Kamala Harris believes she “won” the debate. It’s hard to argue with that conclusion. But there were unintended consequences her team did not factor in. And that is sympathy for Trump, or as they would tell it on the Left, “sympathy for the Devil.”
Please to meet you. Hope you guessed my name.
I, too, thought Kamala Harris had won the debate. By the end, I was so demoralized, so sad, and so full of despair that I just went to bed and hoped it would be gone by morning.
I knew it wasn’t just a debate. It’s much bigger than that. It’s a TIME magazine cover. It’s Frank Luntz and the Spectator declaring the debate will cost Trump the election. It’s a thousand points of light on Twitter, a once-great coalition undone by ugliness for ten long years.
It’s a Stephen Colbert monologue. It’s a Taylor Swift endorsement. It’s the center of Bill Maher’s entire universe on Friday night. It will be Saturday Night Live. It’s too big. Too insurmountable. It’s everything, everywhere, all at once.
Or is it?
When I woke up, scrolled through TikTok, and read the post-debate polls, I found headline after headline declaring voters' choice for president unmoved. It made no difference whatsoever, and, if anything, sympathy tipped in Trump’s direction, and Harris suddenly became as unlikable or “likable enough” as Hillary Clinton.
Why?
Because the Trump haters have destroyed themselves and any good thing they ever stood for trying to destroy him, and at some point, the worm turned.
They are so close to what they believe is the total destruction of Trump they can taste it. But I watched Trump somehow survive the debate unscathed. Something about his ability to not attack Harris adequately worked in his favor. Call it the Charlie Brown effect.
Harris made the fundamental mistake of leaving her JOY™ and unity hats at the door and putting on her prosecutor’s hat. Had she shown up as a gracious, respectful, serious person ready to answer serious questions, she might have won over some voters. That wasn’t what happened. She showed up as a hybrid between Hillary Clinton and the ladies of The View.
We have a brighter future ahead, she declared. But those words ring hollow since she’s been in power for almost four years. How many more false promises can the Democrats make at the people’s expense? They promised that they were the better side, the optimistic side, the unity side, the ADULTS in the room.
Not only have they failed — in Afghanistan, at the border, at our grocery stores, in our schools, and on our streets — but they have lurched toward corruption unseen and unprecedented in this country’s history, up to and including hiding a cognitively impaired president — who is still in office, by the way — and pulling a fast one on us that Kamala Harris is suddenly something new.
That might have worked better for them if the Kamala Harris that showed up had been the Mamala JOYful warrior she presents on the campaign trail. Or the gracious noble candidate she presented on the ONE INTERVIEW she deigned to give.
But that wasn’t who showed up. The prosecutor showed up. She came off as mean at best and shallow and petty at worst. Prepared? Yes. Articulate? Absolutely. She was as strong as Hillary Clinton, but neither of them understands television as Trump does.
It’s a delicate line to walk, and almost no one survives it. Only Joe Biden, in that first debate in 2020, managed to come out looking more sympathetic than Trump. It is inexplicable and impossible to explain, but it is the reality. Harris’ successful debate may backfire.
Don’t get me wrong. I understand that many will disagree with this take, especially those who are consumed with irrational hatred for Trump, which is essentially all institutions, corporations, and our culture. A dark, seething passion that could only be satisfied if the assassin had not missed.
Yet, for some reason, the Harris team thought it was wise to mock and make faces while Trump was talking, to laugh at him and attack him rather than, oh, I don’t know, explain why we should keep them in power for four more years as we sink into a one-party state for the foreseeable future.
Her very first question was proof enough to any voter that Harris did not come to be honest or straight with them but to distract them from their primary concerns with Orange Man Bad, yet again.
Here is an X video illustrating it:
Law and Order: Election 2024
Every prosecutor's job is to tell a convincing story the jury will believe and then manipulate their emotions just enough to render a guilty verdict. Harris learned early in her career how to get that conviction, no matter how many lies she had to tell.
And maybe that would be fine if the jury was deliberating. But now, we have so many different voices added to the daily churn; it isn’t just people in a room who decide the outcome. It’s an entire universe of opinion.
