For Donald Trump, Tuesday night's debate was a lost opportunity. He never was able to zero in and score devastating punches against Harris on the economy, prices, and especially her left-wing tax-and-spending ideas.
Nevertheless, it wasn't the blowout win that Harris and the Democrats claimed, and Harris needed to regain the momentum that had turned toward Trump in the last 10 days.
Immediately after the debate, Harris challenged Trump to another one.
“Under the bright lights, the American people got to see the choice they will face this fall at the ballot box: between moving forward with Kamala Harris, or going backwards with Trump,” Harris campaign chair Jen O’Malley Dillon said in a statement after the debate. “That’s what they saw tonight and what they should see at a second debate in October. Vice President Harris is ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?”
Donald Trump doesn't have to debate again, and he shouldn't, not because of his performance in the debate on Tuesday night but because strategy dictates that a candidate who's tied or slightly ahead shouldn't be giving his opponent oxygen to damage him with. That oxygen is in the form of a nationwide television audience. There are just too many variables for Trump to chance another debate.
"I'd be less inclined to because we had a great night. We won the debate. We had a terrible a terrible network," Trump told "Fox and Friends."
Partisans on both sides will spin the debate outcome every which way, but the only spin that matters is the perception of the voter. And while most of the snap polls after the debate showed Harris to be the easy winner, it's doubtful that many people changed their minds about who to vote for.
That's because the American people are desperately unhappy with the direction the country is in. And Trump was most effective in speaking to that point of view.
Former President Donald Trump focused completely on criticism of Vice President Kamala Harris during his closing statement in tonight’s debate, bypassing any suggestions about what his next administration would be about. “She’s going to do this, she’s going to do that, she’s going to do all these wonderful things,” Trump said in his closing statement following one from Harris. “Why hasn’t she done it? She’s been there for three and a half years. They’ve had three and half years to fix the border. They’ve had three and half years to create jobs.”
While border policy remains in flux, the labor market has been exceptionally strong during the Biden-Harris administration, recording more than 40 consecutive months of employment growth. The unemployment rate has been markedly lower than in recent decades, though the red-hot labor market is now starting to cool.
Fifteen million of those jobs were people going back to work after companies forcibly laid them off during the pandemic. Nothing Joe Biden or Kamala Harris did created those jobs.
Having said that, the number one concern of voters for the last three years has been prices. Biden-Harris kept spending as prices continued to rise. It took the adults at the Federal Reserve to finally tell Biden that enough is enough. The Fed began to jack up interest rates, slamming the brakes on the economy. It's still not clear that we've avoided a recession. And inflation is still above the Fed target inflation rate of 2%.
Trump doesn't need another debate to stick it to Harris on prices, the border, or any other issue that the people are demanding that the government address.
