Vice President Kamala Harris trounced Donald Trump during their presidential debate last week. For more than 90 minutes Trump had almost no substantive responses to her interventions and rebuttals as he lied, prevaricated, and acted like a broken computer spouting out conspiracy theories and obvious lies from some of the deepest sewers of the right-wing echo chamber. Harris’ victory was so complete, and Trump’s defeat so thorough, that the corrupt ex-president’s mouthpieces and other surrogates were basically forced to admit this reality. Of course, Trump who has shown himself to be an egomaniac and a narcissist, declared that he won. However, his actions suggest otherwise: Trump quickly declared that he would not participate in a second debate against Harris.
In total, Harris’ crushing defeat of Donald Trump is best explained by what political scientist M. Steven Fish describes as a “high-dominance leadership style.” Fish is a professor of political science at the University of California, Berkeley and te author of “Comeback: Routing Trumpism, Reclaiming the Nation, and Restoring Democracy's Edge.”
In this conversation, Fish details exactly how Harris used high-dominance leadership to defeat Donald Trump and why she and the Democrats must continue with that approach going forward to win the election. Fish also reflects on how the debate revealed, again, that Trump and today’s MAGAfied Republicans and “conservatives” are really bullies and cowards who will fold when confronted directly and forcefully. Fish also predicts that if current trends continue Kamala Harris and the Democrats will defeat Trump and the Republicans on Election Day.
Given these tumultuous last few weeks with two apparent assassination attempts against Trump, two conventions, Biden stepping aside and Harris now being the Democrats' presidential nominee and reversing the party's political fortunes (for now), how are you feeling?
I’m feeling better than I have in quite a while since it now seems possible that we’ll be able to relegate Trump to the status of a historical oddity. That said, Trumpism will survive this election even if Donald Trump is defeated. The Democrats will have to win a string of national elections — at least two or three in a row — to force the Republicans to return to real conservatism. We’ve got to be in this for the long haul. And the current race, of course, is a dead heat.
Kamala Harris utterly crushed Donald Trump during their debate. It was the inverse of Biden’s failure. And the debate seems like it was just part of the arc of the Democrats’ new approach.
“Crushed” is the right term, and it’s exactly what needed to happen for Harris to launch her fast start in July and then build on her momentum since then, including during the debate. The Democrats have long been seen as more caring, more knowledgeable, more likable, and so on. Trump’s main advantage has been that he’s regarded as a “stronger” leader. You don’t overcome that edge by throwing another rhetorical pity party for voters who are supposedly drowning in tears at the cost of a tankful for their Ford F-150s, nor by busting out another display of wounded indignation at your opponents’ insensitivity. You do it by showing you’re tougher, more resolute, more confident, and more committed to your own ends than your opponents are. You also ostentatiously delight in driving your foes to distraction. That’s precisely what Harris and the Democrats started doing, and it is what has resurrected their prospects.
There were many moments during the debate where I was literally yelling at the screen or commenting and doing play-by-play, as I was grinning and nodding. It was as if she were following the playbook I would have given her and that you spelled out in your new book “Comeback.” I have to ask: Do you know if Vice President Harris and her team read your book on high-dominance leadership?
I have no way of knowing, but I can say that I’m thrilled to see them doing just about everything I recommended in the book to overcome their dominance disadvantage, including many of the things you and I have discussed. At a minimum, what we have seen over the past two months is what scientists call a natural experiment, and the proof-of-concept is there: As soon as the Democrats shifted from almost a decade of abysmally low-dominance messaging to a higher-dominance mode, their fortunes improved overnight. And it was not just about Biden’s withdrawal or Harris’ relative youth. When Biden stepped aside, she was running further behind Trump than Biden in the polls and many Democrats considered easing her aside in favor of a stronger candidate as key to the party’s fate in November. In 2020 she ran an uneven campaign at best, and her tenure as vice president has been uneventful.
Right out of the gate in late July, Harris brought an entirely new high-dominance, patriotic message, and she further upped her dominance and patriotism game at the DNC and the debate. Even her exuberance, which many people just see as a feel-good part of her style, is something I consider to be a crucial aspect of high-dominance messaging. The bottom line is that Harris — and the whole party with her — have suddenly flipped the dominance script.
