Did former President Donald Trump miss opportunities to define Vice President Kamala Harris last night?
Absolutely.
Did Harris goad Trump into detours into rally size and pet eating?
Yup.
Does any of that matter?
Nope.
Voters know who Trump is. Harris can try and make Trump seem weird or extreme or whatever, but for 99% of voters, Trump is a known quantity at this point. Voters know what they are getting. Many of them may not like it, but he’s safe.
Harris meanwhile, is still the enigma. Her campaign so far has been all empty slogans and evasions. She’s running on vibes alone. That continued last night. And voters noticed. And they didn’t like it.
“She didn’t, kind of, separate herself,” Milwaukee resident Shavanaka Kelly told the New York Times, noting that Harris failed to give “more specific policy proposals, especially as they compare to Mr. Biden’s record.”
“Trump’s pitch was a little more convincing than hers,” Keilah Miller, another Milwaukee Democrat, told reporters. “I guess I’m leaning more on his facts than her vision.”
“When Trump was in office — not going to lie — I was living way better,” Miller continued. “I’ve never been so down as in the past four years. It’s been so hard for me.”
Defense contractor and retired soldier Jason Henderson of Arizona was also unimpressed with Harris. “There was nothing done by Harris that made me think she’s better. In any way,” he said.
Not that he was impressed with Trump, who Henderson said “came off as crazy,” but Henderson also noted that Trump’s performance “was no different from his appearances at rallies and in interviews.”
Again, as bad as Trump is to many voters, they at least know what they are getting.
Henderson had been resigned to skipping the election, unable to vote for either candidate.
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Henderson, who voted in the past for former President Barack Obama and then for Trump, noted that Trump “came off as crazy,” but was no different from his appearances at rallies and in interviews.
Kamala Harris did far better than Biden did in the first debate. No one is calling for her to exit the race. But if the goal of the debate was anything other than survival, if Harris wants to close the deal with undecided voters, she is going to have to move on past vibes and explain how her presidency would be different than Biden’s failed one.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
