Kamala Hammers the First Nail in the Coffin

Our first and possibly last debate.

Sep 14, 2024

Hey everyone, I have a quick debate recap, along with some other general thoughts.

Kamala torched him.

If you have not watched the debate, you probably should, but you also could just rely on what the general narrative has been since it happened: Kamala wrecked the floor with Donald Trump. It was not close.

I think there has been a heavy focus on how poorly Trump performed, but that overlooks how well Kamala did. She had great responses to the moderators’ questions and also headed off some of Trump’s attacks. My personal favorite was her response to Trump’s accusation that she wants to “take away” America’s guns: Kamala straight up said she is a gun owner, so why would she want to take away someone’s guns?

Kamala owning a gun is news. I had several immediate reactions:

Kamala is strapped?
Kamala has a stick?
Kamala is chromed up?
Kamala got a beam?
Kamala got that gat?
Kamala got a whisper pickle?
Kamala got that heat on her?

She honestly did really well. I think some people were asking for some more specifics, but how deep can you really get when you have two minutes to answer a question? The debate format ultimately served her really well.

Available polling also shows that the public agrees with me, with her margin of victory largely mirroring Trump’s margin of victory over Biden this past June. But there were a few other clues that Trump lost the debate, with some of them emerging during the debate itself.

For one, shortly after the debate kicked off conservative commentators began saying the ABC News anchors were biased against Trump, which was a clear sign he was losing. The moderators being biased is an extreme right-wing view according to polls, and one that doesn’t square with reality.1 I think what happens in settings like these is that conservatives - who are largely ensconced within a misinformation bubble - are forced to interact with the truth. Megyn Kelly, in particular, had a meltdown over the moderators’ failure to correct Kamala’s “lie” about Charlottesville, but Kamala’s statement at the debate was 100% accurate.

I guess you’re basically reading me repeat what everyone else has said: Kamala won. But does it matter?

2024 is a weird year.

There have been a number of different reactions to the debate, with some people speculating that even though Kamala won it won’t have that much of an effect in our polarized climate. That could be true and even seems reasonable to me.

But 2024 is weird. We have never had a sitting President drop out of the race in July of an election year after losing a debate. So, to say debates don’t matter in 2024 after we just had (probably) the most consequential debate in history is a bold statement.

In the scattering of public polls we have gotten since the debate, they all show improved numbers for Harris. And then there is the fact that voters still don’t know much about her: Harris has a chance to define herself and debates will definitely help with that. I do think if she does another one, she should get deeper into the weeds on policy, but I am also bad at politics so that might be bad advice.

Wait. Another debate?

OK, I know Trump announced yesterday that he was done debating for the rest of the election cycle. I even said to Jackal Champion Adam Kail (who happened to be in Denver with me to watch the debate) after it was over that this was the last one, because there was no way Trump would debate her again.

But can he really withstand weeks of Harris’s Campaign goading him? They are going to say over and over again that she beat Trump so badly that he is now scared of her. Something tells me he will walk it back and try to have another crack at her.

The debate matters.

I have had some major thoughts about the debate over the past few days, and a lot of them are centered around this tweet:

Erickson is delusional so his feed is pretty much unhinged nonsense, but this tweet stood out to me. So did this one:

Erickson supports Trump and wants him to win, but he also credits himself as someone who engages with reality as opposed to misinformation (again, his Twitter feed does not reflect this). So, it’s illuminating to see him basically say the main reason Trump is losing the debate is because he’s repeating stuff other people told him.

Is this the best possible, reality-based defense of the potential leader of the free world? He has bad debates because someone shows him memes about people eating cats in Ohio and he believes them? If someone is that gullible or - let’s put it in simple terms - stupid, how are they qualified for office? Erickson and other Serious Pro-Trump Pundits™ talk about Trump like he’s a child that has to be bribed to elicit good behavior.

Before the debate started, I probably said more than a few things to Adam, but I remember one: Kamala is going to crush Trump. And I said it because Trump is deeply stupid and Kamala is not.

Trump is politically savvy and he is super clever. I think he understands the human id pretty well, which is why he leans into populism so much. But in terms of raw brain power, he is severely lacking. To demonstrate this, I will end with my personal favorite moment of the debate:

Start the video at 9:49. You will soon hear Trump talk about how people are pouring into our country from “prisons and jails…and insane asylums.”

At his rallies, Trump keeps bringing up Hannibal Lecter when talking about immigration, and saying that is who is coming to our country. For a while, the Press has mostly been confused by Trump’s statements. But a couple months ago, people started to get it: Trump thinks that when people claim political asylum, it means they are coming from an insane asylum, like Hannibal Lecter.

The would-be leader of the free world does not know what political asylum means. Let it sink in.

See you all next week.

I went back a re-watched the debate and it was stunning how much Trump was able to lie without being “fact-checked” in real time. For example: In just the first few minutes of the debate he said that we had the highest inflation ever under Biden/Harris, which is just plainly false. The moderators did nothing.