CNN
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Donald Trump defeated Kamala Harris in a virtual coin toss before their presidential debate — but that was about all he gained.

From the opening moments on Tuesday night, when the vice president walked up to Trump’s podium and all but forced him to shake her hand, she dictated the terms of their pivotal clash exactly eight weeks before Election Day.

From Harris’s point of view, the evening could hardly have gone better.

She came across as energetic and full of positive vision for the future. Trump glowered and ranted, criticizing America as a failing nation and looking out of shape. The vice president, who sometimes struggles in impromptu situations, delivered the most impressive performance of her political career. Trump, who went into the debate predicting that he would prove boxing champion Mike Tyson’s maxim that “everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face,” was stunned by several punches herself and landed few in return.

At a time when nearly a third of voters in a recent poll said they wanted to know more about Harris, the vice president’s performance appeared to broaden her coalition. Trump, meanwhile, has made little effort to change perceptions of his dystopian agenda among core voters in the swing states that will decide the election. He has struggled to let go of his own first term and often seemed to wish he were still debating his former rival, President Joe Biden.

It often takes days or weeks for a presidential debate to sink in and create lasting impressions. Candidates who triumph on the debate stage do not always win the election. Both Trump in 2016 and President George W. Bush in 2004 were judged to have lost in debates, but ultimately won the White House.

And while Democrats were euphoric after Harris’ performance, partisans often judge a debate based on their own political leanings. Even if he loses ground after the debate, Trump has long held the advantage on the two biggest issues in the election: the economy and immigration. With many voters still waiting to see the benefits of the post-pandemic economic recovery, it’s not certain that a debate will be a decisive factor in their vote. And Trump’s dark messages on immigration and crime may be overblown, but they have proven powerful in the past. There’s also always the chance that shocking events at home or abroad in the next two months could tip the balance.

While it’s too early to tell whether Harris’ strong performance will lead to new momentum, she will campaign with optimism and increase her chances among the perhaps 200,000 mobile voters who will determine the next election in a handful of states.

Harris wasted no time checking off her goals Tuesday night.

She spoke directly to viewers at home, promising to ease the burdens of working Americans struggling with high prices for groceries and housing. She teased Trump about his crowd sizes and called him weak. And, astonishingly, he fell for it every time, with angry outbursts that fueled her claims that he is unfit for another term and that the country has a fleeting chance of moving on from its bitter chaos. Her thorough preparation paid off, as she avoided campaign-threatening mistakes.

Most fundamentally, Harris validated the Democrats’ decision to drop Biden as their nominee. He conducted a sweeping dismantling of Trump’s character, policies and legacy that went beyond the president himself, during his disastrous June debate that ended his re-election campaign.

Taylor Swift, whose megastar endorsement Trump’s team falsely claimed last month was via the use of AI, apparently felt the same way. As soon as the debate ended, she declared, “I will be voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 presidential election.”

When Trump became agitated, Harris didn’t respond in kind, instead laughing and resting her chin on her hand several times. The second time she did it seemed contrived, but the gesture could become an iconic symbol of the social media debate.

When she challenged Trump on his obsession with rallies, he inexplicably gave her a free pass on one of her most sensitive issues: the southern border. “Let me first respond to the rallies,” Trump said. “People don’t leave my rallies. We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics.”

It was a classic example of how Harris repeatedly used Trump’s perceived character flaws to give him room to undermine his own debate performance.

The ex-president’s inability to resist the bait that was constantly being thrown at him meant that the most fearsome political performer of modern times spent the evening more self-destructive than destructive of his opponent. This was never more apparent than when he repeated a racist slur about Haitian immigrants eating pets – which even his vice presidential candidate, J.D. Vance, admitted on Tuesday might not be true. Harris merely shook her head after watching her opponent confirm her accusations of his extremism.

After refusing to be sucked into Trump’s efforts to make the election a referendum on her race and gender, the vice president offered a much more direct rebuke of her opponent on Tuesday. She cited his past demands for the execution of the Central Park Five and his lies about President Barack Obama’s birthplace, painting him as a divisive force seeking to exploit America’s deepest historical wounds for his own gain. “I think it’s a tragedy that we have someone running for president who has consistently tried to use race to divide the American people over the course of his career,” she said.

Harris’s performance wasn’t perfect. She dodged answering her very first question—the classic consideration of whether voters are better off now than they were four years ago. She also didn’t directly say whether she regretted the deaths of 13 U.S. service members killed in 2021 during the chaotic U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, whose deaths have become a focal point of the Trump campaign. But even her evasions showed how she has become a more effective political performer as she shifts her talking points and Trump can’t effectively question her.

Trump’s inability to focus on a consistent attack on Harris or to push aside her transparent attempts to distract him confirmed the fears of many Republicans disappointed with his inability thus far to deal effectively with his new opponent.

Ironically, Trump suffered from the same problem Biden did during their June debate: He couldn’t get a handle on his opponent and present a clear plan for the future.

Trump often fell down right-wing rabbit holes, making analogies that only casual viewers of conservative media would understand. And at times it seemed like the ex-president was showing up for a debate, but his rhetoric sounded more like one of his wild rallies. In defense of his first term and global leadership, he quoted Hungarian strongman Prime Minister Viktor Orban, lending weight to Harris’s claim that he idolizes foreign autocrats. To back up his false claims, he said he was endorsed by Fox News opinion hosts — a move that may have pleased his core voters but also suggested that life in the conservative fishbowl has undermined his ability to speak to more moderate voters.

Trump’s team had fought to have microphones turned off when candidates weren’t speaking — apparently to frustrate the vice president’s desire to fact-check the former president in real time and limit his temptation to interrupt her. But the restrictions ultimately cost Trump. He was forced to stand still while Harris delivered the kind of beating an ex-president never gets in public.

One way to judge a debate is to turn down the volume on your TV and watch the candidates’ body language. On Tuesday night, Trump smoldered and twitched the muscles around his mouth as his face looked like thunder. Harris threw her punches with a knowing smile and looked viewers at home straight in the eye.

The former president’s greatest failure was not examining Harris’ greatest weakness. She is often strong in scripted situations but struggles when she is put on the defensive when caught off guard. Trump created far too few of those moments to make his rival uncomfortable. It took until his closing statement for him to make his strongest possible case: that Harris, as a vital part of an administration for more than three years, had done none of the things she now says she would do.

He also faltered on an issue that has proven disastrous for his standing among female voters in the polls: abortion. Trump took credit both for building the conservative Supreme Court majority that struck down the nation’s constitutional right to abortion and for falsely claiming that most Americans always wanted the issue to go back to the states. That opened the way for Harris to deliver a stinging line: “It’s insulting to the women of America.”

The former president’s strongest moments came late in the debate, when he lambasted Harris and Biden over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. He raised the specter of Russian nuclear escalation and presented himself as the only thing standing between the United States and World War III. His promises to end the conflict may be closer to heartland sentiment than Biden’s pledges to support Kiev while it lasts. But Harris was probably right when he said that Trump’s plan can only be achieved by making a peace that benefits President Vladimir Putin.

And even during his clashes with Harris over the war in Ukraine, Trump seemed eager for a campaign that would be much more fun for him than the one he is running now.

“You’re not running against Joe Biden, you’re running against me,” the vice president told him in a statement that helps explain Trump’s disorientation and may determine the entire election.