Hillary Clinton celebrated it. She comes from the school of belittling men like Trump in hopes all of America will agree.
They were no doubt hoping the debate performance launched a thousand memes. Maybe they’re right, but I am not sure that’s the look they should be going for, not that they have an honest media to deliver that message.
My Democrat friends would say this is typical misogyny and racism. They want us to see her as worthy to be the President of the United States but also never criticize her—quite a conundrum for we the people.
Maybe “The Prosector and the Felon” seemed like the right move in theory, but that’s only if Trump was the guy the corporate press and Kamala Harris have been telling us he is for the past ten years.
But that isn’t the Trump who showed up, and it’s not the Trump millions of Americans know as the host of The Apprentice, the President, and the Catch Me if You Can runner they’ve tried to jail and bankrupt over the past ten years.
It wasn’t just Harris. The debate moderators were reflecting the same “tired old playbook” of what they’ve been telling us for so many years. It backfired. This was true for Megyn Kelly:
Or they found Harris hitting the same notes over and over again to be so absurd that it was funny.
Just watch this group of college kids watching the debate:
That Time Trump became Charlie Brown and Kamala Harris became Lucy.
Lucy might always be the “winner,” but most people love Charlie Brown more and root for him because he’s the underdog. It’s funny that they’ve never seemed to accept this simple fact about Trump all of these years.
They’ve been trying to cast Trump as the evil Voldemort, the sum total of all of their collective sins - white, male, heterosexual, not politically correct. But whatever it is about Trump, the more they pound him with ridiculous lies the more people end up liking him.
The whole reason we have primaries to begin with is so that the American people can find candidates they like better. But Democrats chose not to give their voters that chance, and now they’re trying to stick America with someone we already didn’t like. A fresh coat of JOY™ and new vibes doesn’t alter that fundamental fact.
The Democrats have become the uptight, puritanical scolds, while Trump is the guy who still makes jokes. Remember jokes? Just the idea of Trump is funny. He’s a walking meme factory. This is largely why, I think, he is doing so well with Gen-Z.
When Trump said that migrants from Haiti were eating “dogs and cats,” it instantly became the meme of the day as people filmed their pets and TikTok laughed about it.
It might be the only thing Gen-Z ever even hears about that debate.
Meanwhile, as usual, to the Left, they took it literally - he’s HITLER! Which, of course, makes it even more funny.
That’s not to say that Haitian migrants are, in fact, eating pets. There is still no evidence of this, despite the rumors.
However, it does highlight the disconnect between the two Americas. To the Left, it’s “racist” for people to worry about any of it. It’s been this way throughout the Biden/Harris presidency and even going back to COVID.
Closing the border to China was “racist,” complaining about the open border is “racist,” and complaining about crime in the cities is “racist.”
So where does that leave Americans who need help or, at the very least, leaders who can see their concerns without scolding them as Nazis?
Here are some perspectives from Springfield, Ohio:
At some point, doesn’t reality have to enter the chat? Americans know they have two difficult choices to make, but if Trump doesn’t win, all we’ll get is the same.
Everything we’re living through — the madness of Black Lists and “Cancel culture,” the looming threat of censorship. The total ruination of culture - movies, books, music, science. All because they lost their minds over Trump. To me, only Trump’s win will end it.
I don’t know what it is about Trump that so many people love as much as they do, flaws and all. It’s something that can’t be described. But if I had to guess, it would be that feeling sympathy is something we can’t help. We see him surviving their unprecedented attacks against him, and something in us fights to resist going along with it.
And that something is our collective humanity, something we’ve lost at the hands of the Left, who pick and choose who is and who isn’t worthy of empathy and decency.
Trump might not have performed well on Tuesday. He missed many opportunities to drop the mic against Harris, but in the end, I’m not sure it mattered.
That’s the trouble with debates on television. True when it was Kennedy against Nixon, Romney against Obama, Hillary against Trump, Harris against Trump. Winning a debate is one thing. Winning over the people is entirely another.
Trump's Surprising Secret Weapon: Sympathy