Voters like debates because they are the only opportunity for them see the candidates directly next to each other.

The moderators are already getting heat for having been biased. I really don’t think so. They made it clear from the beginning that they would let both candidates get away with dodging questions, and so they did.

I think that Donald Trump had a good start. He’s really like a bulldozer and hammered Harris on her two biggest vulnerabilities, immigration and the economy. But after about 30 minutes, his temperament got in the way. I don’t think the story about the pets (which is now all over social media) was the best way to drive home the point about the Southern border. I also don’t think that the grievances from the past about January 6 and the stolen election played well with swing voters.

Yes, he may have gotten more votes than any sitting president before him, but that doesn’t matter. He got less votes than Joe Biden.

Kamala Harris, on the other hand, gained strength as the debate went on and was able to score points. Many may have heard about Trump being a convicted felon or Republicans endorsing Harris before, but they were important things to repeat.

For me as a campaign strategist, it’s always a question of what one wants to strategically accomplish with a debate. For Trump, he should have used it to reset the campaign and finally draw the lines of distinction versus Harris in a way that works for him. In order to do that, one needs a strategy and a narrative, and then use every question to drive home that narrative. He failed to fully accomplish that.

For Harris, I think that getting the debate behind her and accomplishing a draw would have been enough as momentum is on her side. I’m pretty sure she reached that minimum goal of hers. But she was probably able to accomplish more.

It’s not only what a candidate says during a debate, but how he says it. A lot of the (lasting) impact of debates is produced by the non-verbal. And I think the way she looked at him communicated to voters that he is not the future (really, do you want more of this?). This is one thing I have learned during my work in Asia, one can kill with a smile. And last night, Donald Trump didn’t look like the future of America.

Check out my channel on YouTube and my latest video about the debate.