I believe Kamala Harris just won the presidency with this debate. As of right now, this is the last major event of the campaign scheduled until election day. Everything else is just rallies, interviews, social media posts, and press statements. As such, this was Trump's last real chance to get back in this race. She destroyed him. It wasn't even close. She sounded like she had ideas -- popular ideas, I might add -- and knew what the hell she was talking about and he sounded like pretty much a one-issue candidate obsessed with immigration policy to a paranoid, delusional extent, and beyond this only truly with consolidating as much power around himself as possible by any means necessary. He sounded, in short, like exactly who he is. That was the Harris plan and it worked.
My favorite line from the whole debate:
HARRIS: "And I'll tell you something, he's going to talk about immigration a lot tonight even when it's not the subject that is being raised. And I'm going to actually do something really unusual and I'm going to invite you to attend one of Donald Trump's rallies because it's a really interesting thing to watch. You will see during the course of his rallies he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter. He will talk about windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom. And I will tell you the one thing you will not hear him talk about is you. You will not hear him talk about your needs, your dreams, and your, your desires. And I'll tell you, I believe you deserve a president who actually puts you first. And I pledge to you that I will."
That was utterly devastating and not the only such moment.
I swear that I'm trying to be fair and sober here because there is a real danger here of over-confidence, but it gets tough for me sometimes. It's tough for me not to just fangirl much of the time because the fact is that I've never been more excited about any candidate for president in my life than I am for Kamala Harris right now. I mean I know I'm critical of liberals and progressives a lot. I'm among probably the 20% most conservative of Democratic voters in truth. I'd characterize myself as a kind of left-wing populist more than anything. But what I saw in Harris tonight was a confident, smart, hard-hitting, and even satisfyingly catty economic populist who will genuinely help the poor, the working class, and the aspiring small business owner, secure our streets and the border, maintain our military and alliances, stand firmly for the freedom and physical safety of women, and mop the floor with fascists, terrorists, predators both individual and corporate, drug-trafficking cartels, and anyone else who wants to fuck with us, and without compromising our values as Americans (which yes, include equal justice under the law). That's what I want. Do I sound cheesy when I say that? Probably. But it's sincere. That's who we are, and I think we've forgotten who we are lately. So you could say that the Kamala Harris brand of liberal populism holds some pretty strong appeal to me. And also she'll be our first female president. And does not need to constantly remind people of that for those of us who care to notice and care.
All that said, I will try to be sober in my assessment of things though because all this isn't to say that there was no nuance. I could criticize Harris for repeatedly dodging when challenged to defend either her woke policy program from her 2020 presidential run and when challenged to defend the unpopular outcomes of "Bidenomics". She sounded like a typical, dishonest politician trying to change the subject rather than answer the question in those moments. That's the worst I can say of her performance though and in the end it's not that much when compared with her opponent's level of dishonesty. (Seriously, Trump actually claimed that immigrants are eating people's pets. There's a reason why "weird" is fast becoming the new "snowflake" in the arena of insults.) I just don't care that much if she politicians a few answers. I care about where she stands right now and I feel like I know the answers that I need to not just to vote against Trump, but to vote affirmatively and enthusiastically for her.
And now that I've finished writing all that, the first poll results from debate watchers are in. In their view, Harris won easily. Going in, there was division amongst those surveyed -- an even 50-50 split -- about who they expected would perform the best. End result? 63% proclaimed Harris the winner while 37% said that Trump won in their view. That's nearly a complete reversal of the June debate's results. On average, the winner of the debate has led in this poll by 18 points, so Harris’s 26-point win in the CNN flash poll is above average. It was even good enough to finally get Taylor Swift off the sidelines, so there! 
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