Did Kamala Win the Debate? Did Trump Win the Debate? Compared to the JFK-Nixon 1960 Debate

Trump also won the debate. He said what he wanted to say, he shouted what he wanted us to hear, and he repeated what got him elected in 2016.

09/18/2024 Bruce Strom Current Events and History, History 2
Did Kamala Win the Debate? Did Trump Win the Debate? Compared to the JFK-Nixon 1960 Debate

Who won the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump? Did Kamala win? Or did Trump win? Or did they both win?

Kamala did win to the extent that most people think of it as the Harris-Trump debate rather than the Trump-Harris debate, as she controlled the perceptions of the debate from the moment she walked across the stage, surprising Trump by shaking his hand. For once it was not all about Trump. After she said everyone should watch one of Trump’s rallies and notice how many people leave early out of exhaustion and boredom, Trump lit up, claiming she had to pay people to attend her rallies packed with excitement, and that Haitian immigrants are eating all the DAWGS in Springfield.

In an Unfinished Love Story, former JFK and LBJ staff members Richard Goodwin and his wife Doris reminisced about the Kennedy-Nixon debates.

Who won the Nixon-Kennedy debates, the first time Presidential candidates debated live, publicly, on television? Those who listened on the radio concluded that Nixon won the debates. But those watching on television thought that the well-rested, confident, youthful, debonair Kennedy clearly won the debate, upstaging the experienced Vice-President Nixon.

John F Kennedy, Cuba, Russia, and Civil Rights, Book Review of An Unfinished Love Story
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/john-f-kennedy-cuba-russia-and-civil-rights-review-of-an-unfinished-love-story/
https://youtu.be/krkJki2vQ2o

Like JFK so many years before, Kamala Harris and her staff were aware of how critically important this debate was. They were prepared.

Was Joe Biden prepared for his debate? We suspect he was too busy with his Presidential tasks to adequately prepare, although he could have been overprepared. But everyone knows that he lost the debate. Biden has been struggling against his stutter all his life, with great success, which means that public speaking has always been challenging to him, and he could never equal Obama’s performance, nor Kamala’s recent debate victory.

All of us lose executive functioning as we age, all of us are slower to think on our feet as we grow older, including both Biden and Trump.

Trump-Biden Debate, Compared to Kennedy-Nixon 1960 TV Debates
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/trump-biden-debate-compared-to-kennedy-nixon-1960-tv-debates/
https://youtu.be/_YvIst9oxXo

Many pundits claimed that Trump had not prepared for these debates. But in a way, Trump had been preparing for the debate for the past decade. Trump does not care about his legacy, Trump does not care about policy, Trump does not care about governing, all Trump looks forward to are his beloved rallies, where he continually practices his lines, searching for the zingers the crowds love. As John Bolton observed, Trump only cares about his ratings and his upcoming reelection campaign.

Doris Kearns recalls her reactions in rewatching the JFK-Nixon debate on YouTube: “After the candidates were announced, I immediately noticed Kennedy’s dark suit, sharply defined against the gray background” of the black and white recording, “in contrast with Nixon’s indistinct gray suit.” Kennedy’s composed posture contrasted with Nixon’s fidgetiness.

“It’s not fair!” blurted Doris, when rewatching the debate on YouTube. “It is a debate, not a beauty contest.”

“What has fair got to do with it?” Dick retorted.

Unlike Nixon, Kennedy knew that on television he needed to speak to the camera, directly to the people, rather than responding to Nixon or the moderator. Doris noticed: “Watching the two men side by side, the contention that Vice President Nixon was the more seasoned and mature candidate, possessed of greater authority and capacity to lead, had vanished before the first debate was over.”[1]

Kamala Harris also did a better job than Trump in talking to the camera, to the people watching television. She was effective when she looked at Trump as he continually lied, laughing at the whoppers. She acted like a commander-in-chief when she manhandled the scowling Trump. In contrast, Trump never looked at her, especially when she reminded him he was a convicted felon and sex offender.

There was a split screen in the Harris-Trump debate, and Kamala’s remarkable facial expressions showed her command of the stage. Did she practice these expressions as part of her preparation? Or has she been practicing them for much of her life as a former prosecutor?

Trump’s signature red tie and dark blue suit always looks good on television, in contrast with Joe Biden’s skinny, wan appearance clad in a dark blue suit and dark blue tie made him look more like an undertaker. But Kamala Harris’ smart suit was just perfect on television, so Trump did not have an advantage there.

There is no debate that Kamala Harris won the debate.

But liberal pundits are bashing Trump when he claimed that he also won the debate. These pundits are wrong, because Trump did also win the debate. He said what he wanted to say, he shouted what he wanted us to hear, and he repeated what got him elected in 2016.

Why does his hard-core base love Trump? He threw away the dog whistle, he says out loud thoughts they have been ashamed of for decades, and Trump has taught them that they should be proud of these shameful thoughts, that we should not be ashamed of shameful thoughts. So, in his own world, Trump did win this debate, he said exactly what he wanted to say. He wants to bring out the worst in us, and he wants to successfully seed chaos.

