It wouldn’t be a hard sell that Kamala Harris “exceeded expectations” or “over performed” in last night’s debate, but the surest sign that she did neither is the immediate sticky, slavish post-debate media coverage. I’m convinced all of it was pre-written and they were going to call Kamala a warrior queen even if she had literally soiled herself on stage.

New York Times “The Daily” podcast host Michael Barbaro said Kamala “dominated and enraged Donald Trump.” Mike Allen at Axios said Kamala “delivered for Democrats.” The Washington Post heralded her “sharp, fiery” performance.

Politico embarrassingly dubbed the night an “alpha female debate,” and its “Playbook” newsletter laid it on so thick, you’d swear they let Kamala write it herself. “HARRIS WINS,” it said. “If there’s any one word to describe the secret to Trump’s success in business and politics, it’s dominance.” In case you missed it the first time, Politico wrote again, “there was a dominant presence on stage in Philadelphia, and it sure wasn’t Trump.”

A normal person who actually watched the debate, regardless of party affiliation, might have come away thinking either candidate eked out a win or possibly neither did. Without accusing him of being normal, Elon Musk, who has endorsed Trump, said Kamala “exceeded most peoples’ expectations.”

But what it wasn’t was a decisive victory for Kamala. Even with non-stop, highly generous help from the host network’s two Democrat moderators, literally turning the affair into a three-against-one brawl, the vice president struggled. How could she not? Her campaign is attempting to make her appear new when she’s not only currently occupying the White House but she wholeheartedly champions her administration’s dismal record. She’s pushing the triangle block into the circle hole with hopes that the media will help even if the whole thing cracks.

Reuters, to its credit, ran a story on 10 American voters who said before the debate they were undecided on the candidates, but afterward, most of them, six, said they were either committed to Trump or leaning towards him.

So much for “DOMINATED.”

The New York Times the next morning ran an unusually self-aware story under the headline, “Pundits Said Harris Won the Debate. Undecided Voters Weren’t So Sure.” At the very bottom it described the sentiment of a Trump-leaning voter who watched the debate.

“As he watched post-debate commentary on cable news, Mr. Henderson said he bristled at the pundits who widely panned Mr. Trump’s performance,” the article said. “Had they watched the same debate, he wondered?”

A media with the slightest capacity for self-reflection would say to themselves, “Hmm, maybe we’re a little too preoccupied with our personal political preferences and not considering a wider variety of possible perspectives.” But that’s not our media. They’re doing the same thing now that they’ve tried doing in the last two presidential elections — declare a winner before a single vote is even cast. They’ll say and do everything they can to drag Kamala across the finish line.