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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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I'm calling this one a loss for Trump. Not hugely, and I don't think Harris's performance was dazzling. But she came off looking better and more prepared. She was aggressive and sounded like a prosecutor; Trump kept rambling off on ill-thought attack scripts.

"I have the concept of a plan" is probably going to be a meme, and talking about Haitians eating dogs is not going to help him. Treating the debate like a Twitter thread doesn't work with normies.

Moderator bias was evident (repeatedly fact-checking Trump, and asking him about his comments about Harris's race could only hurt him), but mostly I think he has just slowed down a lot (he's not suffering cognitive decline like Biden is, but he's clearly not even who he was 4 years ago). Harris is hardly a spring chicken, but she seemed more on the ball. A decent debater might have made her sweat, but Trump never made her lose that annoying smirk.