Harris delivered a ‘masterclass’ debate. Will it change the race?

it's so funny how for weeks everyone telegraphed "she's gonna bait him" and her team was like "we're gonna bait him" and he managed to act normal for like 3 minutes and then she said one thing about his rallies and it was like feeding a gremlin after midnight

Nope.

Trump fans don't care.
Harris fans saw confirmation.
Disinterested voters didn't watch.

People not voting for Harris because of Gaza need to avoid watching the debate, otherwise they’ll change their minds. No matter how bad things are, they can get worse.

Fox News poll, right after the debate.

Boomertown.

It will change a lot.

This will dramatically increase the number of Republicans who will tell everyone they're not voting for him, and then vote for him.

A few Republicans I know said they were going to vote libertarian or just not vote after watching the debate so she did pretty fucking well.

Some Republican politicians will switch perhaps.

It wasn't a masterclass. It was functional. What she did masterfully was bait Mangolini into showing how incoherent he really is.

The answer as always is, wait a week. We'll know when the post debate polling hits the news.

I think it will, but people won't think it did. Harris was dropping slightly in the polls, Polymarket odds were up to 52/46 Trump. The betting markets being the most responsive item to check, it's currently 50/49 Trump, back to tied. I think polls will look similar, back to essentially tied, but that's where things were a couple weeks ago so it might just erase the mini slump from everyone's mind.

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Did she? I listened to the debate and she sounded mid for most of it. She spent more time attacking Trump than she did answering the questions she was asked.

Sure, she fared better than her predecessor, but "not shitting her pants" is a low bar. Trump was definitely worse than her, but again, if the bar is "don't act butthurt when your opponent says your rallies are boring", then congrats, I guess.

Reading comments from both sides, it seems that the left sees her not being geriatric as a win; and the right thinks that Trump was unjustly treated (targeted questions, live fact-checking, etc...), which is absurd considering that (a) they also asked Harris difficult questions (fracking and Israel, for example, which she did have a hard time answering), and (b) he was given free reign to talk out of order more times than I can count.

I think Harris "won" because Trump sucked. He sidestepped questions regarding an abortion ban ("I haven't talked with JD about it" fucking lol) and Ukraine ("Do you want Ukraine to win the war?" "I want the war stopped" TWICE in a row, followed by "I know Putin really well" and a rant about the awesomeness of Victor Orban); he repeatedly told lies (post-birth abortion and pets-eating immigrants being the highlight) which were promptly caught by the live fact-checker, and even showed weakness and undecisiveness ("do you have a plan?" "I have concepts of a plan").

But those are blunders that Trump committed, not something that Harris should take credit for. Nothing I heard screamed of "masterclass" debate, and I doubt that it will give her an edge in the upcoming elections or sway electors one way or the other. After all, the people who lived under four years of Trump's presidency and watched January 6th unfold live, and still call themselves "undecided" are pretty much lying to themselves at this point.

The debate actually infuriated me. There was no real content. Just two people screaming at each other thet the other one sucks.

Harris did better than trump because she didn't lie, but she still didn't say anything usefull. Mostly she didn't even respond to his "arguments", wich is sad, because they were that easy to respond to. Instead she continued to say what she learned by heart before the debate and what her team tokd her to say.