As a female voter, I was watching the presidential debate for one specific thing.
It didn’t happen.
I was watching to see if former President Donald Trump would say or do something that would give Vice President Kamala Harris a plausible case of feminist victimhood.
It might have been a zinger remark about a personal relationship in her past. Or a condescending tone that sounded like Trump was “mansplaining” to a woman. Or a facial expression that conveyed contempt, arrogant superiority or, riskiest of all, ridicule.
If Trump had been captured on even one frame of video looking disrespectful to a woman, it likely would be on the front page of every paper in the country. The clip would run on a continuous loop on MSNBC from now until the polls close.
But it didn’t happen.
Some post-debate commentators praised Harris’s performance as if she had triumphed over Trump, and the Harris-Walz campaign released a statement exulting, “Tonight, Vice President Harris commanded the stage on every single issue that matters to the American people.”
Maybe not quite. The economy, inflation, uncontrolled illegal immigration and an unsecured border are issues that matter to the American people. Trump brought up those issues in as many of his answers as possible, regardless of the question.
Similarly, Harris brought up Roe v. Wade and abortion as often as she could.
Reading the people who are reading the polls, it’s obvious that voters who are worried about the economy and the border are more likely to vote for Trump and voters concerned about the issue of abortion rights are more likely to vote for Harris.
That’s the way it’s likely to stay, because of the thing that didn’t happen. The debate on Tuesday did not trigger a gender-gap upheaval in the race. Trump avoided the particular trap that is quicksand for male candidates running against women.
In 2000, Congressman Rick Lazio ran against Hillary Clinton for the U.S. Senate seat in New York. Their televised debate, moderated by NBC’s Tim Russert, was combative. This is what the New York Times reported about the candidates’ demeanor: “Mrs. Clinton was serious; she did not smile often. By contrast, Mr. Lazio pulsated while smiling; one of Mrs. Clinton’s advisers suggested later that he was almost smirking.”
So if you watched the debate and wondered why Trump’s face seemed locked into a serious scowl, it may be because every New Yorker remembers that Senate debate, and nobody remembers Rick Lazio.
The risk of offending female voters was just one of the traps for the Republican nominee. The moderators allowed Harris, who repeatedly accused Trump of lying, to repeat false stories unchallenged. The Charlottesville story, for example, has been declared untrue even by fact-checking sites that are unfriendly to conservatives. Trump said the tiki torch-bearing neo-Nazis and white nationalists at the Charlottesville protest “should be condemned totally”; he never said they were “fine people.” Trump said Biden’s policies would cause an economic “bloodbath” in the U.S. auto industry, not that there would be a literal “bloodbath” if he didn’t win.
Harris was intentionally misleading the country, which seems to be the go-to position of the Biden administration.
But all of that is old news. Biden himself rolled out the Charlottesville hoax during his own debate against Trump. It didn’t seem to make any difference. It certainly didn’t save Biden.
What would have rocked the race was any action by Trump that offended female voters, either at that moment or later, following weeks of repetition in the media.
Trump avoided that trap.
Harris’s closing statement was an exquisite specimen of perfect political pablum. She said things like “new way forward,” “dreams and hopes” and “giving hardworking folks a break.”
Trump’s closing statement aggressively went after Harris for not doing any of the things she now says she supports during the time she has been in office. He slammed Harris for her previously stated opposition to fracking, an important issue to voters in energy-producing Pennsylvania, the must-win swing state where the debate was held.
As soon as the debate ended, the Harris campaign announced they want another debate.
Typically, winners don’t call for a rematch. Trump may have closed the sale.
Write [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @Susan_Shelley