Compare what he said when he announced his candidacy when going down the escalator in Trump Tower in 2015 to his infamous quote in the Presidential Debate:

Trump, 2015: “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best … They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with them. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.”[2]

Trump, 2024: “In Springfield, (the Haitians) are eating the DAWGS. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there. And this is what’s happening in our country. And it’s a shame.”[3]

What is the difference? Trump’s only path to victory in 2024 is to continue stirring up the hate and prejudice that won him the election in 2016.

Is Trump radicalizing more independent voters, dragging them into his base? Trump’s question: When did Kamala Harris turn black? may have been more calculating than it seemed. Do not forget there are many older voters who will vote for an old boring white guy who will never vote for a younger black woman, whether she could pass for white or not. Hopefully they will be outnumbered by black and liberal voters who will be excited to vote in numbers never seen before.

Do not forget that half the country lives in the news bubble dominated by right-wingnut media, including Fox News, Newsmax, Breitbart, Steve Bannon’s podcast, and Alex Jones, that lie with abandon.

The past was not so long ago. If you care about our democracy, you must vote, democracy must be guarded and cherished, democracy is not inevitable. We are living through the last throes of the Civil War, the struggle for civil rights, and democracy must win. Black voters must turn out in record numbers. Black voters need to be reminded that their ancestors risked their lives, their jobs, their livelihoods, their homes, and their churches when they registered to vote and voted during Reconstruction and the early Civil Rights era.

We must not forget that the nation permitted the South to re-enslave the former slaves in the Jim Crow system when they threatened to restart the Civil War in the 1876 Presidential Election, or how Martin Luther King compared black sufferings to the Holocaust in his Letter From a Birmingham Jail, or how whites threatened the lives of black children to stop the desegregation of schools, or how over ten thousand blacks were lynched without any shred of due process during the Jim Crow years.

1876 Contested Presidential Election: Precedent for January 6th Fake Elector Scheme?
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/1876-contested-presidential-election-precedent-for-january-6th-elector-scheme/
https://youtu.be/Ny0iyVYatB4

Hannah Arendt Questions Whether School Desegregation Was Wise: Little Rock and Civil Rights
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/hannah-arendt-questions-whether-school-desegregation-was-wise-little-rock-and-civil-rights/
https://youtu.be/nsqngH2gbNc

NAACP Attorneys Thurgood Marshall and Charles Houston Challenge Jim Crow in the Courts
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/naacp-attorneys-thurgood-marshall-and-charles-houston-challenge-jim-crow-in-the-courts/
https://youtu.be/fBSNQXDziDU

Ida B Wells, Journalist, Brave Woman, and Anti-Lynching Activist
http://www.seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/ida-b-wells-journalist-brave-woman-and-anti-lynching-crusader/
https://youtu.be/sLDHs0AigvY

We must not forget what our Founding Fathers said about the need to nourish democracy in the early years of our Republic.

When Benjamin Franklin was asked soon after the Constitutional Convention whether we have a republic or a monarchy, he answered: “A republic, if you can keep it.”[4]

Thomas Jefferson reminded us that “the government you elect is the government you deserve.”[5]

Our commentary on the content of the Biden-Trump debate remains relevant. If this had been a high school debate, he would have won handily for his superior logic and content. But as the Kearns have shared, presidential debates are not about content, they are about apparent substance, they are about perception.

Trump-Biden Debate, Compared to Kennedy-Nixon 1960 TV Debates
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/trump-biden-debate-compared-to-kennedy-nixon-1960-tv-debates/
https://youtu.be/_YvIst9oxXo

We also compare the Kearns’ experiences when LBJ announced he would not accept the Democratic nomination to run for reelection in 1968 with Biden’s decision to step down as the Democratic candidate, clearing the way for Kamala Harris to become the party standard bearer.

Comparing Joe Biden and Lyndon Johnson Withdrawing From Presidential Races in 2024 and 1968
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/comparing-presidents-biden-and-lyndon-johnson-not-running-for-reelection-in-2024-and-1968/
https://youtu.be/WkGXJEEBMpc

DISCUSSING THE SOURCES

Doris Kearns Goodwin shares how her husband, Richard Goodwin, JFK’s speechwriter, remembered the Kennedy-Nixon debates. We discuss this source more thoroughly in our reflections on the JFK and LBJ presidencies. We have many other reflections based on Doris Kearns Goodwin’s An Unfinished Love Story on the momentous decade of the Sixties that defined her and her husband’s careers. This was just a delightful book to read, as was her biography of LBJ, and I would also recommend all of Doris Kearns Goodwin’s history books, we have reviewed several of them.

