Alan Zendell, September 4, 2024

Debate 2.0 is a direct consequence of Debate 1.0, in which Donald Trump put on a shameless display of ignoring every rule and shot gunning President Biden with a nonstop assault of lies, exaggerations, and complete fabrications. At the time, we who believe that re-electing Trump would have catastrophic consequences for America could only hang our heads. In retrospect, it’s doubtful that any of us, expecting a rational debate and unprepared for the kind of attack Trump launched would have handled it well, but for the nearly 82-year-old president who was still weakened from a bout with COVID, Debate 1.0 raised questions like – what if Putin or Xi went after him with the same tactics?

Those questions may or may not have been fair. Backed by talented aides and the best minds available, facing off in the Situation Room in a crisis or at a G7 or summit meeting is something Biden has been doing for decades – he could still do it in his sleep. But perception is everything in politics, and younger voters who think older people should be content to be grandparents had lost confidence in him. Since a Trump victory in November would be the worst possible outcome for America, the Democrats turned lemons into lemonade posturing Biden’s withdrawal as passing the torch to the next generation.

If his behavior since Kamala Harris became the Democratic nominee is a good indicator, Debate 2.0, which will be aired Tuesday, September 10th on ABC, will feature Trump trying to make it a replay of Debate 1.0. He’ll try but he won’t succeed. The reason Trump has been so successful at destroying the traditional Conservative movement and the Republican Party is that until Trump, no one had encountered a politician who possessed his unique combination of shameless narcissism, willingness to lie and pander about every issue to anyone who could help him win, and the personality of a vicious predator. Trump turned the political arena into a Roman gladiator stage.

While it’s shocking to recall Trump knocking off every contender in 2016 like a bunch of dominoes, we’ve seen his magic wane since then. He lost in 2020, and he is generally seen as the reason Republicans lost control of the House of Representatives in 2020 and regained only the barest majority in 2022. What we learned from all that is that women, people of color, and other educated suburbanites reject the core of who Trump is, and they’re wise to the fact that there is no policy substance in anything he says. It’s really simple – Trump will flip on a dime if he sees an opportunity to increase his wealth or power. The health and security of the United States matters to him only in that if the country fails it will take Trump’s fortune down with it.

The message today is that forewarned is forearmed, and Kamala Harris is younger, healthier, smarter, and quicker on her feet than Trump. Imagine the kind of mind it takes to be a successful prosecutor and to have worked her way up from law clerk to state’s attorney to California Attorney General to U. S. Senator to Vice President, and then increase that by an order of magnitude because Harris did all that as a mixed-race woman. Watching her for the last six weeks, I was most impressed by how calm and cool she was. She hasn’t missed a beat or misspoken; she hasn’t seemed the least bit nervous or flustered; and she has demonstrated that she can work a crowd almost as well as Barack Obama. When she speaks, whether in a packed basketball arena or a stadium, she has them eating out of her hand. And when the crowd is mostly black, she has them in such thrall they sound like a revival meeting.

On September 10th, when Harris and Trump face off, not only will she not be flustered or intimidated by him, she will be the one who appears calm and controlled. If he interrupts or talks over her (muted microphones can’t prevent that) she will smile sweetly and say, “I’m speaking, Donald.” When he attempts to insult or denigrate her, she will simply repeat his list of indictments and convictions, perhaps going back to some of Donald’s best known rip-offs like Trump University. She will remind him that she is a respected prosecutor while he is a convicted felon guilty of fraud and sexually assaulting women. And all Trump will see and hear is that a black/Indian woman is stripping him naked in front of a hundred million viewers.

Debate 2.0 may not have the disastrous immediate impact Debate 1.0 had, but it will leave no doubt in the minds of undecided voters that Donald Trump is a grifter and a bitter old man desperate to stay out of prison. He doesn’t belong on the same stage as Kamala Harris.