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The most appropriate terms to describe how Kamala Harris triumphed over Donald Trump in Tuesday’s debate come not from political punditry but from the field of psychology: triggered, baited, ego deflated.

During last night’s debate, Donald Trump said some strange things, even by his own standards. He praised the Hungarian leader Viktor Orbán (using the antidemocratic term strongman approvingly); lamented that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, are “eating the dogs”; and falsely suggested that Kamala Harris wants to do “transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison.” This is not merely the stuff of normal Trumpian discourse.

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This morning found the former apex predator of American politics looking for some hand-holding.

The bar for tastelessness in American politics has dropped precipitously in the past decade. It’s even dropped in the past 24 hours. Nonetheless, it takes a unique kind of vulgarity to bring a 9/11 “truther” to events marking the 23rd anniversary of the September 11 attacks.
The culprit is former President Donald Trump, who attended commemorative events in New York and Pennsylvania today.

Before last night’s debate, I got a text from a friend who summed up Kamala Harris’s predicament: She has to appear feminine but not dainty. She has to be firm but not nasty. She has to call out Donald Trump’s lies but not be naggy. She has to dress presidentially but not be blah.
Evidently, women candidates face challenges that men don’t—voters question their toughness and are often ambivalent about how they should discuss identity.