How Harris beat Trump at his own game

Until Tuesday, Donald Trump spent much of the campaign running as an insurgent.

But in one night, Kamala Harris changed all that. After weeks of intense scrutiny on her own policy pivots over the years, the vice president deftly shifted the focus of the campaign to a referendum on Trump’s presidency.

As the candidates left the debate stage, the momentum Harris had generated after first replacing Joe Biden as the Democratic nominee seemed to be cresting again. Her campaign manager announced she was ready for another debate with Trump, who himself plodded into the spin room in Philadelphia in an effort to shift the unfavorable post-debate narrative that saw even Fox News hosts declare Harris the winner.

But Trump, who insisted to Fox News’ conservative commentator and sometimes sounding board Sean Hannity that it was his best debate ever because it was “three on one,” with the moderators helping Harris, declined repeatedly to commit to debating her a second time.

“We’ll think about that,” he said.

In a contest where the nominees are battling for the mantle of change-agent, Harris’ precise re-framing of the race around Trump’s record — and not her own — could be the lasting impact of the evening. The exchanges — which at times recalled Hillary Clinton’s most effective moments in her debates with Trump in 2016 — allowed Harris to take viewers down a technicolor memory lane of some of the his points in the White House, while putting some distance between herself and the sitting president and escaping a more thorough examination of her own record.

Harris, a former prosecutor, put Trump on the defensive by brutally and methodically laying waste to his record, setting traps on everything from his handling of coronavirus to abortion, tariffs, immigration, China, national security and America’s standing in the world.

Trump stepped into every one of them, while she stared back at him in ABC News’ two-shots: She appeared befuddled and incensed by his attempts to explain himself. She laughed at Trump, and said he was the source of constant ridicule by other leaders, recalling his embarrassing episode at the United Nations.

“I have talked with military leaders,” she said, turning toward Trump, “some of whom work with you, and they say, ‘You’re a disgrace.’”

Harris’ campaign, which claimed that its own focus group of undecided voters responded enthusiastically to several of the vice president’s comments, insisted that she remains “the underdog” in the race but suggested her performance could lift her.

“I do believe that there were persuadable voters out there who will take a second look and who are far more open to her because she did so well and she was presidential and the contrast was clear,” said Rep. Veronica Escobar (D-Texas), one of more than a dozen surrogates the Harris campaign sent into the spin room.

Yet for all the post-debate enthusiasm in Harris’ camp over her handling of Trump, most analysts doubt that the GOP nominee’s support would dip all that much. Although she is far less of a known commodity than Trump, Harris’ strategy of mercilessly attacking the former president left her less time to define her own candidacy — or to rebut criticism of her past calls for a ban on fracking, the Biden administration’s economic record and Trump’s caricature of her as a wild-eyed liberal who, as he said at one point, “wants to do transgender operations on illegal immigrants in prison.”

“I think Donald Trump comes out no weaker, no stronger from this debate,” said Vivek Ramaswamy, who sought the GOP nomination himself before endorsing Trump. “I’d say the same for Kamala Harris. No weaker, no stronger.”

But if some of Trump’s own backers could only go as far as to say the debate was a draw, several Republican operatives were more blunt about what was — like Trump’s first debate opposite Biden in June — a one-sided contest from start to finish.

“Trump may have knocked Biden out of the race in the last debate, but he may have knocked himself out of the race in this one,” said Matthew Bartlett, a Republican strategist and former Trump administration appointee.

He called Harris “compelling and competent” and said of Trump, “He continues to put his head in the sand and not recognize that he is in a close election.”

Harris spent more time arguing the case against Trump than she did on her own biography, calculating that she had more to gain by demonstrating that she could stand toe-to-toe with her opponent — and deliver attacks just as if not more withering than those Trump is known for. Indeed, she sidestepped some direct questions and many of Trump’s haymakers on her own record in favor of turning the focus back to his presidency, which she described as petty, vindictive and un-American.

She repeatedly looked into the camera and asked Americans not just to imagine what can be under her administration, but more importantly to recall what had transpired during his term.

“Let’s talk about what Donald Trump left us. Donald Trump left us the worst unemployment since the Great Depression,” she said. “Donald Trump left us the worst public health epidemic in a century. Donald Trump left us the worst attack on our democracy since the Civil War. And what we have done is clean up Donald Trump’s mess.”

Trump, of course, doesn’t see it that way, so he dug in. He defended his role not just in the attacks on Charlottesville, Virginia, but also Jan. 6 inside the U.S. Capitol.

Harris went straight at what had long been points of great pride for Trump: his rallies, his trade wars, his negotiating tactics, his hiring practices, his systemic evisceration of notable Republicans — several of whom and their families are now lining up to support her. Her comment on how Trump’s rally crowds often get bored and leave early triggered a disjointed response in which the Republican referenced a false internet meme suggesting undocumented immigrants were “eating people’s pets,” leaving Harris cackling back at him.

“Talk about extreme,” she responded, leaving the issue there.

Trump’s attempts to tie Harris to Biden and the last four years fell flat, as he repeatedly abandoned the tread and moved on.

“It’s important to remind the former president, you’re not running against Joe Biden, you’re running against me,” Harris said at one point.

But by that point, the relitigation of Trump’s own administration helped Harris neutralize his his criticism of the Biden-Harris record — and added definition to her campaign’s efforts to recast her as the personification of change, underlining Harris’ central promise to turn the page from an era of Trump-dominated politics.

Trump defended his management style. And when he said, “I fired most of those people, not so graciously,” it helped make Harris’ point about his tenure for her.

Lisa Kashinsky, Natalie Allison and Holly Otterbein contributed to this report.