I have a notion of a concept of an idea for today’s column. (H/T Donald Trump.)
It goes like this: Florida Man is humiliated before tens of millions of viewers on national TV, but, for reasons unknown, we still don’t know how much it will matter.
I mean, everyone knows what happened by now in what may be the lone debate between Trump and Kamala Harris.
If you watched, you saw Harris beat Trump, as he would put it, like a dog — although not one presumably fresh off the grill.
She made Trump, with the expected help from the Trumpster himself, look old, flustered, discombobulated and, mostly, really really angry. Am I allowed to say “peeved” in a family newspaper? Because he was. That was as clear as the squint of his eyes and the scowl set permanently on his face.
She set the traps. And each time, he walked in seemingly unawares. She kept pushing. And each time, he’d get more rattled.
He lost control — and so he lost the night. But that doesn’t mean that he has lost the election. After a similarly disastrous debate night, Joe Biden eventually dropped out. After such a night, Donald Trump will still be very much in the race.
Don’t ask me how. Don’t ask me why.
Because, whatever he has said, even Trump knows he got clobbered. He knows that Harris — a Black woman after all, whom he once described as dumb as a box of rocks — knows he lost. You can imagine the humiliation.
Or maybe you can’t. What exactly does a malignant narcissist feel when he’s reduced to saying — after his worst debate ever — that it was his best debate ever?
He must feel like the kind of guy who can do little more than repeat a baseless and racist claim that migrants in Springfield, Ohio, are eating their neighbors’ cats and dogs and think that is a rational, presidential, unweird thing to say in a debate.
It’s no wonder Harris laughed at him then, as she did so many times during the 90-minute melee.
The moderators, who fact-checked him in real time, and with straight faces, on dogs and cats and related issues, might as well have been laughing at him, too.
Meanwhile, roadkill-hunting buddy, RFK Jr., was probably booking a flight to Springfield.
It’s no surprise Trump repeatedly took the bait. He can’t help himself. The highlight — or lowlight, depending on who’s keeping score — came when Harris wheeled out the crowd-size bait with her charge that people were too bored at Trump rallies to stick it out to the end. Trump sputtered and stuttered and finally said that no one goes to Harris rallies, and if they did, they were being bused in and paid off.
And she just smiled. And with each smile, you could almost see Trump shrinking.
I’ve never seen Trump in a debate where anyone has been able play his game by his rules and still win.
But she did. She clearly did. Muhammad Ali might’ve said — and as more than a few people noted — she roped-the-dope. If it had been an Oxford Union debate, the jury would have stopped it.
OK, that’s all well and good, but where does that leave us?
And here’s the bad news.
We’re left with the hoariest of hoary clichés — that now it’s up to the voters (or will be as soon as the ballot hits your mailbox).
And I wish I felt nearly as confident about the voters as Harris was confident that Trump, with each insertion of the needle, would blow up.
I wish I could say that this race wasn’t tossup tight or that Harris’ performance would move the polls more than a few points.
I lost a great deal of faith in my ability to make political predictions after Trump won in 2016. I’m still dumbfounded by the fact that Trump, after four chaotic years in office, somehow drew 74 million votes in 2020. In fact, the idea that Trump got 74 million votes almost makes me believe him when he says the election was rigged.
But now I’m reconciled to the fact that normal Republicans — not just the MAGA cultists — will vote for a bigoted, anti-democratic demagogue who can’t bring himself to say that he hopes Ukraine wins its war against Russia. Could it be because he initially called Vladimir Putin’s invasion “smart.”
What am I missing here?
I’m not saying that Harris was perfect. She dodged the question on whether voters were better off today than they were four years ago. She dodged the question on whether she believes in abortions up to the ninth month. She dodged. And sometimes she even feinted.
That’s what politicians do.
What they don’t do, unless they’re Donald Trump, is say that Harris is the second coming of Joe Biden and responsible for any and all Biden faults and then also say — as if he knew — that Biden “hates” Harris and “can’t stand her.”
What they don’t do, unless they’re Donald Trump, is try to convince the millions of Americans who supported Roe v. Wade that they didn’t really support it and that they’re somehow happy — as Harris pointedly mentioned — that, in some red states, doctors can go to prison for life for assisting in a medically necessary abortion.
The insta-polls said Harris won easily. The betting markets said Harris won easily. Brit Hume offered much the same on Fox News after the debate — while, um, praising Harris as “a different person from the absolute dunderhead many of us thought she was.”
It should matter.
Unsurprisingly, it mattered to Taylor Swift, whose expected endorsement of Harris nearly broke the internet. I never thought it’d come to this, but I’ll quote her on why she’s voting for Harris.
”I’ve done my research, and I’ve made my choice,” she wrote on Instagram, where she has 283 million followers. “Your research is all yours to do, and the choice is yours to make.”
So, you see, she’s saying: After watching the debate, you wouldn’t have to be a pop megastar to have a notion of a concept of an idea about whom to choose for president.
Mike Littwin has been a columnist for too many years to count. He has covered Dr. J, four presidential inaugurations, six national conventions and countless brain-numbing speeches in the New Hampshire and Iowa snow. Sign up for Mike’s newsletter.
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