When Harris Doesn’t Win, But Trump Loses

From the Center

It’s very difficult to win a presidential debate. It’s much easier to lose one.

While a presidential candidate could conceivably craft a message of such power and persuasion that voters instantaneously decide to cast their ballot for that leader, such a moment has occurred very rarely in the decades since debates have become a regular part of the campaign calendar. But historically, when a general election face-off has produced a definitive advantage for one campaign or the other, it’s almost always because one of the candidates has badly faltered.

Richard Nixon lost to John F. Kennedy in their historic debate. Gerald Ford and Michael Dukakis produced memorable gaffes and were defeated by Jimmy Carter and George H.W. Bush. Bush, in turn, lost his debate to Bill Clinton. Bob Dole, Al Gore, John McCain, and Barack Obama all lost their debates too. Most recently and most decisively, Joe Biden lost his showdown with Donald Trump earlier this summer, so badly that he soon exited the race altogether.

It can be argued that only Ronald Reagan actually won his two most important general election debates, first in 1980 by demonstrating to the American people that he could be trusted with the presidency and again four years later by showing them that he was not too old to continue in the role. 

Add Donald Trump to that list of losers. His encounter with Kamala Harris last week might have been the most conclusive defeat – except for Biden’s this summer – in presidential debating history. And it was all planned in advance.

Harris’ campaign, augmented by a team of Obama-era political veterans, knew from the outset that the likelihood of their candidate winning the debate by dazzling the viewing audience was small. They understood that she needed to demonstrate competence and coherence, a decidedly lower bar than the dominance that a clear-cut victory would require. But they also decided to concentrate on helping their opponent lose the debate. So they prepared their candidate with a series of distractions designed to lure Trump off of his strongest messages into unwinnable arguments over topics that were unlikely to win new supporters but deeply irritated him. 

Their plan worked to perfection. For the first fifteen or twenty minutes, both candidates tentatively offered variations on their key messaging goals. At that point, the debate felt like a football game after a scoreless first quarter. Then Harris took a question about abortion policy, and the entire tenor of the evening changed.

Harris took on the question much more confidently and aggressively than in her earlier responses. Her answer seemed to reassure her after a somewhat cautious start, which then allowed her to begin rolling out a series of taunts that completely discombobulated Trump. She began by mocking his prized rallies and then went on to troll him on a range of other sensitive topics too. After each provocation, Trump became increasingly enraged, and his responses became increasingly erratic. It wasn’t until his closing statement that he calmed himself enough to return to his prepared strategy, offering his strongest argument of the night by questioning her tenure as vice president.

Harris was successful in raising voter concerns about Trump, but her decision to spend so much of her time concentrating on Trump meant that she was unable to accomplish other key objectives. Heading into the evening, one of her greatest challenges was the large number of voters who still did not know much about her record and her agenda. The last weeks of the campaign are a race to define Harris, and after 90 minutes in front of the largest audience that she will see until election night, the vice president did relatively little to fill in those blanks. 

While most public opinion polls showed that the majority of voters felt that Harris had won the debate decisively, those surveys also demonstrated that Trump was trusted by more voters on economic issues and that his margin had increased after the debate. Harris now faces an important challenge to convince those voters otherwise on the issue that a plurality of voters cite as the most important in their decision. It’s no wonder that her campaign began calling for another debate so quickly.

Trump may have lost the battle of the debate, but he still has definitely not lost the election war. And while Harris certainly gained ground last Tuesday night, without another debate, she must work even harder to convince swing voters that she’s up for the job.

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Dan Schnur is a Professor at the University of California – Berkeley, Pepperdine University, and the University of Southern California, where he teaches courses in politics, communications and leadership. Dan is a No Party Preference voter, but previously worked on four presidential and three gubernatorial campaigns, serving as the national Director of Communications for the 2000 presidential campaign of U.S. Senator John McCain and the chief media spokesman for California Governor Pete Wilson. He has a Center bias.

This piece was reviewed and edited by Clare Ashcraft, Bridging Coordinator & Media Analyst (Center bias).