ED MORRISSEY: Should Republicans Wet the Bed Over the Debate? Depends.
The fundamentals of this election cycle still favor Trump. Harris still belongs to a deeply unpopular administration, and Trump has more trust on the issues that matter most to voters in this cycle — inflation, immigration, crime, and national security. Trump needs to remain focused on those issues, and the rest of us need to put these game shows in the correct perspective.
Addendum: My pal Jim Geraghty is more pessimistic than I am about the debate, but on the same page about the impact:
So — again on paper — Trump was terrible, and you would think his poll numbers, nationwide and in the swing states, would nosedive. But what we saw Tuesday night wasn’t all that different from the same Trump we’ve seen year after year. And remember when Trump’s conviction was supposed to be a game-changer? The numbers barely budged.
Trump isn’t neck-and-neck in this race because Americans are charmed by his personality. He’s neck-and-neck in this race because of the national exhaustion with the Biden administration status quo, and frustration with inflation and the high cost of living, an insecure southern border, and a sense of growing chaos overseas. So, yes, in theory, this should have been a Harris knockout blow. But if this sort of contrast works, and one sort of performance is so much better than the other . . . why is Trump still so close to reaching 270 or more electoral votes?
I don’t think he was as terrible as people think, largely because they expected Harris to fold like a cheap suit under pressure. Mike Pence tried to warn people about setting that expectation this week. Jim’s correct, though, that the fundamentals haven’t changed.
Curiously, Trump supporters are shocked to discover that the House of Stephanopoulos was the House of Stephanopoulos last night. Jesse Kelly writes that the GOP will take serious action on their massively biased approach:
The GOP will have a severe response to ABC for this ridiculous, biased debate.
They’ll make them wait four years before agreeing to do another one on ABC.
— Jesse Kelly (@JesseKellyDC) September 11, 2024
UPDATE: Roger Kimball: ABC News is the big loser of the Trump-Harris debate. The immoderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, repeatedly pecked at one candidate and not the other.
Unexpectedly!