The Debate Debate

​A friend asked me the other day how I thought the debate would go tomorrow.  I repeated pretty much what I wrote here a long while back before Trump and President Biden debated.  I was wrong about that for all of the reasons that we now know.  President Biden just wasn’t up for it.  However, there are two things worth adding for perspective: 

The first is that Trump himself did not do well during that debate.  Polls showed that viewers were put off by his relentless lying.  And not doing well against an 81-year-old man having a day so poor that he soon after dropped out of the race is a very huge warning sign for Republicans.  Particularly when he himself is 78 with his own very serious cognitive issue of dementia that, unlike old age (which he also faces), is not normal, and degenerative.  And the second is that Kamala Harris is a generation younger, and twice-elected Attorney General of California and elected District Attorney of San Francisco, a career prosecutor whose professional life has been convicting criminals and dealing with liars and con men.  Further, all the difficult debates issues for Trump that I’ve written about, every one of them still holds. 

And one other thought –

It is my hope that Kamala Harris doesn’t go into the debate having prepared with the strategy to win it, as is the norm for debates, of course, but rather with the uncommon goal of showing that Trump is in such horrible shape -- mentally, criminally, politically, emotionally -- that he should be disqualified from even being considered a serious candidate for president.  Winning the debate will help her in the election, but keep the race razor-thin close.  Accomplishing the latter, needless to say, would be impactful.  And as uncommon as being able to do that is, it is not improbable.  Why?

That brings us to tomorrow.

In anticipation of a presidential debate, I’ve long felt that triggering Trump was the core.  The thing is, VP Harris doesn’t have to do much to trigger him.  Just being on a debate state for 90 minutes standing next to a Black woman will be a trigger for him.  Not only because she is a Black woman, but I suspect that to Trump Black women are the cause of his problems – Letitia James, Judge Tanya Chutkin, Fani Willis, and now Kamala Harris.  Also, another basic trigger for Trump is that he always wants to be called “Mr. President,” and VP Harris almost always refers to him in speeches as “Donald.”  There’s no reason for her to stop that at the debate, and calling him “Donald” all night – nothing more than referring to him by his actual name -- will be a trigger for him.  And third, I’m sure she will say “You’re wrong,” “That’s a lie,” “That’s not true” all night.  Given that Trump has shown he believes he is right about literally everything (to the extent that he’s said he has no reason to go to confession in church, since he has nothing to confess!) being told he’s wrong and lying all night will be a trigger for him.  Especially when it’s a Black woman telling him.

So, without doing much at all, I think Kamala Harris will be triggering Trump all through the debate.  But I’m sure it won’t stop there.  And the reason I’m sure is that she and her campaign have been going out of their way to trigger Trump ever since she entered the race.  And it seems improbable that she’ll stop now -- at the debate.

And so, I’m sure she’s being prepped to trigger him as much as possible.  She might well bring up sharks, electricity, bacon, wind and such, and talk about how out of control he is.  How weird he is – Trump has repeatedly made clear how he dislikes being called “weird.”  And further, Trump has actually said at a rally, “I really, really, really, really hate being laughed at.”  (Something his niece has explained, as well.)  And without even needing to be prompted, we know Kamala Harris loves laughing, laughs all the time,  and so she might well be prepped to laugh when it's appropriate (not guffaws, just head-shaking and mere chuckles of ridicule.)

Further, she’ll absolutely bring up that he’s been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable of sexual abuse and guilty of fraud.  After all, she brings it up in her speeches, so she won’t stop now.  Most likely, Trump will insist all his convictions were political and rigged, and he’s won court rulings, however him saying all that alone in a speech is very different from saying it with your opponent, a career prosecutor, standing right next to you, ready to respond.  Perhaps even explaining that every criminal she convicted insisted they were innocent. And she may even explain how the judicial process works – and that you either believe in it as core to the Constitution and democracy, or you’re out to destroy it.

After all, again, she is a career prosecutor.  She knows how to go after a witness who lies and tries to deflect and insists on his innocence.  And when Trump tries to talk crime, and how he’s the anti-crime candidate (which is his latest position), I think she’ll lay him out flat on that.  Not just on actual statistics that crime is down, but again, how he’s the only person on stage who’s been literally convicted of crimes – felonies, sexual abuse and fraud.  She may even point out that the judge in his sexual abuse case wrote that it was the equivalent of rape.

