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So often Tuesday night it looked as if Kamala Harris were debating Joe Biden. You’d never have thought the dimming and diminished man she was facing had been president, or had the capabilities to be president again. He was an angry old scrooge, confused, grimacing, gesticulating, hunting for that old sarcastic touch he never found. His Mussolini lips had gone from crossbow to limp sling. He was out of air, out of place, and out of his depth.
Of course we’d been used to this from Donald Trump for years. The man has been a blur of bluster and brutality ever since he descended into the Hades of his own making at Trump Tower in 2015 to announce his neoconfederacy’s assault on America. Back then, two days after his 69th birthday, he was still a sprightly bully you could mock at your own risk, as we smug and blind believers in fairytale democracy all did.
His debilities and narcissism, his cruelties and Central-Park-Five vigilantism had defined him even in his prime when the less fortunate of us who lived in New York endured his wilding rants on late-night TV and his mug so often pollute the front page of the New York Post. That was not an easy thing to do in Rupert Murdoch’s already toxic tabloid. But Trump was made for American exceptionalism.
If by 2015 age had made a white whale of him, with barnacles for charm if you were to compare him to Ronald Reagan (who took the White House at the same age), Trump could still depend on a model wife, his nepotist daughter-in-waiting and his years as The Apprentice’s biggest fabrication to give him the kind of lift Photoshop couldn’t. He could also depend on a servile press still laughing along, as if the Trump candidacy were an extended Letterman appearance. Really, we were all in on it. We deserved him.
Trump spent the next four years turning this country into something O’Henry used to make fun of when he wrote of cabbages, kings and bananas in Central America, and the four years after that rewriting history, foremost his own, as if he were the real inheritor of the Donation of Constantine.
But Americans are prone to dementia when it comes to recalling political history older than SnapChat. With Biden next to him a few weeks ago it had been more difficult to see how far Trump had degenerated to something like American carnage. As one analyst had it when the two relics debated, Biden turned in the worst performance ever. Trump turned in the second-worst performance ever.
On Tuesday, Trump finally had that honor all to himself. He was so proud of it that he did what candidates never do after debates. After Harris left him in the cold like a cat hissing in an Atlantic City alley, he went to the spin room to gain back a little warmth from all those flashing bulbs and add a chapter to his donation we’ll come to know as the Protocol of the Elder of Mara.
This isn’t to say Kamala Harris was that good. For all her attempted wit and jabs and chin tricks she was no Adlai Stevenson. She was no Shirley Chisholm, for that matter, and both lost more decisively than Clinton did in Trump’s first clobber. Harris showed she could stand up to Trump and force him to stand down, as someone should have done, say, when he was 6. But she has yet to show she can stand up for herself, as in stand up for a four-year record that is barely less accomplished than LBJ’s better years (and LBJ had a supermajority of Congress to get his program through).
Afghanistan? The final days were a debacle but nothing like the murderous, pointless debacle of America’s longest war, which Biden alone finally had the courage to end. It’s a little pathetic and typically arrogant of imperious Americans to find tears and agony for 13 dead when 70,000 civilians were killed from the time George W. Bush invaded.
That two-year inflation blip? Devastating. Admit it. But stop making it look like an exclusively American creation. The post-Covid Biden splurge contributed a couple of points. Every state, especially DeSantis’s Florida, basked in the splurge to cover up what would otherwise have been deficits. But inflation was a global phenomenon that primarily radiated from Russian aggression and Saudi manipulation of oil prices. If it’s splurges we’re worried about, the Trump years’ ballooning of debt and deficits should be catching voters’ eyes. So should Biden’s. Instead, Trump is peddling schemes to bribe voters with more reckless tax cuts and run the country as if it were one of his bankruptcy-begging properties.
But we’re getting into policy details, and that’s the last thing Harris wants. She followed a script Tuesday. It was a solid, made-for-TV script. It wasn’t a knock-out. Trump lost from own goals, which his flagellant faithful always forgive him. If you’re a Harris fan you probably shouldn’t raise your hopes even with that Swift endorsement. Carter and Reagan were supposedly neck-and-neck until the final weekend. Carter, who could still run the country from Hospice better than Trump, lost by 10 points. Clinton was ahead in nine out of 10 polls with an average lead of 4 points over Trump and a bigger lead in October 2016. John Kerry and Michael Dukakis had huge leads in their fleeting summers, nothing like the wish-upon-a-star margin Harris is carrying. They lost.
It’s not just the electoral college. It’s an electorate inebriated on phony nostalgia, desperate for a nonexistent fantasy that Trump can nevertheless sell like bibles and steaks. He should be 30 points down, even if Biden was still in the race. Instead, he’s about to return from his Elba, and you know how that went. America’s Waterloo is still ahead.
Pierre Tristam is the editor of FlaglerLive. A version of this piece airs on WNZF.
Nancy N. says
I have to have hope in Kamala. The alternative is unthinkable. Already, Desantis is sending police officers to the doors of people who signed the petitions for the abortion amendment. That will seem like child’s play if Trump is re-elected.
Tom D Hutson says
Kamala Harris Hype
Well Pierre, you out did yourself with this op-ed regarding the Harris-Trump debate; not much of a debate! I have to admit that I agree with you and the complete op-ed, it was well written and covered everything from both sides of the political aisle.
The Democratics realized after the last debate between Biden and Trump, it was time for a change, and they did just that. President Joe Biden withdrew was replaced with Vice President Kamala Harris.
After last nights debate, The Republican Maga supporters need to accomplish the same thing and replace the “DONALD”, his time has passed. Oh no, there is not enough time left, Oh well.
OMG, would that mean his Vice President pick, JD Vance, that “Knuckle dragger” as a true ex-seal team member Jessie Ventura called him, could possibly become President? Good thing there is not enough time for that to occur.
Things to think about.
John says
Donald showed our nation last night he is not qualified and never was to be the leader of our nation. He couldn’t even answer one question the monitor asked him. He kept repeating the same thing over and over. And I believe they counted he said 33 lies on national television last night.
Sorry, I only vote for winners and it isn’t him.
The dude says
Lets be honest here… the bar for him to be considered successful in this debate was set so remarkably low, anything short of him pissing himself, and repeatedly screaming the N word over and over was set to be considered a win by the media.
On the other hand, the VP could have announced she single handedly cured cancer, childhood poverty, invented a perpetual motion machine, and discovered the true identity and nature of dark particles… and she would still be considered to have “lost” if the former president managed to just not piss himself and scream the N word over and over…
It’s truly sad that things are as close as they are. Especially after last night.
Alex says
Donald is threatening to have ABC license removed over the debate last night. So not only to make a fool of himself last night but now he is making an even bigger fool of himself now saying he wants ABC license removed. This is a guy that is off the wall and has no business running our country he is not stable enough. Time he packs it in and just goes play golf everyday that is all he is good for, PERIOD.
James says
Most memorable moment from the debate still was Trump’s in my opinion.
Apparently there is a (Ohio?) case of waterfowl poaching in a public park by a (purportedly Haitian) refugee, but domestic pets?
Is there widespread reports of refugees eating cats and dogs???
Just wonder’n.
Btw, not sure what to make of that statement made by Trump, but either way (true or not) it’s not too promising a sign for our future.
Leave it to Trump to blurt out something so truly bizarre.
Just an opinion.
Pierre Tristam says
To be fair to Mr. Trump, I think he was confused, as we all can be. I don’t think he meant to refer to Haitians, but to Triffids.