Christian Paz
Okay hope you got some rest, I'm so tired still but can't stop thinking about they are eating the dogs.

Eric Levitz
Non-specific allegations of dog-eating have long been staple of American presidential politics.

Christian Paz
Wait, what?! Who has been accused of eating dogs before? I was craving a hot dog by the end of the night.

Eric Levitz
I'm kidding. I wrote about this Tuesday night, but I was really struck by how internet-poisoned Trump seemed. He's spent the past four years speaking almost exclusively to his Truth Social followers and rally attendees, and failed to code switch for a context where you really want to be speaking to undecided voters — who, generally speaking, pay relatively little attention to politics in general, let alone the insane racist right-wing Twitter meme du jour.

Christian Paz
That code-switching point is so true — I've been watching Trump rallies for a while, and it seemed like as the night progressed, his attempts to stay on message about inflation, border security, and crime were getting overwhelmed by his impulse to just speak like he speaks at a rally. You really do have to be internet-pilled to a certain degree to understand what he was saying — Hannibal Lecter, Springfield, the mayor of Moscow's wife — it's the language of the Trump base, not the median persuadable voter.

That felt like a big departure from the last debate, when it was Trump who seemed to be staying more on message while letting Biden kind of unravel by himself.

I was listening to an ABC News podcast and one of the guests mentioned something interesting: that mentions of immigration were down from the last debate, mentions of abortion were up, and the economy was still the most talked about issue. If I remember, there were a few times when I was shocked at how Harris was able to spin away from talking too much about topics she may be perceived as weak on, and Trump just kept trying to get the last word on topics he's bad on, like abortion.

Eric Levitz
Yeah. She also helped limit his speaking time on immigration by using part of her own answer to suggest that his rallies are boring.

Christian Paz
Oh my god, that's right! I think I remember seeing his face grimace.

Eric Levitz
One thing that Harris did pretty successfully was simply not really answer politically vexing questions. That might have made her seem weaselly or phony, but Trump's approach on, say, abortion — digging in to ramble incoherently about how he did a great thing in overturning Roe v. Wade, which is something everybody always wanted — was clearly worse than shamelessly pivoting ("I'll tell you what really needs to be overturned, this administration's open borders policy" etc.)

But like, Harris was asked whether Americans are better off than four years ago, whether she's culpable for inflation, and why she took on all these very left-wing positions in 2020 only to disavow them this campaign. She just didn't answer and still won the debate.

Christian Paz
It could've been as easy as "it's been bad, it's been tough, but we're getting out of that time, the economy is getting better slowly, and here's how we keep that work going." It still seemed to me like that was one of the goals on the Harris side, not to get too bogged down in defending the past, not to spend too much time attacking Trump, but actually talking about her own life, her ideas, her goals.

An important piece of context here is that there are still a fair number of voters who feel like they don't know much about who Harris is or what she stands for. Meanwhile, everyone knows Trump, and they both helped remind folks who he is last night.

Eric Levitz
Yeah, I think she hit more or less all her marks. I do think one of the knocks on her, which Trump's team is trying to popularize, is that she's an empty suit/phony. And it's possible that repeatedly reciting canned talking points that don't actually answer a given question served to reinforce that impression. But on every other front, she executed very well. Seemed competent, knowledgeable, and certainly, more normal than the competition.

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