New Hampshire Gov. Chris Sununu (R) called Vice President Kamala Harris the clear winner of Tuesday night’s presidential debate.
“Oh, Kamala definitely won the debate,” Sununu said during a Wednesday morning appearance on CNN. “There’s no question about that. So the question is, what does it mean, right? And it’s not just, what does it mean to everybody? What’s going to do that 10 percent of swing voters?”
“I think if you poll those swing voters, they want results,” he said. “They’re results-driven. It’s the cost of living, it’s the border, it’s public safety, those types of issues, you can be the change agent to make that better in their lives.”
The outgoing New Hampshire governor, who considered a presidential run of his own, praised Harris’s debate strategy Tuesday night.
“She kind of talked confidence in her answers, and then she took the last 30 seconds of almost every question and hit him with a personal attack, knowing that that would get under his skin,” Sununu said. “It was a very effective measure, and I give her a lot of credit on that. It kept him on the defensive, to be sure, and it’s ultimately, definitely, stylistically, why she openly won the debate.”
Sununu said the debate would move the needle “a little bit,” but argued neither candidate explained to voters how they would help lower costs for average Americans. The GOP governor added Trump failed to take advantage of openings to go on the offense over the economy.
“He should have talked about price controls,” Sununu said. “He should have talked about the cost of living more. I think he went like an hour, not even talking about inflation and those are real issues.”
Sununu said the ex-president should also draw a bigger contrast on foreign policy with Harris, saying on CNN there “was clearly more peace when” he was in office.
“That is a strength that he has, that he has not exploited in this campaign,” he said. “There is chaos in Ukraine, chaos in Israel. You know, there’s a lot of pressure going on in Taiwan. Let’s not forget about that. Let’s not forget about Afghanistan.”
That would explain the pauses and the abnormal facial expressions. She made some really weird facial expressions last night. Just like everything else cheat at all cost.
Crowning the System alone the Estd
We need to properly define “winning” a “debate” between candidates for office.
Judged as an academic debate, it can easily be argued that Kamala performed better. However, that IS NOT the proper criteria for judging a political “debate”. The goal is to shift more people toward voting for you, and/or away from voting for your opponent. Under that standard, the opinion of anyone that will vote the same after the “debate” as before the “debate” isn’t worth squat. The ONLY thing that matters is who changes position as a result of the “debate”.
Note: I put “debate” in quotes because what I generously call “joint pres conferences” have very little in common with debates.