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All our commentators who watched the presidential debate are sure of one thing: Kamala Harris won. A lot of them are equally unsure of another: Does it matter?

But first, in case you missed the melee, Alexandra Petri will catch you up with a summary that is accurate both in spirit and, alarmingly, in letter. She weaves into her satire several of Donald Trump’s most outlandish lies — including that immigrants in at least one U.S. community are “eating the pets of the people that live there.” (The enormous time-since-Trump-gaffe clock the moderators keep resetting is Alex’s invention, though.)

You can see how this was not just a victory for the vice president but “plain and simple a rout,” as Michele Norris determined for our post-debate Prompt 2024 newsletter, written alongside Matt Bai and Ramesh Ponnuru, who agreed that Trump got too agitated and missed lots of opportunities. As Jim Geraghty put it in his column: “The active volcano Mount Trump erupted.” Casualties? “The GOP’s assumptions about winning the presidency.”

Karen........

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