Stop Whining and Start Regrouping

Excuses are for losers, and by any objective standard, Donald Trump lost last night’s debate.

Now before you tar and feather me for stating the obvious, let me assure you that I still support President Trump and plan to vote for him this November. Simply put, a Harris-Walz administration would be absolutely catastrophic for America.

That being said, my fellow conservatives need to stop whining about last night’s format, the moderators, the questions, and the factchecking… and start regrouping for the rest of the fall campaign, which may or may not include a second presidential debate.

After all, a presidential campaign is like a 15-round prizefight, and although Ms. Harris landed quite a few punches last night, neither opponent was knocked out of the ring.

To his credit, President Trump’s only post-debate complaint had to do with the factchecking conducted by the two ABC moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis. Despite her multiple lies, Vice President Harris wasn’t factchecked once, while President Trump was factchecked five different times.

Unfair? Absolutely! Blatant favoritism on the part of ABC News? You’d better believe it! However, President Trump knew what to expect going in and should have been better prepared for such lopsided treatment. You can’t walk into a lion’s den and then act surprised that it is filled with lions.

As far as the questions themselves, social media is ablaze with allegations that Kamala Harris received them in advance. Has that happened before? Most certainly in 2016, when Donna Brazile later admitted to giving her friend Hillary Clinton a heads-up as to the questions that would be asked.

I sincerely doubt that such a rules violation happened this time nor do I think that Harris’s answers were prompted by a microphone hidden in her earring. Conservatives lose total credibility when they make such unfounded allegations. The simple fact of the matter is this: it didn’t take a rocket scientist to predict that there would be questions about abortion, climate change, the economy, healthcare, immigration, January 6th, Kamala’s flip-flopping, and the wars in Afghanistan, Gaza, and Ukraine. Harris was well-prepped to answer each one, but Trump wasn’t.

While Harris sequestered herself in a hotel room in Pittsburgh to prepare for the debate, Trump continued to conduct rallies in key battleground states. Both approaches have some merit, but here was the difference. Whereas Ms. Harris was grilled by her handlers one-on-one, Mr. Trump delivered longwinded rally speeches to his fawning audiences… and when it came time to whittle his answers down to two-minute sound bites, he simply wasn’t ready.

Instead, every time Harris threw out some bait, Trump gobbled it up like a hungry bass at the crack of dawn. By the time he finished responding to her purposely inflammatory and largely false accusations, there was little time for President Trump to answer the actual questions.

Yes, he did an admirable job of controlling his emotions and interruptions, unlike the first debate in 2020 when he came across as a bully. However, if there is a second debate, Mr. Trump must stop being distracted by every verbal squirrel that darts across the stage.

Stay on message, Mr. President, and keep hammering home your most important talking points. That is what Ms. Harris did in expert fashion. She also mastered the camera, looking into it when addressing the viewers and sideways at Mr. Trump when lobbing allegations in his direction. For the most part, President Trump stared straight ahead.

Back to my boxing analogy for a moment…

On June 19, 1936, Joe Louis faced off against Max Schmeling for the first time, each man hoping that a win would position them to fight for the heavyweight championship of the world. Louis entered the ring as a 10-1 favorite, but instead of training hard, he went to Hollywood to star in a movie. While there, and despite being a newlywed, he spent many nights in the company of other women. He also ate too much and took time off to play golf.

Meanwhile, Schmeling trained extremely hard and studied films of Louis’s past fights, playing them frontwards and backwards, looking for a weakness in his opponent. After countless hours, Schmeling discovered that Louis often dropped his guard between lefts, providing a brief opening for a hard-hitting right, which was Max’s bread-and-butter punch. When he saw his opening in the second round, Schmeling struck hard. Louis managed to last 10 more rounds before being knocked out for the first time in his career.

A humbled Louis vowed never to take an opponent lightly again and when he faced Schmeling in a rematch two years later, the “Brown Bomber” KO’d him in the very first round. Personal and professional redemption was his.

Now back to politics and my final point…

In 1984, amidst concerns about his advancing age, Ronald Reagan underperformed in his first debate with Walter Mondale. Inspired – and better prepared the second time – Reagan delivered one of the most memorable lines in presidential debate history, erasing all doubts about his fitness for office and “knocking out” Mondale in the process.

Twenty-eight years later, incumbent Barack Obama was seen as listless and uninspiring in his first debate with challenger Mitt Romney. However, in the rematch, Romney’s team advised him to play it safe and nurse his perceived lead while President Obama went on the attack. Come that November, Obama won re-election and left Romney wondering “what could have been” had he been more aggressive and gone for the knockout.

The moral of those stories – one from the world of boxing and two from the world of politics – is one and the same. Don’t underestimate your opponent and train like your life depends on it. And remember the words of Yogi Berra, “It’s not over til it’s over.”