ANDREW NEIL: A senior Republican told me Trump's performance was the
'worst debate' he'd ever seen.
On the most crucial test for last night's US presidential debate in Philadelphia, Kamala Harris won hands down.
On the most crucial test for last night's US presidential debate in Philadelphia — which candidate reached out best beyond their base to the wider public — Kamala Harris won hands down. Donald Trump was too busy stupidly taking her well-crafted bait to do the same.
There was no rabbit hole she showed him that he did not then scurry down. Harris is a lackluster candidate but in Trump she has a formidable ally.
He was warned in advance by his campaign team not to rise to the baiting. But he just couldn't help himself. Every time she provoked him, he ranted and raved incoherently as if he was at one of his rallies.
Even his hard-core supporters are beginning to tire of this schtick. In front of a massive prime-time TV audience it went down like a lead balloon.
Especially, it would seem, with Taylor Swift, who endorsed Harris within minutes of the debate ending — though no doubt that was choreographed well in advance with Team Harris.
There was no rabbit hole Harris showed him that he did not then scurry down. She is a lackluster candidate but in Trump she has a formidable ally.
I'm not sure celebrity endorsements are as important as politicians think. But in the case of the premier entertainer of our age, better to have than not, I guess.
Harris is obviously convinced she emerged from last night as the clear victor. Her campaign has already called for a second debate next month. It's hard to see how Trump can refuse. Though unless he learns the lessons of Philadelphia, the chances are he'd be in for another drubbing.
True, Harris was helped by the ABC News moderators who were far keener to hold Trump's feet to the fire than hers. But a skilled debater would have played a three-to-one ganging up to their advantage. Trump just sounded petulant.
ABC did not cover itself in glory last night. But a serious post-mortem by the Trump camp will need to do more than simply blame the TV network, whose bias was already well known.
Harris was let off the hook again and again by the moderators — and, more importantly, by Trump. She was never properly held to account for her flip-flopping over fracking (we know she's dropped her opposition to it only because she needs to win Pennsylvania). Her total failure to stem the tide of illegal immigration on the southern border was never properly exposed.
She was allowed to sidestep the most crucial economic question of all for voters: do you feel better off than you did four years ago?
True, Harris was helped by the ABC News moderators who were far keener to hold Trump's feet to the fire than hers.
In all of the above, the moderators clearly failed to do their job. But so did Trump. He was too busy blustering about the size of his rallies (infuriated by Harris's accurate claims that folks now drift away early from them). Too determined to wash his hands of responsibility for the shaming events of January 6, 2021, recycling lies about how he'd offered to make 10,000 National Guard available. Too obsessed with still claiming he'd won in 2020 when all available evidence shows he lost.
These Trump talking points might still resonate with the core. Yet they merely remind uncommitted voters watching TV why they didn't vote for him four years ago.
Harris was shallow, inconsistent, vague, insincere, full of meaningless film-flam, even at times a stranger to the truth. But alongside Trump she came across as a woman of substance. She called the shots throughout. At no stage did Trump seize the initiative, even on issues like the economy, immigration and crime where voters regard her as weak.
That is the true measure of just how poor Trump's performance was. One senior Republican, not hostile to Trump, confided in me that it was the 'worst debate performance' he'd seen in a long time.
Harris returned several times to her expensive policies for housing, child tax credits and help for small businesses. A mainstream conservative would reasonably have pointed out that these all involved yet more government spending at a time when the federal deficit for this year was just about to top $2 trillion. But Trump is a big spender too. So, instead, he careened headlong into unsubstantiated social media guff about illegal immigrants eating family pets.
It made him sound unhinged and unworthy to occupy the Oval Office.
On abortion he was all over the place, even though it was entirely predictable that Harris (and ABC) would make it one of the issues of the night.
Trump trotted out his usual litany of lies on everything from Ukraine to the military to NATO to the economy. But Harris had familiar lies of her own to tell, from falsehoods about what Trump had said about Charlottesville to Project 2025 (the Trump 'manifesto' that never was), to IVF treatments (he is not against), to his alleged calls for bloodshed. She's now posing (even though she once considered mandatory confiscation) as a proud gun owner!
Unsurprisingly, ABC was less enthusiastic about calling these claims out than they were Trump's.
Trump clearly hankers for the return of Joe Biden as his opponent. At one point Harris had to remind him he was up against her. Biden's only relevance in this debate should have been tainting Harris with all his administration's failures — and underlining how Harris vouched for Biden's mental acuity when he was clearly in serious cognitive decline. She misled the American people.
He was warned in advance by his campaign team not to rise to the baiting. But he just couldn't help himself.
But Trump got round to neither. He was too busy drivelling on about pet-eating Haitians, droning about how Hungary's prime minister (a rather unsavory 'strongman' 99 percent of Americans have never heard of) thought he was great, and predicting we were on the verge of World War Three. Not quite Ronald Reagan's 'it's morning again in America'.
The debate was not the transformative event of the Biden/Trump clash at the end of June. But it was highly significant nevertheless. In a closely fought race the momentum is with Harris once again and, after last night, the Trump campaign could easily descend into faction fighting and acrimony.
In a rollercoaster campaign in which each side has its periods in the sun, Harris must once again be regarded as the front runner. For now. November 5th is still some way off and much could change, not least if there is a second debate.
I do not relish a Harris presidency but it would have two advantages over a Trump one.
A second Trump defeat would surely spell the end of his malign tutelage over the Republican Party, allowing it to rediscover its traditional roots and values which have served it so well in the past.
And, at a time when a revanchist Russia is on the march (backed by the world's leading autocrats) and Europe is in peril, it is clear NATO would be safe in her hands whereas it is equally clear — especially from the debate — that Trump's idea of peace in Ukraine is for it to surrender to President Putin, which would be a disaster for NATO.
The catastrophic consequences of that for America and its allies are clear for all to see. Bar - on last night's showing - to Donald Trump.
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