By: The Editorial Board – wsj.com – September 11, 2024

The former President let her rattle him, as he failed to make her defend her policies.

Ms. Harris, less well known than the former President, had the most to gain and our guess is she helped herself. She clearly won the debate, though not because she made a powerful case for her vision or the record of the last four years. Though she kept talking about her “plan” for the economy, she largely sailed along on the same unspecific promises about “the future” that she has since Democrats made her the nominee.

She won the debate because she came in with a strategy to taunt and goad Mr. Trump into diving down rabbit holes of personal grievance and vanity that left her policies and history largely untouched. He always takes the bait, and Ms. Harris set multiple traps so he spent much of the debate talking about the past, or about Joe Biden, or about immigrants eating pets, but not how he’d improve the lives of Americans in the next four years.

The Vice President had help from the ABC News moderators, who were clearly on her side. They fact-checked only Mr. Trump, several times, though Ms. Harris offered numerous whoppers—on Mr. Trump’s alleged support for Project 2025, Mr. Trump’s views on in-vitro fertilization, and that no American troops are in a combat zone overseas.

Tell that last one to the Americans killed by Iranian proxies in Jordan this year or the U.S. Navy commanders tasked with intercepting Houthi missiles in the Red Sea.

But Mr. Trump didn’t help himself because he let Ms. Harris put him on the defensive. He mentioned Mr. Biden so many times—14 by our count—that it’s clear he hasn’t gotten over the President’s withdrawal from the race. That let the Veep keep saying she isn’t Joe Biden without having to explain how, or whether, she differs from Mr. Biden’s policies. Mr. Trump didn’t press the point.

He also fell into the trap of saying the last election was stolen, that the rioters on Jan. 6 were mistreated, and that the courts had ruled against him in 2020 on a “technicality.” Does any undecided voter worried about the price of groceries care?

We almost laughed out loud when Mr. Trump even fell into a debate about the size of his rallies and whether people leave early. All of this played into Ms. Harris’s hands as she portrayed the former President as a man of the past and asked voters to “turn the page.” She took the mantle of the “change” candidate, though she has been in power for the last three-and-a-half years.

Mr. Trump also let Ms. Harris off the hook time and again on her policy views. One of his weaknesses is that he can rarely marshal policy details or arguments that explain an issue beyond a slogan. He resorts instead to over-the-top claims like she’s a Marxist, or the “worst Vice President in history.” He didn’t even say she wants to raise taxes by $5 trillion, which happens to be true.

If Mr. Trump won on any topic, it might have been foreign policy, where he contrasted as he always does the current world disorder with the relative peace of his four years. Ms. Harris didn’t offer much more than Biden Administration talking points. But even that exchange was marred by Mr. Trump’s refusal to say that he hoped Ukraine would prevail against Russia’s invading army. That failure let Ms. Harris argue that Mr. Trump would settle the conflict by abandoning Ukraine.

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Whether any of this will be decisive for swing voters, we don’t know. The electorate is closely divided, and most voters already have a firm view of Mr. Trump. The wild card is whether Ms. Harris made a strong enough impression to persuade the undecided that she is worth taking the risk. If she did, she will owe her success to Mr. Trump’s lack of preparation and discipline. This is the risk Republicans took when they nominated a 78-year-old who has always thought he can wing it and win.

Flush with its candidate’s success, the Harris campaign on Tuesday night called for a second debate in October. But don’t expect her to sit for any in-depth interviews. That would be risky. This was the only scheduled debate between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump, and given what we saw Tuesday, the nation will be grateful if it is the last.

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Source: Trump Lets Harris Off the Debate Hook – WSJ