Trump repeatedly walked right into the traps and ambushes she set for him. When Harris talked about the crowd sizes she symbolically and psychologically castrated him, for example. It started with Harris going over to shake Trump’s hand. Trump wasn’t expecting it, and it was a move to get in his space. It showed she wasn’t afraid of him.
I agree, and then during the debate she scrapped the time-worn, fruitless Democratic practice of treating Trump mainly as a dangerous, imperious liar. Instead, she cast him as insecure, tiresome, and small. Playing on Trump’s crowd-size obsession, she invited viewers to attend a Trump rally, telling them they would see the crowds thinning out early as bored spectators headed for the doors. A stammering Trump responded, “We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics!” and then launched into his conspiracy theory lies about how immigrants were eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio.
Rather than just calling Trump a friend of dictators, she got deliciously derisive. She mentioned that “It is well known that he exchanged love letters with Kim Jong Un” and pointed out that “If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be sitting in Kyiv right now.” Turning to Trump, she said America’s enemies were rooting for him since “they can manipulate you with flattery and favors. And that is why so many military leaders who you have worked with have told me you are a disgrace.”
Harris was not perfect. There were several times when she passed on delivering what could have become instant viral hits and lines for the ages that would have really put Trump away. Such lines are what get the most press coverage and are what we recall from presidential debates down through the decades.
Harris talked to the audience and, as you mentioned, directly at Trump. Trump did not make eye contact with her. Again, he looked totally beaten and flummoxed. What do you think was going through Trump’s mind?
Trump must have known Harris was owning him. Harris’ command was plain for all to see. While Trump was talking, Harris often alternated between gazing at him with bemusement and then looking away with a breezy grin as if to avoid bursting out laughing. The split screen captured it all.
They did it.
— Joshua Reed Eakle 🗽 (@JoshEakle) September 11, 2024
They did the meme. pic.twitter.com/6lNvPUtiFy
Still, she never condescended to or attacked Trump’s supporters. In fact, she made the case that they would feel more at home in the Democratic Party than in the party of Trump. She mentioned the Republicans only to point out that she had the endorsement of hundreds who worked for George W. Bush, Mitt Romney, and John McCain. For God’s sake, Dick — not to mention Liz — Cheney endorsed her. She listed top Trump administration officials who concluded that Trump was a threat to the nation, reminding him that he’d been abandoned by many of his own. It is no wonder he couldn’t bear to look at her go after him.
Here is another moment: A Freudian slip by Trump where he talked about ending the debate and going to the border right now. It appears that Trump actually did want to leave the debate. I was seriously wondering if he was going to come back out onto the stage after the commercial break/intermission.
Trump definitely wanted to get of there. But his very lowest moment might have come when he walked into the situation room after the debate. Nobody who didn’t know he got shellacked would have done that. Some journalists gathered around him to hear him toil and spin, but most just ignored the former and possibly future president of the United States and just kept milling around and chatting with each other.
Sean Hannity finally swooped in to give Trump the fawning interview he was searching for. As soon as that ended, Fox anchors and guests canceled out Hannity as they mulled what an embarrassing night it had been for their man. As I watched it, I thought I even felt a pang of sympathy for all those Fox viewers who haven’t changed the channel since 2016 and had nowhere else to turn. The feeling didn’t linger long, since I switched from FOX back to MSNBC to join the party.
Trump has repeatedly shown that he is a racist and a white supremacist whose own nephew alleges he uses vile anti-Black slurs in private. He also reportedly calls Harris a “bitch” as well in private.
We’ve known such things about Trump for decades, and ever since he entered politics the Democrats have been responding with cries of hurt and disbelief: Did you hear what he said?! Then a smirking Trump coyly admits what a bad boy he is and repeats his slurs and slights — but even worse. The Democrats keep taking the bait, and the liberal social media bubble swells with indignation — Can you believe he said it again?! MAGA media then rolls out bemused reports of the liberals’ swimming in pique.
Meanwhile, Trump’s doing all the punching, and the Democrats are just reacting. That enables Trump to turn even his vilest moments into dominance flexes. Liberals and the rest of the decent, non-bigoted majority sulk in exasperation. This was quite literally the story of American politics between late 2015 and July 2024.
