I now have done a full mea culpa from where I was three months ago. And this is where I do something that may be unprecedented in the history of the comments section in medium.
I was completely and utterly wrong.
The one thing that I absolutely believed Trump was capable of doing - pivoting when circumstances dchanged dramatically - has not happened. During the month since Harris became the Democratic nominee he has remained unable to move away from the fact he is no longer running against Joe Biden. GOP strategists believed the only hoe Trump had to pivot awhat this debate. By my count he mentioned Joe Biden five separate times as if he were his opponent. Harris gently reminded him of that fact in what if her better moments and Trump just said: "She is Biden." I don't know if he truly thought that was a campaign counter punch, I'm pretty sure that even some of his die hard supporters thought he'd forgotten who he was running against. (That may not stop some from voting for him, I know, but what can you do?)
Trump has clearly been having a complete meltdown the last month. If we needed more proof, after the debat, he went into the spin room. This is historically not the place for the candidates who let their surrogates speak for them. aND YET he went in to make it very clear that this he won this debate. Not even Fox News was willing to go that far. Trump to be very clear is not willing to debate again because., according to him, he won last night. His debate, like everything else, was perfect. According to the nielsen ratings somewhere between 62 and 63 million people watched last nights debate. Somewhere between 55 and 63 percent are sure he lost. This was his best chance to stop the momentum that had been going for Harris. He clearly come close to doing that.
No one - certainly not me - will pretend this was the knockout punch. We already know how much things can change in a short time and the polls have underestimated Trump's support before. But at the very least he is going to have to work even harder to convince the voters on the margin that he is worthy of another chance at the White House. Looking like a crazy old man claiming that migrants are eating dogs and cats is, too put it very diplomatically, not going to help him.