For weeks, undecided voters have been asking for more substance.
So it was perhaps no accident that Vice President Kamala Harris’ first words during the presidential debate on Tuesday were, “I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan.”
Some Americans might need more convincing.
Bob and Sharon Reed, both 77-year-old retired teachers who live on a farm in central Pennsylvania, had high hopes for the debate between Harris and former President Donald Trump. They thought that they would come away with a candidate to support in November.
But, Sharon Reed said, “It was all disappointing.”
The couple ended the night wondering how the costly programs each candidate supported — Trump’s tariffs and Harris’ aid to young families and small businesses — would help a couple like them, living on a fixed income that has not kept pace with inflation. They said they didn’t hear detailed answers on immigration or foreign policy, either.
Tuesday night was the first time any voter had seen Trump and Harris together. The two candidates had never met in person before, creating considerable trepidation among supporters of both campaigns about how they might perform.
Immediate reaction from political analysts favored Harris, whose attacks appeared to rattle Trump. She goaded him over the various criminal and civil charges against him. She said his former aides considered him “a disgrace” and that world leaders laugh at him. At one point, she asked whether he might be “confused” — a stinging line given Trump’s relentless mocking of President Joe Biden’s mental acuity. And she questioned his emotional stability by saying he was not capable of processing his loss in 2020.
But not all voters, especially those undecided few who could sway the election, were effusive about the vice president’s performance.
In interviews, these undecided voters acknowledged that Harris seemed more presidential than Trump. And they said she laid out a sweeping vision to fix some of the country’s most stubborn problems.
But they also said she did not seem much different from Biden, and they wanted change.
And most of all, what they wanted to hear — and didn’t — was the fine print.
Voters said they were glad she has a tax and economic plan. But they want to know how it will become law when Washington is so polarized. They know she wants to give assistance to first-time homebuyers, but doubted that it was realistic.
“She tried a couple times to say, ‘I want to do this and I want to do that,’ and that’s nice promises,” Sharon Reed said. “I hope she can get them through Congress.”
Going into the debate, Harris faced a challenge that Trump did not: Telling the country what they should expect from her presidency. With two-minute limits on the answers the candidates could give, that was always going to be difficult.
Americans are familiar with Trump — especially after four years in the White House and three-plus years of legal troubles since leaving Washington in disgrace and defeat.
A vast majority — 90% — of likely voters nationwide said they pretty much know all they need to about Trump, according to a New York Times/Siena College poll released this week before the debate.
And the debate seemed to contain few surprises for them.
Shavanaka Kelly, who lives in Milwaukee, said her three teenage daughters began laughing when Trump ranted about false social media rumors that migrants in Ohio are stealing and eating pets.
“It was kind of like, can you take him serious?” she said.
Kelly, 45, liked a lot of what Harris had to say, especially about Trump’s role in the riot on Jan. 6. Still, she said she wanted to hear more specific policy proposals, especially as they compare with Biden’s record.
“She didn’t, kind of, separate herself,” Kelly said, adding that she was “still on the fence.”
Harris, who remains unfamiliar to many Americans, is working under an extreme time crunch to persuade voters that she is presidential material.
The euphoric scenes from the summer of Democrats celebrating her entry into the race did not reflect the reality in many American homes. Twenty-eight percent of likely voters said in the latest New York Times/Siena poll they felt they needed to know more about her. The biggest question on their minds, the poll found, was what her plans and policies would be.
Samira Ali, a sophomore at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, entered the debate unsure whether she would vote at all. She left a raucous viewing party on campus still unsure.
“She still has to impress me,” said Ali, 19. As someone who recently moved into her own place off-campus and has had to buy groceries for the first time, Ali said she wanted to hear Harris speak more about housing costs and inflation. “I’m still deciding,” she said as the debate neared its end.
In Las Vegas, Gerald Mayes, 40, said he felt both candidates failed to connect their campaign promises to his family’s budget. And he came away confused.
“Nothing is clear to me, and I am really trying to follow it,” he said. “I want to know how all of this impacts my family financially.”
Kristen Morris, 60, a nursing student from a suburb outside Charlotte, North Carolina, was deeply disappointed at the start of summer with her presidential choices, but became intrigued when Harris entered the race. After the debate, she said she felt cleareyed and planned to vote for the vice president.
A former longtime Republican who voted for Biden in 2020 and recently changed her affiliation to independent, Morris said, “My expectations have been met.”
Others who have been unimpressed with their choices also found the debate clarifying — but in their doubts about Harris.
Keilah Miller, 34, who lives in Milwaukee, grew intrigued by Harris, too. Miller said she had voted Democratic in past presidential elections but decided to stop voting altogether about a year ago. Her own situation, and that of other Black women in Milwaukee, had not improved, she said.
On Tuesday, she felt nudged unexpectedly toward Trump.
“Trump’s pitch was a little more convincing than hers,” Miller said. “I guess I’m leaning more on his facts than her vision.”
Miller said that, while her heart pulls her to Harris’ potentially history-making candidacy, she finds herself thinking fondly of her old life.
“When Trump was in office — not going to lie — I was living way better,” she said. “I’ve never been so down as in the past four years. It’s been so hard for me.”
In Southern Arizona, Jason Henderson, a defense contractor and retired soldier, had been resigned to skipping the election, unable to stomach either candidate. Like Miller, though, he came away from the debate leaning, tenuously, toward the Republican nominee.
“Trump had the more commanding presentation,” Henderson said. “There was nothing done by Harris that made me think she’s better. In any way.”
Henderson, who voted for President Barack Obama and then for Trump, allowed that Trump “came off as crazy,” but he was no different from his appearances at rallies and in interviews.
His answers on Ukraine were weak, Henderson said, but Trump successfully attacked Harris on the border and immigration. While the vice president gave better answers on abortion and race, he said, she did not get into specifics about her tax plans for parents or small businesses.
As he watched post-debate commentary on cable news, Henderson said he bristled at the pundits who widely panned Trump’s performance. Had they watched the same debate, he wondered?
Still, Henderson said his new enthusiasm might fade once the frenzy surrounding the debate passes. “I’ll probably come back to my senses,” he said.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
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