Now it’s finally occurred to the Democrats that Trump and the Republicans are bullies and cowards who will fold if you hit back hard and fast. They started treating Trump’s bigotry as weakness and insecurity rather than callousness. Trump and his ilk suddenly went from being terrifying, offensive, and heartless to lame, ridiculous, weirdo whiners.
Finally, the Democrats wiped away their tears of frustration and burst out laughing. Harris’ irrepressible, gorgeous grin symbolizes the shift and sums it up perfectly. I can’t get enough of it. My wife has taken to teasing me about how often I call the vice president things like “enchanting.” But she’s crushing on Harris, too.
Do you believe that Trump knows he was cowed and defeated by Harris in the debate? Or is he coming up with some other narrative to resolve the cognitive dissonance of being so humiliated before an audience of tens of millions by a Black woman?
He’s desperately trying to create a new narrative for himself for precisely the reason you mention. To that end, and to the chagrin of Republican leaders, he’s raging that he won the debate, returning with a vengeance to his claims he beat Biden in 2020, vaunting his warriors of January 6, and taking cues from Laura Loomer who said “the White House will smell like curry” if Harris wins. Mind you, this is someone Marjorie Taylor Greene called “appalling and extremely racist.”
Trump’s whole message now has an audience of one — his own rattled self. Why? Because the Democrats are no longer standing back and proclaiming, “Isn’t Trump terrifying?!” as he hogs the spotlight. Instead of marveling with dismay at how he gets away with it, the Democrats are finally peeling his Teflon off with their own hands. Consequently, I think more people are seeing Trump for what he is—which of course only drives him crazier. This could depress turnout for Trump, even if it does not show up in the polls. After all, he’s always been their revenge and nothing more. What good is he to them if the libs — the libs! — are owning him?
It's important to remember that Trump’s self-absorption runs so deep that his grasp on the reality of how others see him is often tenuous at best. This is a man who genuinely thinks Putin and Xi Jinping respect him and that Kim Jong Un loves him because that’s what they tell him and that’s what he wants to believe. (How I wish I could be a fly on the wall when Putin puts Trump on his muted speakerphone while surrounded by his guffawing cronies during what Trump thinks are their intimate man-to-man talks.) But Trump does feel it when people are laughing at him—provided, that is, they keep up the ridicule rather than recoiling when he slaps back. And like all bullies, Trump knows that once somebody finally decks him, his tough guy shtick and reputation as a winner can dissipate in an instant. That’s what he fears most now, and it helps explain why he seems to be going from merely off the rails to a headlong dash to la-la land. The Democrats’ high-dominance approach isn’t just affecting voters’ perceptions; it’s driving Trump’s meltdown as well.
Trump admires dictators and tyrants. This aspect of how he thinks about leadership and the public and legitimacy needs to be explored much more by the mainstream news media and punditry. You are a Sovietologist. When Trump talks so fawningly about dictators, authoritarians, and autocrats how do you make sense of it relative to that political tradition and style of leadership?
We know that Trump wants what they have — absolute power, office for life, a press that can’t scrutinize or criticize him, and the ability to turn the public treasury into his feeding trough. But I think there’s more to it than that. Trump senses that the leaders of America’s democratic allies think he’s a moron. Their media reports it too. Trump knows, for example, that Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and former German Chancellor Angela Merkel dealt with him with their noses pinched between their fingers. Shortly after Trump was elected, French President Emmanuel Macron tried his hand at being Europe’s Trump whisperer and showed him some respect. But Macron quickly tired of the effort when it was clear it wasn’t going to do France or Europe any good.
Dictators are different. They can feign respect for Trump and prevent their media from spilling the beans. And they really do want him in office, since he discredits democracy in its most powerful stronghold, undermines American power in the world, and never calls out their atrocities at home.
And don’t forget this: Alone among world leaders in 2016, Kim Jong Un publicly endorsed Trump in his race against Hillary Clinton, and Vladimir Putin as much as did so. Practically every other leader of note loathed the prospect of a Trump presidency. Harris is right — the dictators are rooting for Trump. Now think about what that means to a man who has never given a thought to anyone but himself.
Does the apparent assassination attempt or whatever it turns out to be impact Harris' and the Democrats' pivot to high high-dominance leadership style? As you can imagine I have many concerns and worries here. Moreover, how can/should Harris navigate this and the predictable pivot by Trump and his propagandists to continue, now amplifying, their claims — which are not true — that this is somehow the Democrats' fault.
