By James Jimenez
The 2024 Presidential Debate between former President Donald J. Trump and current Vice-President Kamala Harris was a key moment in the candidates’ battle for the undecided vote. And just like in any other political debate, the outcome was decided by how effectively the candidate neutralized their opponent’s arguments and pushing their own their point. Stripped of all politics, debates such as this are really a question of which candidate is the better communicator. And in this Trump-Harris dust up, it was clear that Harris outclassed Trump. And here are the top three things she did right.
Concretize
Harris took abstract concepts, like abortion bans, and gave concrete, real world examples of the concept in operation. When abortion was brought up, Trump very quickly segued into praising himself for getting Roe v. Wade overturned. This tack effectively distanced him from the real world consequences of removing the protections afforded by Roe, and reduced abortion to a sterile talking point. Harris’ reply strategy, on the other hand, was to enumerate a handful of specific cases where the lack of Roe protections created a climate of fear among reproductive care professionals, granted politicians the right to override a woman’s decisions over her own body, and endangered the lives of women undergoing risky pregnancies or miscarriages.
What this approach did was to bombard the listener with visceral reminders of what abortion truly meant in the trenches, away from the sterile and safe environments of debate and rhetoric; it gave listeners a chance to actually feel the abstract concept being discussed.
Non-verbal Communications
Both of Trump and Harris made liberal use of their facial muscles throughout the debate. But where Trump mostly pulled comical faces, mocking and taunting his adversary, Harris used looks of befuddlement, surprise, and disbelief to silently communicate how absurd Trump’s statement were.
When Trump exploded into a tangent about cats being eaten by immigrants in Springfield, Harris’ face went from amused disbelief to a look of concern as if to say, “are you ok, man?” Those facial expressions contextualized the words that were coming from Trump and gave the television audience permission to admit to themselves that the allegations of pet-murder – for which Trump was crisply fact checked – were ridiculous.
And it wasn’t just facial expressions either. Trump has exactly one move whenever he’s trying to make a point. His shoulders bunch up, his right elbow moves toward the center line of his torso, and his right hand waves around in little circles as he speaks. Typically, his left hand grasps the lectern or pushes off against it. Over-all, this body posture is aggressive and domineering – exactly how Trump sees himself.
Harris, on the other hand, has a whole range of body postures she deploys adroitly. From leaning slightly back to signal surprise, to squaring her shoulders to face the audience when she’s making a point, to holding on to her chin, looking both amused and slightly pensive – as though whatever was going through her head at that particular moment was particularly puzzling.
But of all the instances of non-verbal communication that Harris deployed during the debate, none were quite as effective how she used the tone of her voice to communicate amusement, disbelief, and in one impossible to miss moment, disgust. It happened while she was recounting how Trump brought the Taliban to Camp David. Barely containing her distaste, Harris visibly restrained herself from using a profanity in referring to Trump. “This, this … former President!!”
And the fact that we have no trouble guessing what she really wanted to say, is proof that her nonverbal communication game was perfectly on point.
Baiting Trump
And the top thing that Harris did in this debate – and the strategy that was perhaps the most consequential and fundamental to her debate victory – was to bait Trump into ranting about his stale talking points. On multiple occasions, Harris communicated her point and then ended her time by dangling a talking point that she knew would trigger Trump. And it always did. If she brought up John McCain, she knew Trump would trot out his old grievances; if she dangled Charlottesville, he would relitigate how both sides had very fine people; and if she mentioned rallies, she knew with absolute certainty that he would be lured into ranting about crowd sizes yet again.
Trump did not disappoint. Again and again, he would rise to the bait and end up going on at length – getting more and more agitated as his ranting progressed – discussing the same old tired tropes that he’d been harping on for the last 200 years. This often left him breathless and with no time left to address Harris’ point, much less to add any substantial arguments to bolster his own. This meant that at the end of the argument, Harris’ points remain largely unrebutted.
Having debated, since my university days and throughout my two decades as spokesperson of the Commission on Elections, I recognize in this strategy, Harris’ background as a prosecutor. I totally appreciated both the fact that Harris adopted this prosecutorial strategy and how adroitly she deployed it. It was done so skillfully that it was as if Trump never saw how he was being entrapped.