John F Kennedy, Cuba, Russia, and Civil Rights, Book Review of An Unfinished Love Story
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/john-f-kennedy-cuba-russia-and-civil-rights-review-of-an-unfinished-love-story/
https://youtu.be/krkJki2vQ2o

Lyndon Johnson, Enacting the Great Society and Vietnam, Review of an Unfinished Love Story
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/lyndon-johnson-enacting-the-great-society-and-vietnam-review-of-an-unfinished-love-story/
https://youtu.be/MgVEipHdvfM

Cuban Missile Crisis, Forty Year Reunion, Compared to War in Ukraine
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/cuban-missile-crisis-forty-year-reunion-compared-to-war-in-ukraine/
https://youtu.be/gOQMH9-v4bE

Saving Ancient Egyptian Monuments From Aswan Dam’s Rising Waters, from Unfinished Love Story
https://seekingvirtueandwisdom.com/jackie-kennedy-and-richard-goodwin-save-ancient-egyptian-monuments-from-aswan-dams-rising-waters/
https://youtu.be/FywSKdDmk88

[1] Doris Kearns Goodwin, An Unfinished Love Story (New York: Signet Book, 1976), Chapter 3, Aboard the Caroline, pp. 63-67.

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_views_of_Donald_Trump

[3] https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/harris-trump-presidential-debate-transcript/story?id=113560542

[4] https://www.nps.gov/articles/000/constitutionalconvention-september17.htm

[5] https://www.carrollcountycomet.com/articles/is-this-the-government-we-deserve/

About Bruce Strom 382 Articles
I was born and baptized and confirmed as a Lutheran. I made the mistake of reading works written by Luther, he has a bad habit of writing seemingly brilliant theology, but then every few pages he stops and calls the Pope often very vulgar names, what sort of Christian does that? Currently I am a seeker, studying church history and the writings of the Church Fathers. I am involved in the Catholic divorce ministries in our diocese, and have finished the diocese two-year Catholic Lay Ministry program. Also I took a year of Orthodox off-campus seminary courses. This blog explores the beauty of the Early Church and the writings and history of the Church through the centuries. I am a member of a faith community, for as St Augustine notes in his Confessions, you cannot truly be a Christian unless you worship God in the walls of the Church, unless persecution prevents this. This blog is non-polemical, so I really would rather not reveal my denomination here.

Related Articles

Civil Rights

Was the Rough Rider President Theodore Roosevelt a Proponent of Civil Rights?

11/18/2022 Bruce Strom Civil Rights, History, WEB Du Bois 0

Theodore Roosevelt was not a man bound by class, which can be seen in the composition of the Rough Rider volunteer regiment unit he organized to fight in the Spanish American War. The newspaper publicity hyping his heroic charge leading his Rough Rider regiment up San Juan Hill made him a household name, eventually propelling him to the Presidency.
Roosevelt, like his distant cousin Franklin, was a member of the patrician class, which meant that, of course, he attended Harvard University. After serving in the New York State Legislature, Roosevelt was devastated when both his beautiful young wife Alice and his mother passed away on the same day, just two days after the birth of his daughter, also named Alice. For solace, he purchased a cattle ranch in North Dakota, developing many friendships among the rough riding cowboys in this western state. His rough rider recruits were an unlikely mix of wealthy blue-blooded aristocrats and rough and ready cowboys from the Badlands.
Roosevelt’s Rough Riders were not the only regiment charging up San Juan Hill, history books often do not mention the role of the colored regiment Buffalo soldiers in the Spanish-American War. During the war Roosevelt was chided for fraternizing with the enlisted men, this criticism makes more sense if he fraternized with both his Rough Riders and the Buffalo soldiers, which have an interesting history of their own. […]

Philosophy

Why This Old White Christian Abandoned the Republican Party

01/07/2022 Bruce Strom Philosophy, Politics 0

The absolute disrespect shown to our President Barack Obama by many Republican Congressmen, Fox News, and the Tea Party movement was both deeply offensive and also reminded me of similar insults thrown about during the Jim Crow lynching years of our ugly history. It was the rise of the Tea Party movement that meant I now had an ugly choice, I could either support the party of morals, or I could support the party of compassion, but the choice was not really that ugly, because if you are not compassionate, than any morals you wear on your sleeve for show are fake morals, because compassion and morals go together. […]

Martin Luther King, Birmingham, Nonviolent Protests v Bombs and Brutality
Civil Rights

Martin Luther King, Birmingham, Nonviolent Protests v Bombs and Brutality, Biography Chapter 7

01/17/2024 Bruce Strom Civil Rights, History 2

In September 1963, a black church in Birmingham was dynamited, killing four young girls and injuring several dozen others. Addressing the nation on television, President Kennedy proclaimed, “This nation is committed to a course of domestic justice and tranquility.” “If these cruel and tragic events can awaken that city and state, if they can awaken this entire nation,” “then it is not too late for all concerned to unite in steps toward peaceful progress before more lives are lost.” But no whites attended the funeral services of these four young black girls. […]