It need not have any effect on the Democrats’ strategy, and I doubt it will affect the race. Harris should just condemn it in the strongest possible terms and move on. Contrary to what so many Democrats feared at the time, Trump got no bounce at all from the first assassination attempt. Part of the reason may have been that Trump squandered his chance to take advantage of it. It happened just before the RNC, and had Trump come out and given his speech at the convention with his ear bandaged and said nothing about what had just happened to him, he would have looked like a boss. Instead, he spent the whole first part of his speech recounting in rich detail how brave he had been, how much his ear bled, how he raised his fist in heroic defiance, and on and on and on and he came off looking like an egomaniacal whiner. And his conspiracy theories about Democrats being behind it just sound like all the other nonsense he spews. I doubt the recent apparent assassination attempt or whatever it was will move the needle at all. We’re already past it.
What must Harris do next with her campaign to maintain the momentum and pressure on Trump? What must she avoid?
She must build on her newfound dominance advantage. That means staying on the attack and showing everybody what a great time she’s having cleaning Trump’s addled clock. It also means not getting bogged down in policy specifics but instead relentlessly pressing her broader vision of a better, greater, freer America that reclaims its place as the light and leader of the world. Harris should mention Trump only to ridicule and punch holes in him. Her central message should be about herself and her party — about their past achievements and all the great things they have in store for the country.
To that end, Harris should bear down hard on reclaiming the flag. That means casting herself as a mighty defender of the country’s national security, global preeminence, and the American way. The parts on foreign affairs in her DNC speech and the debate — including Trump’s subservience to Putin and her promise to preside over the world’s most lethal fighting force — weren’t just “foreign policy” statements. They were her hardest, highest-dominance flexes, and they appealed to a far broader audience than she can hope to reach by talking about her differences with Trump on economic policy. This is an area where Harris can most readily appeal to centrists and real conservatives and where Trump is most vulnerable with these voters. Harris has to bear in mind, every minute of the campaign, that Americans are hungry for a real leader and powerful protector who will end the chaos — not just a builder of roads and a deliverer of healthcare benefits.
Harris also should unremittingly embrace the prosecutor-versus-felon frame. It’s a great component of a high-dominance strategy and helps seize the law-and-order issue from the Republican goons who have wielded it to score dominance points for decades. In the debate, she said she and Tim Walz owned guns. Guess what? Trump, being a felon, is barred by federal law from doing so. I hate guns, but I still want to hear her say it.
Debates and conventions do not determine the outcome of an election — despite how many Democrats and others would like to believe that they do given Harris’ dominant performance and their enthusiasm for her. What do you think will happen on Election Day? Then what comes next?
It all depends on what the Democrats do now. Harris has to be the news every day. For almost a decade, the Democrats have intentionally yielded the spotlight to Trump, hoping against hope that if they just stood back and let him be himself voters would finally turn against him. It didn’t work. So now every time I log on to CNN or watch the news, I want to see Harris — whether it’s a provocative statement, a memorable quip, some cool new idea, or just her gleefully making fun of and diminishing Trump.
We must remember that the Democrats’ new strategy is less than two months old, and they could still revert to some version of their old risk-averse, defensive, passive, and weak messaging style. In that event, Trump might regain his footing, Harris will likely lose, and democracy’s days will be numbered.
But if Harris pours it on and Democrats downballot follow her lead, she can win by 100+ Electoral College votes and the House can be taken back. Of course, Harris has to defend Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania, but I think she should also pursue her own Southern Strategy — and that includes investing in Florida as well as really bearing down in Georgia and North Carolina. There’s an abortion referendum on the ballot in the Sunshine State, and Harris’ launch of the “Reproductive Rights for All” bus tour in Palm Beach, Trump’s hometown, was a good show. Forcing Trump to defend Dixie is the ultimate flex; it would throw him off what little game he’s got left in a way that a hundred trips to Scranton can’t. I can see it now: North Carolina, Georgia, and Pennsylvania report, and by midnight EST you and I can go to bed if we like, relieved and finally knowing for sure that we’ll still have a democracy and the opportunity to have another election in 2028.
