PrintPresident Trump Won the Debate with Harris
It is not surprising that there was a surge of punditry opinions arguing that Kamala Harris won the September 10 debate with Donald Trump. The DNC desperately needed the validation of such a win and it was also evident that the ABC moderators felt the same. Many conservative analysts have joined in and agreed that Trump lost the debate. From the standpoint of debate practice, Trump performed one of his most successful debates and arguably won the debate.
One of the most important successes that Trump scored that has been ignored by analysis was his effective handling of the hostile moderators. Muir and Davis “fact checked” Trump five times while making zero fact checks of Harris. The debate format is unusual because each candidate had an option to make a one-minute rebuttal at any point during the debate. Trump used this option masterfully to have the last word on most of the major controversies in the debate. This was compounded by his win of the coin toss where he again had the last word and made the powerful point that any of the proposals Harris made during the debate could be dutifully performed back at the White House. Trump suggested in the middle of the debate that the two of them should stop debating so she could go back to the White House and implement her proposals.
This leads to the second major strength for Trump that allowed him to prevail over Kamala Harris: the use of humor. Humor is an exceptional weapon of political argumentation. Trump used it with devastating effect multiple times. At least three times, Trump made even Kamala Harris laugh at his jokes directed at her. One of the most famous events in debate history and captured in the recent Reagan movie was when Reagan made Mondale laugh at his joke about his “youth and inexperience.” Trump had multiple moments where he made the audience laugh at Harris’ expense. Trump’s turning of Harris’ dominant debate tactic ‘my turn to speak’ concluding with “does this sound familiar” was a devastating demolition of her tactic used against Mike Pence in 2020. Humor is an underrated tool in political debates because this rhetorical form is highly dramatic, filled with incredible tension and anxiety. The comic relief provided by multiple humorous incursions by Trump demonstrate a level of confidence and argumentation mastery that is higher than Harris.
Many commentators are distracted by the facial expressions made by Harris. From a debate standpoint, looking at your opponent and making mocking interpersonal gestures with your face is childish and weak. Focusing on the camera and the audience that is adjudicating the debate is the best rhetorical option. It is likely that Harris hoped that her close proximity on the stage would allow her to provoke outrage from Trump with her mocking gestures. That did not happen and at key moments such as the discussion of the 13 dead U.S. soldiers in Afghanistan, Harris had to abruptly change her facial expression on camera to not appear callous to a serious error by the Biden/ Harris administration.
It is important to understand that Harris is one of the best debaters to ever take the stage for the DNC in recent history. Her first debate against Biden in 2020 was devastating. Her background as an attorney and prosecutor provide her with a base set of skills that are formidable. Her performance on September 10 did not appear to be among her best performances. It was of course better than Biden’s performance on June 27 and that low expectation game may be the driver behind the idea that her recent effort was so strong. Harris’ first debate against Biden in the 2020 primaries is instructive and important. She leveled two incredible charges against the defendant Biden: 1) Biden was historically sympathetic to anti-black segregation in a manner that made him unsuitable to lead the Democrats in 2020 and 2) the allegations by Tara Reade that Biden had raped her were credible and needed to be considered seriously before Biden could be accepted as the nominee. These historical details are easy to forget but her skills in skewering Biden in that debate are arguably the reason that the Biden team chose her to be his vice-presidential candidate. They wanted to keep their enemies closer. Trump alluded to this division during the debate when he said that Biden hated Harris. Media reports indicate that Jill Biden continues to maintain a grudge about the rape allegations supported by Harris against her husband.
Debates are complex rhetorical games and they are further confounded by the misconduct of journalistic moderators who want to argue for their personal preferences in politics. Muir and Davis held advanced degrees from the Candy Crowley media school of debate interference. Despite this misconduct, such gaming makes Harris appear to be a weaker candidate who needed the protection of media guides. ABC News executive Dana Walden likely expected Muir and Davis to favor her candidate as indicated by her long donation history to Democratic Party candidates since 2003. Trump’s ability to thwart Muir and Davis by asserting his one-minute rebuttal privileges repeatedly arguably drove the ABC News event off the rails. The debate finished almost 15 minutes late. Trump’s aggressive consumption of debate times stood in contrast to the CNN debate of June 27 where he and Biden both underanswered questions by almost 12 minutes. At moments Muir and Davis appeared to pause as if hoping that Harris might invoke a reciprocal rebuttal right against Trump’s aggressive assertions. In almost every instance of those pauses, Harris deferred to the moderators and hoped to reset the debate with a new question from the sympathetic moderators.
It is important to realize that Muir and Davis did breach professional ethics by engaging in such a partisan display at the debate. The first presidential debate in 1960 actually required amendments by the Congress to broadcast laws regarding campaign communication because of high ethical concerns that the media should not interfere with the freedom of political campaign speech. ABC’s decision to in some sense correct the more balanced approach of CNN in June implies strongly that Harris is a weak candidate who needs the protection of partisan moderators. Harris’ assertions about January 6 and Charlottesville were false but unchallenged by the moderators. The re-assertion of the Charlottesville narrative appeared to be a rhetorical homage to Biden who rarely refrains from the “fine people on both sides” mythology when in publicly partisan settings.
It is not unlikely that, similar to the first debate between Al Gore and George W. Bush in 2000, that the initial polling showing a win for Gore devolved into a sense that Bush won within the week. Gore also employed aggressive split screen non-verbals to convey his exasperation with Bush. Over time, those antics did not wear well in the public. It is not improbable that this process will play out again in fall 2024. C-SPAN polling about the debate may already indicate the less partisan but more realistic conclusion. Kamala Harris is a much more formidable debater than Joe Biden but her performance this week was not among her best. Conversely, Trump, who does not often score an outright win in any candidate debate, gave among his strongest debate performances by using humor strategically and dominating the hostile moderators.
Dr. Ben Voth is professor of rhetoric and director of debate at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. He is the author of several academic books regarding political communication, presidential rhetoric, and genocide.