And we haven’t gotten to two of the biggest hurdles she will make certain Trump can’t get over.

The first is abortion.  Trump can dance and twist and obfuscate and try to crawl towards the center and insist he’s all for States’ Rights on abortion – but that will fall with a resounding thud with a woman standing next to him, ready to excoriate his words.  That he took pride in ending Roe v. Wade, that Red states are blocking abortion, tracking women’s travel, that he has literally said on camera there should be a penalty for women having an abortion, and that (as far as States' Rights go) he said he would vote for the six-week abortion ban in the State of Florida.  And more.  And the “more” might be that all this allows her to get into comparing vice presidential candidates and the total, mind-blowing weirdness of “JD Vance.”  And his positions on childless cat women and post-menopausal women giving up their careers to take care of their grandchildren, and giving more votes to parents with children, none of which Trump has repudiated.

And second, it seems near-impossible to imagine that the Jan. 6 Insurrection won’t be brought up.  And how for four years Trump has insisted the election was supposedly rigged, and that he really won, and that he would pardon all the rioters convicted and in jail.  Indeed, it took until a week before the debate against a career prosecutor that Trump finally even acknowledged, but weakly that he barely lost.  Though not that the election wasn’t rigged.  And I suspect that VP Harris will be happy to position Trump into ranting about that.

And yes, she has flaws that she will have to defend.  Two which most stand out.  However, this is hardly a false-equivalence situation.  

When Trump brings up border security and that she is the failed “Border Czar,” VP Harris will not only explain what her actual job was – as an emissary with the Northern Triangle countries in South America to help keep their citizens from leaving for the U.S. and how successful that was – but then bring up the bipartisan border security bill that the Biden Administration put together, but Trump personally blocked.

And the other major concern the public has that is a challenge for VP Harris is the economy.  And while she can (and will) get into numbers about how vastly it's improved, what I think she is more likely is do is point to Trump's own position on handling the economy, using tariffs -- something which, up to now, he's been able to taut unchallenged -- and she will explain how that would literally work in reality and be utterly disastrous for the economy and cause massive inflation.  In fact, she'll now be able to point to an open letter released just today by 88 major business leaders who said exactly that.

And Trump may bring up that she flipped on fracking.  But I’m sure she’ll say that she did, indeed, change her position on it over the course of several years and explain the reasons – but then (importantly) add that if you want to talk “flipping,” Donald not only flips around all the time on a wide range of issues , but just last week, he flipped in one day on how he was going to vote on abortion in Florida.

Finally, I suspect that Trump has actually convinced himself (like he seems to always do with his repeated false claims) that Kamala Harris really, truly is “dumb” and “stupid” and an “awful person.”  So, when she responds to him all night with competence and intelligence and expertise, it might well throw him completely off.

Obviously, I could be all wrong about that.  But I do have reasons to support my opinions, and I don’t think any of the reasons are stretches.  Most especially that just being a Black woman, calling him “Donald” and saying “You’re wrong” – and being a career prosecutor -- are as basic as you can get.  And talking about abortion and the Insurrection are core issues.  Not to mention his legal convictions.  And so, I think she’ll show herself as smart and able, and he’ll be “Trump being Trump.” 

And in the end, worse than Trump being Trump, there is not an unreasonable possibility that he’ll be triggered enough to snap at a few points and even have his dementia kick him at places and give a rambling answer or two, or have some “paraphasia” moments, making up words that sounds like what they’re trying to say but can’t think of it.  I’m not suggesting he’ll have a meltdown rant.  Just angry or dementia-related moments that are troubling for the public to watch.  I don’t discount that he could have a meltdown, but I don’t expect him.  But then, voters seeing “troubling moments” are likely awful enough.

That said, if he does give a long, incomprehensible answer (still just an "if" – but if not, she can bring up some of his others), my hope is that she’ll point that out, say they’re not only troubling, but disqualifying.  That’s my hope, but I don’t expect that she will.

As I said, I don’t know what will happen.  As I said, I could be totally wrong.  But for these reasons, most of which I believe are very basic and reasonable, I think I’ll be right.