still there. That's a great point. And the framework of very obviously racist, all this stuff.

With that, like, you know, I was on a text chain before the debate and people were bringing up J.D. Vance's sort of promotion of it, I think, today or yesterday. And I was kind of like, I hadn't really been, I was like writing something today, right? So I hadn't been really following it that closely. And then it came up in the debate. And I had this thought, which I'm saying to you guys out loud now, of like, is this going to become like a thing? Like, is this or is this going to remain in the realm of like weird things?

internet meme that like most voters or most Americans don't know about? Or will it become this like headline of the Daily Mail for the next week? And like, you know, people are going to... Like, is it going to become a thing? And I just like...

I think I have no sense of calibration on that. Trump just brought it up unbidden on TV. Like, he was the one who brought that up. Yeah. Yeah. It was it was a strange moment. Yeah. We'll have more with Claire Malone and Vincent Cunningham in just a moment.

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I want to talk to you guys about this idea of the change candidate, since voters have said that they want a candidate who represents change. And it seems like both Harris and Trump are trying to portray themselves as the change candidates, even though they are both Republicans.

incumbents, essentially. And you saw Trump get at this in his closing remarks, where he's basically like, look, like, you know, if Harris wants to, you know, if Kamala wants to change something, she should just go back to the beautiful White House and make those changes right now. Just go back, just get off the stage, just go. And I'm curious whether you think that that is an effective framing. And if you came out of the debate feeling like one candidate, you know, was better at communicating that change message than the other.

I guess she is the change technically because she is less known by many people. She is a face of change. Do I think he effectively tied her to Biden enough? No, I don't. Do I think she effectively didn't answer a lot of questions about Biden? Yes, I do. Like, so I guess coming out of the debate, maybe I would say like Harris presented herself better because she kind of did that, that politician skill of like,

Not over here and not over here. Just right here. I do think she sort of calibrated herself decently well. And just the fact that like she is new. I mean, her sort of like weird excitement bump from, you know, becoming the nominee has ended. But I do think she still has that kind of element of like curiosity. But again, like we're talking about like how do voters in like seven states view her over the next year?

two months. And I, you know, it's an unsatisfying, waffling answer that I just gave, sort of akin to like how I would answer on a debate. This is a meta exercise. No, but I think you're getting at something interesting, which is like just the sort of difficulty of having Harris having to sort of handle her alignment with Biden and kind of how you thread the needle. And it seemed like during the debate, like there were certain things that he did that she wanted to take seriously.

credit for and basically, you know, like, you know, his energy policy and whatnot. But then there were other times where she really wanted to distance herself. And that's just like a tough thing to do. She never openly like shit talked him. Yeah, never dissed him. The closest she came was saying because he was like, you know, she is Biden. She was like, actually, I'm not. So the biggest pushback was like, I am not, you know, ontologically Joe Biden. Like, I am not him. Yeah. Yeah.

I would like to remind you that I am not him as a person, that Joe Biden is a person and I am one. Can I just – did you know she – this is actually one new thing I learned about Kamala Harris. She is a gun owner.

She did say that. I thought that was. Just throw that in there. Interesting. And I want to know more. Yeah. Like, anyway. Yeah, she should have led with that. I own a gun. Can I just admit, though, that this is the biggest way in which I'm just like a coastal elite to my core? My question is, why? You don't need a gun. You've never lived in a place. You don't need a gun.

She definitely, like, bought one at the beginning of her political career, right? I'd be surprised if Trump—I don't think Trump owns a gun. No way. There's no way. No way. He's from Manhattan. Do you think Trump's ever shot a gun? Totally, right? Maybe. Like at, like, a shooting range or something. No, I think he's an indoor cat. I don't think he does. But then we would have seen the—we would have seen the photos, right? I don't think he's— But maybe he looks dorky in the little, like, earmuffs you have to wear. Do you think that Harris did what she needed to do tonight? No.

I think so. Yeah. I think she, as you said, Claire, introduced herself to people who perhaps had things missing about her, not only biographically, but sort of in terms of her comportment. And as I mentioned before, I think she kind of artfully helped reveal just a few glints of Trump's weirdnesses. Like, if you have forgotten suburban married woman who...

Has a general distaste for Democrats and therefore thinks of herself as uncommitted. But then don't you remember, don't you, don't you like not like this guy either? Like if that needed to be sort of brought back into consciousness, I think she maybe did that and might have peeled off a couple of voters. Yeah. Because I think it's like, you know, the other thing about the past four years and people paying attention to the news and like...

people's viewing of the news, reading of the news has gone down so much. It is really hard to emphasize how much people just don't like to read the news or watch the news anymore. And so I think like,

Yeah, just the power of television. And most people aren't going to watch the whole debate, but they're going to snip it. It's going to go online in certain segments. And him being like a little weird at moments. I think that's, you know, to use the word of the zeitgeisty word of the moment. And her just being, again, like, yeah, competent, like not I don't want to sound flip, like, but it's like there was nothing to write home about in this debate in a way that's kind of like.

normal for how debates usually are. And so, and I do think like, now I'm curious about what the inflection points will be in the election. That's right. What's the next like capital E event? Yeah. Like, and I don't know, I guess like there's a vice presidential debate coming up, but I do just wonder like what,

the nature of the rest of the campaign will be, like what the inflection points will be because we don't have the... We're not going to have another debate between the two of them. And you kind of do need those, like, you need the pseudo events, right? Like, you need those pseudo events to kind of keep people interested and tied to what's going to happen. And so that's where I kind of find myself. I'm like, it's such a close race. It felt like quasi-normal in the current, like, paradigm. And now I'm just sort of like, okay, so...

How do we spend the next two months with these people? Maybe that's why Taylor Swift endorsed because the debate was so – she was too boring to be an inflection point. I forgot. So I'm going to create an inflection point. I forgot about that. That's big.

She reinvigorates the heiress tour, but it only goes to swing states. Exactly. And that's how the battle was won. Is the heiress tour back in North America now? Yeah, in about a month I think she's going to be performing in Florida. And then it's like New Orleans and a few other places. And can someone check the chief's schedule? Because, like, when are they going to swing states? Right? That's it. Because she's going to go to his games. Yeah. This is just like...

Eagles. Wearing like a brat t-shirt. Arizona Cardinal. Like we can just like swing state it out and see if there's like a strategy there. Claire, Vincent, thank you so much for being here. Claire Malone and Vincent Cunningham are staff writers for The New Yorker. You can find their work and The New Yorker's debate coverage at newyorker.com. This has been The Political Scene. I'm Tyler Foggett. This episode was produced by Sam Egan and edited by Gianna Palmer with mixing by Will Pertin.

Our executive producer is Stephen Valentino. Chris Bannon is Condé Nast's head of global audio. Our theme music is by Alison Leighton Brown. Enjoy your week, and we'll see you next Wednesday. My name is Madeline Barron. I'm a journalist for The New Yorker. I...

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