Kamala Harris emerges unscathed from debate, dancing around her flip-flops

WASHINGTON: She ducked, she weaved, and she danced around questions on her policy flip-flops and sketchy record in office. In between, Kamala Harris landed sharp blows on Donald Trump, reminding American voters of not just his chaotic years in office but also tormenting his ego. She said world leaders and US generals think he is a "disgrace," she taunted him about people walking out of his rallies, and she mocked him for his inherited fortune, his poor business record, and his bankruptcies.

Trump fell for the bait, spending time and energy talking up his rallies, talking down the generals, and talking up his fortune.

In turn, he called her a "Marxist" and savaged her for high prices and inflation, for letting in millions and millions of illegal immigrants which he said had led to rising crime, for not having any policy plans of her own and copying his, and for weaponizing the courts against him. She just shrugged it off with sneers.

At the end of 90 minutes of fierce back and forth in the Presidential debate on Tuesday, Kamala Harris got away largely unscathed and smiling. Donald Trump looked angry and frustrated. The contrast was evident in the Harris campaign, buoyed by her performance, immediately seeking a second debate; Trump, on his part, stormed into the post-debate spin room (which presidential candidates seldom do) to assert he had won the face-off, even as his campaign claimed it was a 3-1 fight with the ABC News' moderators ganging up with Harris.

There were several remarkable moments in debate, none more than when Trump, in an effort to stoke voter fears over illegal immigration, resorted to validating the grisly rumors that illegal immigrants are eating pets in Ohio. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in, they’re eating the cats, they’re eating the pets of the people that live there,” Trump said, as Harris first looked on with an incredulous expression and then began to laugh, even as the moderators fact-checked former president, saying city officials had debunked the reports. He kept insisting that "people had said this on television."

On the two issues she is most vulnerable on -- inflation and the Afghanistan fiasco -- Harris pushed back, blaming Trump for leaving the Biden administration with a cratered economy after mishandling Covid and for negotiating "one of the weakest deals you can imagine” with Taliban and inviting its leaders to Camp David. She also talked her way out of her reversal on fracking, which she had opposed as a senator, explaining that her position is that "we have got to invest in diverse sources of energy, so we reduce our reliance on foreign oil."

Distracted by her tactic of getting under his skin, it seemed Trump was simply unable to nail her to the failures of the Biden administration or for such policy reversals, as he meandered into the inefficacy of solar energy, immigrants eating pets, foreign dictators admiring him and other digressions. When Trump had tried tie her to Biden and his policies, she clapped back. “You’re not running against Joe Biden. You're running against me.”

While the MAGA media talked up on how Trump would trample all over Harris with his superior debating skills and combativeness, what transpired was anything but that as the vice-president skillfully needled the former President, projecting confidence from the get-go even though there was a hint of nerves. She strode up to Trump's lectern before the start of the debate to proffer a handshake, saying, " Kamala Harris. Let's have a good debate."

Trump: "Nice to see you. Have fun."

And fun she had, needling him repeatedly to take him away from focusing on her dodgy record, after she danced away from the very first tough question she faced: do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago? Rather than responding yes or no, she launched into her plans to boost the economy, slipping in a charge that her opponent's tax cut proposal would amount to a "Trump sales tax."

Trump had to explain and defend himself against several such darts. Among them "not everybody got handed $400 million on a silver platter and then filed bankruptcy six times" and "Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people... and clearly, he is having a very difficult time processing that"

Somehow, she managed to wriggle her way out any responsibility for the the inflation and price rise that workaday Americans are having to deal with, instead painting the picture of a rosy tomorrow even if she is seen has failing to deliver today. And the man who promises to "Make America Great Again" was left holding the picture he painted of an America overrun by dangerous immigrants, ravaged by crime, on the brink of world war three -- "a nation that is dying."