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    • Who won the debate? Trump improvised and easily lost to Harris
    Colorado

    Who won the debate? Trump improvised and easily lost to Harris

    Madoc Meredith Posted on

    Conservatives blame the moderators for Trump’s loss of face during the presidential debate. They should blame the guy in the red tie.

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    If you want to know who is winning an NBA game, go to social media and see which fans are attacking the referees.

    I mean, you can see that in every game.

    The winners are happy. The losers chase zebras.

    On Tuesday evening, American conservatives moaned and complained about the referees.

    “This is the new record for worst debate moderation. It is utterly disgusting,” wrote the Federalist’s Mollie Hemingway.

    “Trump needs to debate both Kamala and the moderators,” complained Republican U.S. Representative Darrell Issa of California.

    “These moderators are a shameful failure and this is one of the most biased and unfair debates I have ever seen. Shame on you,” wrote former Fox host and podcaster Megyn Kelly.

    Come on, Megyn Kelly. You, of all people. You’re the expert who shoots straight even when Republicans are in the crosshairs.

    Don’t blame the moderators for this debacle

    The referees didn’t steal this debate. Donald Trump lost it as badly as anyone can lose.

    He lost because he was smarter, inferior and less capable for 90 minutes at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

    He lost because Democrats set up a stage in Pittsburgh and put Kamala Harris through a week of mock debates against a former Hillary Clinton aide while the “stable genius” tweeted memes.

    I fully expected Trump to lose this debate – and I told my colleagues as much in our daily meetings over the week leading up to it – because Trump is incapable of producing two coherent sentences.

    Few remember that Trump was awful in his decisive victory over Joe Biden, in which the incumbent president collapsed from his mental weakness. An undisciplined, babbling wreck.

    On Tuesday night, he was the same – only this time facing Kamala Harris, who is 22 years younger than Joe Biden and makes her living as a prosecutor compiling arguments.

    Harris was superior to Trump in every way

    While she has remained silent for much of the past month, Trump and her surrogates have portrayed her as the madwoman who fell out of the coconut tree, the giggling champion of cat ladies, the walking, talking word salad.

    In her first presidential debate, now in its seventh round, she certainly could not stand up to Trump.

    But there she was, and it wasn’t a word salad. She was throwing an elegant Waldorf snack while Trump was throwing around the same old hash.

    Not only did she not giggle, but she managed one, two, three, and four sentences full of facts and context, four times as many as Trump managed.

    Late in the debate, I received a three-word text message from one of my Republican friends who was planning to vote for Trump.

    “He’s an idiot.”

    I answered with three words.

    “Yes, he is.”

    Trump got more speaking time than Harris

    No, those weren’t the referees. And you conservatives who complain that ABC News anchors David Muir and Linsey Davis were the deciding factor are missing the 43 minutes of crap Trump served up on Tuesday night.

    While the moderators did fact-check Trump’s statements in real time (who is in charge of this convention?), they did so with such politeness that they were almost invisible.

    If Harris needed a fact check, Trump had plenty of time to do so. After all, he got five minutes more speaking time than Harris, CNN reported. That really is a deciding factor.

    Trump seemed like he always did – like he was improvising. He couldn’t even prepare a closing statement, for heaven’s sake. He was still growling and playing visual support for Harris’ overarching theme – “We are not going back.”

    Back where to?

    Back to the pile of hashish with the red tie.

    Harris was most vocal on the issue of abortion

    Even worse for Trump is that he did not compete on one of the most important issues for women voters, the voting bloc where he is weakest.

    The issue of abortion was raised early in the debate, when the millions of Americans were still alert and attentive.

    Harris knew this was her big moment and was able to express herself best.

    “Understand what has happened under Donald Trump’s abortion bans. Couples who pray and dream of starting a family are being denied IVF treatment. This is what is happening in our country: Working class, professional women who work one or two jobs and can barely afford child care anyway are having to travel to another state to sit on a plane next to strangers and get the medical care they need.

    “…That is why Americans voted for freedom in every state where this issue was on the ballot, both red and blue states.”

    How Trump should have reacted

    Trump should have responded: “Then the Vice President agrees with me that it was a good thing to finally give red and blue states the opportunity to vote on abortion.”

    Democrats are pushing a pro-abortion extremism that would allow the procedure up until birth. When ABC’s Linsey Davis asked Harris, “Would you support restrictions on a woman’s right to an abortion?” she replied, “I’m absolutely in favor of reinstating the protections of Roe v. Wade.”

    That is, no – given the ambiguity of Roe.

    Responding to this requires a certain level of sophistication that, frankly, Trump has little to offer.

    It would go something like this:

    “Republicans do not want to control women’s bodies. Republicans believe that the separate human being that comes to viability in a woman’s womb, that has its own DNA, its own heartbeat, and its own central nervous system, is a life that has dignity and deserves protection because it cannot protect itself. The Republican position on abortion has never been about control. It is about compassion.”

    Can you imagine Trump making this argument?

    Republicans can win on issues

    When Harris presented her economic plan, Trump should have picked up on the part she left out. Something like this:

    “What the vice president hasn’t told you is that she plans to give bureaucrats in Washington the power to set the prices of milk and eggs at your neighborhood grocery store. Do you know why she hasn’t told you about this? Because wherever it’s been tried, whether in North America, Latin America or the former Soviet Union, it has led to food shortages, empty shelves and bread lines.”

    Such a response would have required considerable foresight and preparation and was entirely outside Trump’s area of ​​expertise.

    Trump’s “dog” statement made us laugh: But it’s not funny

    Trump has one major advantage in this election: the facts. The American people do not like the direction the new progressive Democrats are taking the country.

    This is why Harris has abandoned many of her old positions. This is why she is fleeing the identity politics that the Democrats have been pursuing for decades.

    Unfortunately, Trump’s pride stands in the way

    Unfortunately for Conservatives, we are burdened with a candidate so confident of his brilliance that he neither prepares, improves, nor adapts.

    That was the reason for the faceplant in Philadelphia. Not the referees.

    According to an ancient scripture, “pride goeth before a fall.” But with Trump and the Republicans, it is even worse.

    Even the fall is followed by pride.

    When asked about his performance, Trump told Fox News: “I think that was our best debate ever.”

    Phil Boas is a columnist for The Arizona Republic. You can reach him by email at [email protected].

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