Here's a point for those who say that the debate performance is much, much less important than the fundamentals of the race -- voters want a change from Biden, and voters saw through Kamala's well-rehearsed talking around the issue and realized she was double-talking while doubling down on Biden economic and immigration policies.
Or at least that's what I hope this single ten-person panel means. Panels are made for 1970s rumpus rooms.
Ed Morrissey, quoting from Reuters:
Reuters interviewed 10 people who were still unsure how they were going to vote in the Nov. 5 election before they watched the debate. Six said afterward they would now either vote for Trump or were leaning toward backing him. Three said they would now back Harris and one was still unsure how he would vote.
Reasons for backing Trump? I guess they were looking for Kamala Harris to perform so well she overcame the fundamentals of the race. But she didn't. She just turned in a well-rehearsed, canned-answer performance.
The Trump converts said they trusted him more on the economy, even though all said they did not like him as a person. They said their personal financial situation had been better when he was president between 2017-2021. Some singled out his proposal to tax foreign imports, although economists say that is likely to raise prices.
Four of those six also said Harris did not convince them she would pursue different economic policies than Democratic President Joe Biden, a Democrat they largely blame for the high cost of living.
Ed Morrissey comments that Kamala Harris won on style points, and thought she was winning while continuing to hide her actual policy positions.
However, that's not what voters wanted out of the debate. Harris came into it as a cipher, and that's the way she left it as well, thanks in large part to the efforts by ABCs moderators. They rarely pressed her for specifics on policies, and only lightly challenged her wide-ranging flip-flops over the last eight weeks or so. Only a couple of days after finally producing an issues page and nearly two months of refusing to talk to reporters (except for 26 minutes on CNN), undecided voters wanted some "meat on the bones," as one focus-group member told Reuters.
And they didn't get it. Harris may have succeeded in zinging Trump, but at least in this group, her strategy to skate on issues and just disqualify Trump failed to land.
One point I wish Trump made more forcefully is that Harris is trying to pretend that both of them are unknowns, and no one knows how either will perform in office.
But we do know how they'd perform in office. Trump was already president, and the world did not end, despite all the many, many claims from the "smart" set that it would. In fact, the economy rose to record heights and we had something close to world peace.
And we know how Kamala's performed in office, too.
This isn't a battle of two unknowns upon which we are free to project our wishes. These are two very known qualities (particularly in Trump's case).
Trump pointed out, at the end (when most stopped watching), that Kamala keeps saying "I'll do this, I'll do that" but never answers: Why aren't you doing that now, then? In fact, why hasn't it already been done?!
He equally should have pointed out that Kamala keeps claiming "Trump will do this, Trump will do that" while ignoring that Trump was in office for four years and did none of the things she's claiming he's determined to do.
This Pennsylvania voter from CNN's panel makes this point much more clearly than Trump did:
I don't know what CNN's panel said overall.
CNN did a post-debate poll and found that Trump gained on the economy:
Major caution with that, though: Post-debate polls reflect who watched them, and I would guess more Trump-voters watched than Kamala voters, because Trump's support is very enthusiastic and Kamala's is not.