Post-Debate, Trump STILL Has The Advantage

According to the media, the presidential race is effectively over, with a couple of months still left to go in this election.

Normally, in a presidential race, this is where the race heats up. It’s not where the race ends.

That’s particularly true this year because one of the candidates is still a complete unknown. And yet the media have declared — since the news cycle moves so fast and since Trump is such a known quantity — that because Trump did not perform well in the debate this week and because the media ganged up with Kamala Harris in the most rigged debate in presidential history, Trump is effectively done.

A Newsweek article published this morning cites pollster Frank Luntz as predicting Trump’s loss: “I think this race is now over. Donald Trump has blown it. It’s completely done. … I’m trying to decide if I want to go on record, and the answer is yes. I think that he loses because of this debate performance.”

The answer to that is simple: Luntz is wrong. Trump does not lose because of this debate performance.

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To begin, the ratings on this debate were good, but not historically amazing. Apparently, about 67 million total viewers watched this debate. But of those 67 million total viewers, how many of those people were the undecided voters or independents who are actually going to decide this election?

That is the real question.

Sixty-seven million people sounds like a lot of people, yet the first presidential debate in 2020 garnered 73 million people. The very first debate between Trump and Hillary Clinton in 2016 garnered 84 million people.

The debate between Trump and Harris did not do that well in terms of ratings compared to historic presidential debates.

But more importantly, the vast majority of Americans have already made up their mind. This race is going to come down to extremely small margins, truly tiny margins, in seven different states: North Carolina, Georgia, Arizona, Nevada, Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin. All of those states are currently within the margin of error.

Nate Silver, who I think is the best poll analyst in the country, contended that it would be four to seven days after the debate before any polling is truly accurate and another week or two before the reality of the race is clear.

But a week in American politics is forever in American politics. Remember, two weeks from now will be the vice-presidential debate. A lot can happen between now and then.

Silver has suggested Harris will probably get between a one-and-a-half-point bump nationally. According to Silver’s model, he thought Harris was a fairly significant underdog going into the debate. But because she performed well, because Trump underperformed, and because the media were, of course, jumping on Trump’s back to basically facilitate Harris’ victory, she’ll probably get a boost, but not enough of a boost to actually make this into a solid win for her.

What had to happen in that debate for each side was different. Trump failed in the debate because there were three things that he had to effectively establish, which he did not do.

One, he had to establish that she is Biden. She is responsible for everything the Biden administration has done. If you don’t like what’s going on right now, you need to change it up. You need to move away from Harris.

He did not do his job in actually tying her that closely to Biden. She was able to evade those punches with the help of David Muir and Linsey Davis, who should be on the DNC payroll at this point.

But that is a proposition most Americans do agree with right now: that Harris is not the agent of change; that she is, in fact, tied at the hip to Biden; and that she is responsible for his policies.

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Second, Trump had to drive home that Harris is dangerously far-Left. He tried to do that and the media just lied about it. Muir and Davis fact-checked Trump when he called out Harris’ far-Left policies on abortion or illegal immigration. They were lying on her behalf.

Third, he had to paint her as incompetent. But because he did not seem particularly competent on the stage while she was massaged into competence and never challenged by the moderators as she spewed out answers she’d memorized, she didn’t appear incompetent.

So Trump didn’t do what he had to do on stage.

But — Kamala Harris also did not do what she needed to do on the stage.

This is why it is still a 50-50 race. Roughly two-thirds of people who watched the debate thought she won. But back in 2012, two-thirds of people thought Mitt Romney destroyed Barack Obama in the first debate, and then Romney lost the election.

What did Harris actually have to accomplish? She had to dodge all the punches, which I think she did. But she also had to establish that she is different from Biden in some fundamental way. She tried that routine, but it didn’t land.

Did anyone believe that she is there because she is so different from Biden? She’s a new coat of paint on an old broken jalopy, and they’re trying to pass it off as a Lamborghini.

Thus, she had to establish she’s wildly different from Biden. Did she accomplish that?

I don’t think so. She also had to establish that she’s a moderate who somehow moves her positions for good reason. She never established that because she never bothered to explain why she moved from the far-Left in 2019 to her supposed current positions in 2024.

She never explained why she reversed her stance on fracking. She never explained why she reversed her stance on decriminalization of border crossings — if she did. She never explained why she reversed her stance on mandatory gun buybacks. She never explained why she reversed her stance on electric vehicle mandates.

She didn’t explain any of those points. That is the problem for Harris. All of these systemic disadvantages that she currently has as a candidate remain true today.

Those perceptions have not been changed by the debate.

An article published by Politico yesterday claims, “Harris’ campaign advisers made clear she will be doing more media interviews, including with unconventional outlets.”

But none of them are going to be adversarial. They’re going to use the debate as the opportunity to say she has now answered every question she had to answer. That means she can go hang out with Charlamagne tha God. That means that she can go hang out with the ladies of “The View.” It means that she can go hang out with a bunch of friendlies from here all the way to the election.

The Kamala Harris campaign is betting that what people saw from President Trump Tuesday night was so off-putting that they simply will not vote for him and, instead, vote for her by default.

But the problem is this: As much as people are saying that Trump was super terrible, awful, no good, very bad, the question is this: Was Trump a standard of deviation different from what he normally is? I would say no. I think Trump was pretty much who he always is, and we’re all pretty used to it.

Harris will not explain why she changed her positions, but she has to establish she’s different from Biden. I don’t think she’s doing that.

RFK Jr. stated that Trump lost the debate but won in terms of his governance.

That is the point.

Harris’ policies remain a horror show, and her policies are the same as Biden’s.

There will be ads all over the place that talk about Harris’ hard-leftism. You will see them from now until the election. And they will matter.

Today is September 12. The election is not for 54 more days. The notion that it’s all settled, that it’s over?

Not by a long shot.