Vice President Kamala Harris needed a big moment at Tuesday's debate with former president Donald J. Trump to walk away the clear winner.
She didn't get it. Harris may have been more polished and professional in her demeanor and delivery than the former president. But she didn't score the points needed to build the kind of lead she'll need to sustain her through November. Democrats are more likely to be talking up Taylor Swift's endorsement of the vice president than her actual debate performance through the remainder of the week.
Trump was, as ever, Trump—messy, rambling, and repetitive in all the right ways and on all the right things. He remained on message. Harris failed at the border. Harris will ban fracking, no matter what she says today. Harris is part of a weak administration that never fires anyone who messes up.
None of that may seem presidential, but with well over half the electorate in agreement with Trump that America is on the "wrong track" rather than "headed in the right direction," Harris needed to make a stronger case as to why she represents the change people want.
Harris is caught in a tricky situation. If she goes too far towards the middle, she loses the Left. If she affirms her previous progressive positions, she chases working-class voters in crucial states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin into Trump's corner.
When you come down to it, this most unusual battle for control of the White House is just too close to call. Pundits have their favorites and skew their analysis to match. When you pick apart the data, all we can say for certain is that over the period between first becoming the presumptive Democratic nominee and the debate, the best Harris could do was fight her way back into a tie with Trump.
That's not much of an accomplishment. Harris has been able to walk back from previously held positions that, to quote her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz, might be described as "weird." These include defunding the police, banning the sale of plastic straws, or having the government pay for gender reassignment surgery for people who are in the United States illegally.
But it hasn't been enough to gain the vice president a solid lead. The most recent New York Times/Siena Poll, taken before the debate, showed Trump with a slight, inside-the-margin-of-error lead. That's not what Democrats who've been cheering Harris' ascendence in the polls were hoping for. They want the former president destroyed, along with everything he and his political movement represent. Harris made that clear at last night's debate, even as Trump deflected much of what she had to say about him.
A compulsive focus on Trump's personal qualities has caused Democrats to forget a few electoral fundamentals, the most important of which is that you need to give the people something to vote for.
At the debate, Harris offered a laundry list of policies that included capping the price of more prescription drugs, a $25,000 subsidy for first-time home buyers, and yet another expansion of the child tax credit—a group of unconnected ideas that, as Trump pointed out more than once, doesn't exactly constitute a plan. Unless one of your objectives is to boost the price of every home up for sale by $25,000.
People who know who Trump is. Harris has tried her best to remain an enigma, to be all things to all people without ever having to define herself. It's not working, as the sudden arrest of her rise in the polls can attest. People are beginning to figure that out. They need to know what they are voting for. Remember how Nancy Pelosi famously said Congress would have to pass the Obamacare bill before people could know what was in it? America's not voting for a president who says, "Wait until I'm in office so you can see just what I'll do."
The debate may have changed that perception, but it isn't likely. Harris' refusal to define herself much beyond vague statements about how her "values haven't changed" has left her open to attack from both sides. The extreme positions she does take are as damaging as Trump's extreme personality. Voters may dislike the former president, but they enjoy their gas stoves and air conditioners too much to risk letting Harris take them away.
Most campaigns, especially national ones, are based on persuasion. Candidates and surrogates often seek to use issues to move voters in one direction or another, or to separate them from—or link them to—a candidate whose stances may be too far outside the mainstream. This one is different. Most everyone's already chosen their sides, which means there's little persuading left to do, especially in the Trump camp.
That means both campaigns should spend the remainder of their efforts identifying potential voters and getting them to vote, whether by mail or in person, on Election Day or early. It doesn't matter. The millions that will soon be spent on television, radio, and online advertising trying to define Trump and Harris as extremists too far from the mainstream would be better put into get-out-the-vote efforts.
That may seem like heresy, especially in a media environment where everyone pretends everything lives or dies based on a particular position taken, but this race is different. The campaign that does the better job of getting out its vote wins. Typically, the Democrats do it better—which means Harris may be farther ahead than the polls suggest. Likewise, Trump had almost four years to put an operation in place to do what he needs to win. How it turns out is anyone's guess.
Newsweek Contributing Editor Peter Roff is a veteran journalist who appears regularly on U.S. and international media platforms. He can be reached at roffcolumns@gmail.com and followed on social media @TheRoffDraft.
The views expressed in this article are the writer's own.
