I Don’t Know Who Did More Damage To Trump Last Night. Harris Or Trump

I’ll start with a touch of cold water. As spectacular as Kamala Harris was last night, there’s always room for improvement, that’s why a 10.0 is almost impossible to obtain in gymnastics.

This one is actually quite simple, but it could help Harris pick up a lot more undecided and independent voters. In post debate watch party interviews and focus groups today, undecided and independent voters were generally favorable of Harris and her performance, but with one caveat. At least four I counted said something along the lines of, that $6000 child tax credit sounds nice, and that $25000 small business tax credit is awesome, but how is she going to pay for it? Those are just campaign promises.

Actually she can pay for it, easily, and all she has to do is to add two simple sentences to her stump speech, I know it all sounds great, but how do we pay for it? That’s easy. by not renewing the silly Trump tax cuts for billionaires and corporations, and let them kick in their fair share. Like Geico, it’s so simple even a caveman can get it, and it makes sense.

Now on to the main dish. Before the debate I wrote about two things Harris had to work over, with or around. First, she had to find a way to deal with Trump’s naked aggression and disdain without going for a wallow in the mud with him. This she did by neutering him with her firm purposeful handshake, chasing him down to his own lair to force the contact. Trump was on the defensive all night.

Second, I wrote that Harris’s secret weapon could be the power of laughter. Her laugh drives Traitor Tot insane. She didn’t have to be loud or obvious, just crack that grin and laugh quietly to herself. She did that all night, and the more she did, the more enraged he got and the further off point he went.

But by far and away her most effective device was a tactic that any cat owner, childless or not can tell you. You don’t have to tire your arm to a cramp playing with your cat by waving a piece of yarn around, or by bouncing up and down a shiny tinsel ball on the end of a string. All you need is a laser pointer.

And Harris had one, industrial strength. In confronting Trump, she chose a path of non direct confrontation. Even when insulted by Traitor Tot, you might have noticed that she seldom if ever addressed him directly, Former President Trump, what you don’t understand is, this would just invite a retort, and even more nasty, dragging her down personally.

Instead, after a Trumper tantrum, she turned to the microphone and spoke directly to the audience about Trump, I’m inviting you to attend a Trump rally, it’s fascinating to see. You’ll hear about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter, you’ll hear that windmills cause cancer, and you’ll see people leaving early because they’re exhausted or bored. But you’ll never hear a word about you.

Brilliant. There wasn’t even anything about crowd size in the question she was asked, but she pulled out that laser pointer, wiggled it around over the crowd size rabbit hole, and there went Trump, scampering furiously right on down. Just an FYI, we use that laser pointer to get the cats into their travel bags for a trip to the vet, so now you see how that can work out.

She did that all night long, And every goddamned time she wiggled that laser pointer over a rabbit hole, down Trump went. And it took a toll on him. The more she got him off topic, and the deeper he went down into those holes, the closer he got to his secret place, his Q-Anon man child cave. And once he was in there, Harris had him by the old short-and-curlies.

Once His Lowness descended into full blown conspiracy theory mode, he hit his self destruction button. It didn’t matter what the question was, or what Harris had said, he was off to the races on insane consipracy theories. And the viewers in the watch parties and focus groups hated it;

• Several watch party goers, and more focus group members thought that Trump hysterically recounting how live, viable fetuses were being born, and then aborted outside the womb as sickening, depraved, and disgusting
• Trump went full Hillbilly Imbecile and related the conspiracy brain fart about Haitian special protection immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio stealing pet cats and dogs from their neighbors, cutting them up, and barbecuing them. Condemnation was largely universal, with one disgusted viewer opining, What kind of a sick, perverted mind actually buys into that kind of stuff?
• One of the few times Harris confronted El Pendejo ex Presidente was over her weak point, immigration. She mauled him for tanking a bipartisan bill that would have improved the border situation, and directly asked him why he did it. With no palatable response, Traitor Tot instead launched on a long, angry tirade about Crime rates being down all over the world because they’re sending all of their criminals here, through our open southern border. Our violent crime rate is a disgrace, and it’s all their fault. One watch party viewer nailed the landing when he said, Millions of criminals from all over the world invading our southern border? Who does he think he’s kidding? He’s talking about Hispanics!

You’ll notice that with the exception of the bipartisan immigration bill beatdown, Harris never got down into the mud with Trump, stooping to personal resorts that only extend the embarrassment. Instead she simply waved her laser pointer around, and let Trump disqualify himself from ever being elected to the White House again. I love it when a plan comes together.

Late Addition: GOP pollster and analyst Sarah Longwell, CEO of The Bulwark and Republican voters against Trump was just on MSNBC in the 6pm PDT hour. And she related that she was pleasantly surprised when, in her focus group this morning, four different independent and undecided voters used the same term to describe Harris’s performance, Presidential. Considering the fact that the issue of presidential qualities is the biggest remaining knock against Harris, it sounds like she moved the needle last night.

I thank you for the privilege of your time.