- ‘Hillary won the debate but lost the election’ I read repeatedly. I agree Hillary Clinton won her debates with Trump. She stood her ground and made effective points. But her wins were not close to the complete annihilation that Kamala was able to accomplish (although Kamala had Hillary’s and Joe’s examples to work from so this is not to disparage Hillary who in my view might have been an LBJ-like effective president given her experience and inherent abilities…). Kamala’s victory is of an order that hasn’t been seen since Kennedy v Nixon and is having a much larger impact: she eviscerated Trump.
- Kamala used narrative effectively: where many democrats (Joe Biden was guilty of this) use fact and stats, those simply do not reach people as well as a good story. Hence Trump’s use of stories involving one incident and his many urban myths, which stay in people’s minds longer than someone quoting a stat. The single most memorable moment in the debate was Kamala’s story of the woman ‘bleeding out’ in a parking lot (an interesting reversal of Trump’s ‘bleeding’ comment regarding Meghan Kelly from earlier years). Not that statistics aren’t important, but they are fodder for the university trained classes; regular people will respond to a story.
- A significant moment that I haven’t seen noted: when Kamala said to the moderators something like ‘ I want to pause and go back for one moment’ and then directly dressed Trump down for two falsehoods pertaining to her and Walz, saying he should stop repeating those. She then went on to speak to the question she was asked. He never got the chance to respond because her timing was impeccable, and he looked like a guilty schoolboy for a moment. I think that was a key part of the evisceration.
A final more depressing thought: Trump will be the GOP candidate in 2028. Can anyone in the GOP say no to him? None of these hard macho guys or strong women has the guts to say no to him, and it’s in his interest to continue the endless grift. Just sayin’!
