Here are the winners and losers in Tuesday’s presidential debate in Philadelphia:

WINNERS

Vice President Kamala Harris.

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Debates are as much about style as substance, and Ms. Harris presented her case for the presidency calmly and confidently, without letting Mr. Trump’s insults rattle her. Instead, she managed to get under Mr. Trump’s skin repeatedly with barbs that often drifted into personal attacks.

There’s a lot to dislike with Ms. Harris’ agenda, vague as it is. She insists that she won’t ban natural gas fracking, a claim that perhaps five people in America believe. After pairing herself with a very unpopular president for nearly four years, she didn’t articulate any significant policies where she would differ from him.

The bar was low for Ms. Harris, who is still introducing herself to some voters in her two-month-old campaign. And she cleared that bar easily, coming across as someone who can rise to the moment.

ABC News

Mr. Trump, as he predicted, was up against not only the Democratic nominee but also ABC’s moderators for most of the night. David Muir and Linsey Davis rarely asked tough questions of Ms. Harris, if at all, while hitting Mr. Trump with questions seemingly calculated to get a rise out of him, such as revisiting the results of the 2020 election.

LOSER

Former President Donald Trump.

Mr. Trump started strong but quickly allowed Ms. Harris and the moderators to turn him into a scowling, shouting candidate as she raised points that seemed calculated to get his goat. He took the moderators’ bait on the 2020 lost-election question, sounding like a candidate who is still looking backward.

He wasted precious time defending the size of his rally crowds, again falling for the bait that Ms. Harris tossed his way.

Mr. Trump knew the winning themes to hit — inflation, record illegal immigration, crime. But he never really got untracked from a consistent message on any of those topics. Whether that was due to the moderators’ questions that favored the Democrat or his ego responding to Ms. Harris’ insults, Mr. Trump is a better debater than he showed in this one.

He rallied a bit in his closing argument, asking why Ms. Harris hasn’t done the initiatives that she’s espousing during her nearly four years in office.

“Why didn’t she do it?” he asked.

Ronald Reagan famously asked in a debate whether Americans were better off than four years ago. We expected to hear far more from Mr. Trump along those lines. By the end of the night, it seemed like a gift that had been wrapped for him but left unopened.