Reason Roundup

Christian Britschgi | 9.11.2024 9:30 AM

Vice President Kamala Harris did not make a good case for herself at last night's presidential debate. But she did get former President Donald Trump to make the case against himself and that was enough.

Throughout the 90-minute debate hosted by ABC in Philadelphia, Harris effectively baited Trump into going on blustering, bizarre riffs that mostly served to highlight his weaknesses as a candidate.

A representative snippet was when debate moderators asked Harris why the Biden administration waited so long to place more restrictions on migrants' ability to claim asylum in the U.S. given the historic high levels of illegal border crossings.

Harris offered the briefest of defenses of her record, saying only that as a former prosecutor she's prosecuted transnational gangs and that she supported a bill (opposed by Trump) that would have created more border guards.

Then, she quickly pivoted to a dig at Trump's rallies, saying "You will see during the course of his rallies, he talks about fictional characters like Hannibal Lecter, he will talk about [how] windmills cause cancer. And what you will also notice is that people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom."

That's a non sequitur and kind of cheap shot. It's also a massive deflection from the immediate topic at hand, border enforcement, which is a weak issue for Harris (her........

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