CATS AND DOGS

So . . .

The most important thing that happened at last night's presidential debate . . .

Wasn't the debate.

More about that later.

In the meantime, Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump took to the stage at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia last night for their first debate. By the time it was over, Harris had clearly wiped the floor with him.  

As importantly, sixty million Americans saw her do it.

Harris's objective was to persuade the sliver of undecided voters that she can be President and that her policies will help them.  Trump's objective (at least as disclosed by his campaign managers) was to focus on issues the polls put him ahead on (the economy and immigration) and otherwise not go off the rails.

When it was over . . .

It was clear the rails had won.

Over the course of the six-week period in which Harris has been running for president, both the GOP and many in the pundit class have had a field day pretending she is not a particularly skilled debater.  This was largely based on her aborted campaign for the presidency in 2020, which ended before a single vote had been cast and is remembered, if at all, only for her "I was that little girl" debate line on school busing that was designed to but never knocked Joe Biden off the pedestal Rep. Clymer fashioned and then launched him to the Democratic Party nomination on following what by then had been Biden's own floundering campaign. 

Harris's failure in 2020, however,  said nothing about her ability to go mano a mano against Trump or anyone else.  

Indeed, in search of tea leaves, Harris's opponents haven't been looking in the right place.

She is a former prosecutor.  

And not just California's Attorney General or Alameda County's District Attorney. 

She served for years as an Assistant District Attorney.  

She tied cases. 

She convinced juries.

I've done that too.  

And the thing about a jury trial is there is no real filter between you and the twelve people who will decide your case.  

If you are a phony . . . or pretentious . . . or even remotely dishonest, they figure that out.  And then you lose.  

And while critics often assume prosecutors have the decks loaded in their favor (unlimited investigative resources and the power of the state behind them), the truth is usually different in cases that actually go to trial.  

In those situations, there is always something the other side can exploit.  

As a young prosecutor, I had a case where the police had mistaken the date on which our only witness  had the defendant committing the crime. The witness told the cop it was done on Thursday and without probing he assumed she meant the last one.  Unfortunately for us, the defendant was in jail on that Thursday; the actual crime was witnessed a week earlier and the cop had just made a mistake in failing to pin down the date. 

In preparing for trial, convincing him to admit that mistake took some doing. Failing to do so, however, would have been fatal.

On a larger stage last night, Kamala Harris the trial lawyer made her case to the jury that is America's voters.  

She was prepared and precise.  

Anyone looking for policy specificity found it in child and business start-up tax credits, down payment assistance for first-time home-buyers, an anti-gouging law to combat unjust price hikes, and the restoration of Roe v. Wade as national policy. She did not duck her change on fracking and on immigration, she preached the specificity of a bipartisan bill that Republicans in the House and Senate had supported but Trump killed because, as she put it, he "preferred to run on a problem instead of fixing" it. 

On the divisions Trump foments as a matter of course, the democracy he tried to destroy on January 6, and the dictators he wants to emulate in the White House, she invoked the generals who have deemed him "a disgrace", the scores of Republicans who have endorsed her, and the allies who joined us in restoring NATO.  

She also allowed Trump to destroy himself.

He refused to say he wanted Ukraine to win its war against Putin's Russia but claimed he would somehow end it before he was inaugurated. He wouldn't or couldn't say how.  And in truth, the only way that happens is by giving Putin a lot of what he wants (and allowing him to go back for more later, after he rests, re-arms and re-mans his army). 

Which is a long way of saying what Harris said in five words:

Putin "would eat you for lunch."

On the Affordable Care Act, which Trump has claimed for eight years he wants to replace but has yet to offer any plan for doing so, he said he now has "concepts".  

If that means anything, he didn't share it.

She told us he would lie.

And he did.

About winning the 2020 election.

He lost.

As Harris put it, 81 million voters decided to fire him.

About crime being "through the roof".

It's actually down.  

About his proposed tariffs being paid by foreigners.

They will be paid by American consumers.

About babies being killed after they are born in pro-choice states.

It doesn't happen in any state.

And about immigrants eating cats and dogs in Ohio.

It never happened.

By the time he got to this last lie, he was more than off the rails.  As Joy Reid noted in her own post-debate analysis, "the cheese" was no longer "firmly affixed to the cracker."

When the debate ended, Trump had performed so badly that he had to replace his seconds in the spin zone to pretend his act was other than a flop.  While there, the media reported what was perhaps the biggest development of the night -- Taylor Swift's endorsement of Harris.

Alone among today's crop of entertainers, Taylor is a world-renowned icon.  She is the most famous "Childless Cat Lady" on the planet. She has 283 million followers.  Within a half hour of posting her endorsement on Instagram, 2.3 million people had liked it. By around noon today, that number had risen to 9 million.

The endorsement itself was substantive.  It wasn't a shout out and it was a far cry from the celebrity kitsch that often accompanies Trump (think Hulk Hogan's "shirt tearing" at the RNC). 

She began by asking her fans to "do" their "research on the issues . . . and stances" Harris and Trump "take on the topics that matter  . . . the most" to them. She explained that part of her reason for endorsing now was an "AI of ['her'] falsely endorsing Donald Trump's presidential run . . . posted to his site." She explained that "It really conjured up my fears around AI, and the dangers of spreading misinformation," and that she "need[ed] to be very transparent about [her] actual plans for this election as a voter."

"The simplest way to combat misinformation is with the truth."

"I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election," she said. "I am voting for @kamalaharris because she fights for the rights and causes I believe need a warrior to champion them . . . [S]he is a steady-handed, gifted leader." Calling out Trump, she continued that she "believe[s] we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos." Calling out JD Vance, she explained that she "was . . . heartened and impressed by [the] selection of running mate @timwalz, who has been standing for LGBTQ+ rights, IVF, and a woman's right to her own body for decades."

She finished by saying "I've done my research and I've made my choice." 

But she did not end there.

Instead, she concluded with: "Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make."

She then signed off . . . 

"With hope and love,

Taylor Swift

Childless Cat Lady"

In many ways, her last lines were  the most important.

She was rightly alarmed by a Trumper's  AI attempt to hijack her voice and create a false endorsement. She knows, however, that there are lots of ways to hijack a voice.  

Misinformation is one of them. 

Ignorance is another.

So too viciousness.

More than two hundred years ago, the founders warned that these flaws could kill our experiment in republican democracy.  As Pennsylvania's Benjamin Rush put it : "If the common people are ignorant and vicious, a republican nation can never long be free."

Yesterday, Taylor told her Swifties much the same thing.