Morning after thoughts:

• The memes from this one are already amazing. “Concepts of a plan” is going to haunt Trump until his dying day.
• Trump usually dominates any conversation he’s in, simply by being the loudest one there. It often works for him. Last night, it worked against him, because he was loud about what Harris wanted him to be loud about.
• In retrospect, the level of optimism Harris was able to maintain throughout was very impressive. She looked happy to be there, even when confronted by Trump’s obvious mental illness, and I don’t think she was faking it.

I’m starting to have genuine hope for November.

Harris was widely seen as having performed better yesterday.

Hell of an understatement.

This one was surreal to watch, too. On one side of the screen was a presidential candidate. On the other was a demented weirdo who thought immigrants were eating people’s pets and looked like he was angrily shitting himself the entire time.

Honestly, you underplayed just how demented he was.

Apparently, Taylor Swift just responded to AI fakes of her supporting Trump by formally endorsing Harris.

So here are my thoughts:

• First, the obvious: Harris won handily. She was in her element, and just thoroughly excoriated Trump at every turn, while maintaining an optimistic tone.
• But at the same time, Trump is probably not losing any of his base over his abysmal performance. Most of them probably didn’t watch, and the few that did probably tuned out in favor of reading conservative bloggers’ desperate spinning about halfway through.
• The real question is how off-putting he’s been for undecideds. He was pretty bad, but I’m aware enough of my own biases to wonder exactly how bad his behavior looks to undecideds.
• On the issues, Harris didn’t really have a stumble. I was pleasantly surprised by how well she handled the issue of Israel/Palestine, for example.
• The moderators get a B for following up questions, a C- for mic handling, and an A- for calling it out when Trump’s bizarre, rambling bullshit failed to even vaguely resemble an answer.

All in all, I didn’t hate this (other than the sound of Trump’s face hole).

Whoops, he’s debating Biden again.

“President Trump, thank you” sounds more and more like “Shut the fuck up now, bitch” every time a moderator says it.

“I have the concepts of a plan. I’m not president right now!”

Holy shit, dude. You biffed that one hard.

Harris has managed to remain optimistic this whole time. I’m genuinely impressed.