It was hers to lose. Her lead in the polls was melting away over the past few days. Strange, since neither candidate actually changed anything, nor was there any actual news that would tip the scale. Maybe a slight dip in the job numbers? “It’s the economy, stupid.”
The stakes were high. After all, the B/T debate had a dramatic outcome. Seen from the perspective of the self-proclaimed stable genius, the subsequent candidate swap of the Democratic ticket was clearly the result of his very own remarkable debate performance.
In light of the H/T event yesterday, it seems clear that it was the gerontological issue of 46 that the cameras captured, which made his dropping out of the race inevitable. Those snippets that the Internet repeated painted a drastic picture of Joe Biden’s issues.
After the Harris announcement, the Republicans honed in on a narrative that she would be a lightweight, somebody who could not even do an interview, which logically implied that her fate in a debate would be along the lines of her future predecessor. Trump would be victorious in two debates, clearing the entire Democratic bench in two TV innings lasting a mere 3 hours in total. The best work. He actually believed that. Republicans had 9 years now to stop worrying and love Trump, so they went blindly along with that narration.
During those 90 minutes in Philadelphia, it fell on their feet.
Countless times, Harris did not answer the questions that were put in front of her.
Donald repeated dutifully, and with all his zest, the tropes that get him cheers during his rallies. Frequently, since Kamala wanted him to do so.
She played him like a fiddle. When Biden wanted to get nominated, and still had a more than ephemeral pulse, he said he should be the candidate, since he would beat Trump like a drum. Which he did. And yesterday, the man from Queens became her instrument.
Kamala did the only thing you can do if you are in a debate with DJT in 2024. And she executed a good plan very well. Sure, it is strange that who fills the 4- or 8-year king role in the country with the most nukes gets decided in an event, almost WWF-like, with commercial breaks that has nothing to do with content and which gets decided by how people enter the room and what they do in the next 5 seconds.
What a fateful handshake that was. Good to touch a man that doesn’t want to get touched. Smart.
When topics came to questions she didn’t want to dwell on, she simply diverted to talk about his event crowd or inheritance sizes. And he took the bait, every time. Exploding in inner anger, he started to direct his rambles in a predictable manner.
A behavior that she eventually turned into her future presidency when she outlined that he would be equally easy to manipulate—something that became a stronger point by her letting people come to that conclusion by themselves instead of pointing it out explicitly. People like it if they are the smart ones in a story.
But their expectations were also that he would trounce her. So everybody would see what a lightweight she “is.” Hard to see how one could read that into yesterday’s event. I am sure Fox, etc., will find a way to edit things in this way, but they haven’t been given much to work with.
Again, her triggering his anger at will was case in point to the argument she made.