Harris won the debate — and it wasn’t close

Kamala Harris showed up — and then some.

The vice president’s performance against Donald Trump, in which she repeatedly baited him and knocked him off balance, was a far cry from President Joe Biden’s disastrous June debate. And it gave Democrats the role reversal they had hoped for after their switch at the top of the ticket.

The two candidates entered the debate deadlocked in the polls — and in a deeply polarized nation, the race is still likely to remain close. But voters got their first look at Harris going toe-to-toe with Trump, and she did more than hold her own.

We asked five POLITICO campaign reporters and editors for their takeaways from the Harris-Trump debate:

Who had the better night?

Steve Shepard: All you have to do is check the sound levels on Trump’s microphone from the start of the debate to its end to see that Harris came out ahead. A debate that began with a question that should favor Trump — are Americans better off economically than they were four years ago — quickly turned against the former president. Even when the debate returned to the friendly terrain of immigration, Harris set a trap for Trump that had him talking about the size of crowds at his campaign rallies and fever-swamp tales of abducted pets in short order — and at an increasing volume that made it clear he knew things were not going his way.

Elena Schneider: Harris won this debate. Her goals for it were clear: Draw a contrast with Trump by casting herself as the change candidate who could move voters into the future. Throughout the debate, Harris spoke directly into the camera, urging voters to “turn the page” on Trump. The former president, meanwhile, primarily focused on the litigating the past, including an extended back-and-forth over whether he won the 2020 election. (He did not.)

Adam Wren: Harris won — and it wasn’t close. She showed up as her prosecutorial self, effectively putting Trump in the witness stand throughout much of the debate. Democrats have to be downright giddy, particularly over her extended remarks on abortion — an issue she’s been talking about around the country since the fall of Roe. And it showed tonight.

Eugene Daniels: I’m going to shock you here: Harris. And honestly, she probably had the best night of any of Trump’s debate opponents since he began running for president in 2015. The Harris team was clear she wanted to bait him to get him to react in a way that suburban voters would be turned off by. She did it first by invoking his rally crowd sizes, then his criminal charges, on the Central Park Five, and over and over again. She got in his head from then on.

Democrats watching texted me that this is exactly the reason they wanted the switch from Biden to Harris: a candidate that could actually make the case against Trump.

Lisa Kashinsky: Another thing you can check besides the sound levels, Steve — what Trump’s allies are posting on X. Lots of claims of this being a “3 on 1” fight floating around. Trump and his backers went into this debate casting doubt on whether ABC’s moderators would treat him fairly. If they felt the debate was going his way, they wouldn’t still be saying that.

How will the debate change the trajectory of the race?

Shepard: This was a very close race before the debate, and it’s likely to be a close race a week from now. But Harris did clear an important bar. A disappointing debate performance threatened to reverse her standing after six weeks of momentum. That didn’t happen.

Wren: Given how tonight went, I would be surprised if there’s another debate — even though the Harris campaign said afterward she is “ready for a second debate. Is Donald Trump?” Trump might want a mulligan, but it’s difficult to see how his advisers would want to go through something like that again.

Daniels: Steve is right, the race is going to stay close until the very end. Harris went into this debate needing to prove that she could be unscripted, and she did that tonight. Does it change the election fully in her favor? Probably not. But it keeps people from running away from her.

For Trump, everything he did tonight is what voters are probably used to for him, whether they like it or not. For the MAGA faithful, nothing changed. But I’m not sure he pulled anyone who was on the fence into his camp, which means they both have a lot more work to do.

Kashinsky: Honestly, Taylor Swift endorsing Harris after the debate might do more to change the trajectory of this race than anything that happened during it.

Schneider: Swift didn’t call Trump the Smallest Man Who Ever Lived, but she might as well have.

What’s the one moment each candidate will regret, and what will we remember about this debate a year from now?

Schneider: What might go viral? I’m already seeing the memes of Harris’ facial expressions — a bemused smile, raised eyebrows, a hand under her chin — all over social media. Yes, Harris’ team was worried about the muted microphones, but they ultimately didn’t matter. Through body language, her decision to force a handshake with Trump and snippets of unmuted moments, Harris communicated all she needed about her opponent — underlining the moments when she baited him into his more off-the-rails comments.

Trump’s team, I’m sure, will regret that the former president didn’t more forcefully link Harris to Biden in the first 30 minutes of the debate. Harris’ team, however, may wish she’d more effectively pushed back on her policy flip-flops, as one of her key vulnerabilities is swing voters seeing her as more liberal.

Wren: I’ll remember Trump engaging in the debunked conspiracy of animal eating in Springfield, Ohio — a low water mark of this conspiracy laden era. It is objectively a falsehood, criticized as misleading and racist, that Haitian immigrants have been abducting and eating pets. Town officials say that is not the case. Even his own running mate, the junior senator from the state — appeared to at least partially back away from the fabrication earlier in the day.

And while we’re talking about Vance: He had somewhat of a rough night, with Trump essentially conceding they had different views on abortion (“I didn’t discuss it with JD, in all fairness, and I don’t mind if he has a certain view…”) Vance’s team have gone to great lengths to smooth out some of his statements on abortion since his 2022 Ohio Senate bid.

Shepard: It’s hard to compare a head-to-head debate to the 10-candidate pile-ups that characterized the race for the Democratic nomination in 2020. But this was clearly Harris’ best debate performance of her career, without any clear missteps.

Meanwhile, one of Trump’s advantages in this race had been that voters didn’t see him as a riskier choice than Biden or Harris: Biden because of his age, and Harris because she was unproven. In the New York Times/Siena College poll this week, roughly equal percentages of likely voters (52 percent for Harris and 54 percent for Trump) saw each candidate as a “risky choice.”

But on a number of occasions — most notably citing television reports about the pet-eating immigrants allegedly overrunning a town in Ohio — Trump underlined some of the attributes that voters don’t like about him, as Harris cleared the bar of reasonableness.

It’s hard to drink from a firehose, but Harris might regret leaving some of Trump’s more potent attack lines unanswered, particularly on inflation.

Kashinsky: The abortion segment was brutal for Trump, and he only made it worse for himself by distancing himself from his own running mate. But if we’re talking about damaging sound bites: Trump saying he only has “concepts of a plan” on health care is one that Democrats can play on loop. In fact, they already are.

Both candidates left some key opportunities on the table. Harris could have done more to address concerns about the policy positions she’s changed over the years. And Trump didn’t dig in on one of his key lines of attack — why Harris hasn’t done the things she’s promising during her three years as vice president — until the end of the night.

Daniels: The abortion back-and-forth is going to play over and over again in ads and in news packages tomorrow morning. It was the first moment when the debate felt like one and you couldn’t find two candidates with more of a contrast on the issue. Harris, the lead on abortion for Democrats for years and Trump who got three Supreme Court picks who knocked down Roe.

For Trump’s regrets: I agree with Adam. It was a strange conspiracy theory before the debate and it played out even stranger on the debate stage with Trump going back and forth with David Muir on whether immigrants are eating pets (there’s zero evidence this is happening.)

I don’t know if she will regret it, but Harris still left some unanswered questions about positions she’s changed over the years. Trump brought it up over and over, she was asked directly about some of those from Linsey Davis and the folks who still have questions are left with “my values haven’t changed.”