The moderators, David Muir and Linsey Davis, did open the evening by asking Harris if she believes people are better off now than they were four years ago, but when Harris completely avoided the question to give a scripted little speech about her planned “opportunity economy,” they did nothing to stop her evasion or haul her back to explain her integral role in the past four years of massive deficits, inflation, lost purchasing power, declining real wages, high interest rates, sky-high mortgages, and unaffordable housing. She skated away from all blame on the economy, and the moderators waved her a fond farewell. 

Donald Trump, for his part, also failed to forge the obvious and unbreakable link between Harris and the public’s economic woes, and throughout the 90-minute debate, he allowed himself to get sidetracked on issues irrelevant to voters, such as the crowd sizes at his rallies. But although some blame for his miserable evening falls on him, it was ABC News that was supposed to be in charge and supposed to make likely the only debate we will get between Trump and Harris an even playing field and helpful to voters. Instead, Trump was outnumbered 3-to-1.

The ABC moderators did not take a similarly soft hands-off approach to Trump. Throughout the evening, they “fact-checked” with their own highly questionable opinions and analyses. In contrast, they never corrected or checked Harris.

The network’s effort to help Harris continued throughout the debate, most prominently by asking only a single meek question 45 minutes into the debate about her many flip-flops on policy and again allowing her to walk briskly away from her duty to supply answers. Asked to explain her reversal on mandatory gun confiscation and decriminalization of illegal immigration, Harris answered by talking about housing policy, Social Security, and domestic violence. These are important issues, but they were completely unresponsive to the question she had been asked. Yet ABC News let it go by. Harris said she was “going to discuss every one” of her policy changes but of course did not do so and was not reminded to do so by ABC News.

In this cozy atmosphere, Harris relaxed and became more effective as the debate wore on. She still offered mostly canned answers, evidently learned by rote, but she delivered them better in the final hour of the night than she had at the outset.

Trump, meanwhile, started well, with clear answers, but he became more angry and undisciplined as time went by. He could hardly avoid knowing that he was losing, but either way, he became indignant and incoherent. As entertaining as Trump is at campaign rallies, he is a terribly undisciplined debater. He failed to stay on message or force Harris to defend her radical record on government spending, crime, illegal immigration, gun control, and energy.

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The bar for success for Harris was low Tuesday night, and she exceeded it. All she had to do was speak in coherent, complete sentences and she would have demonstrated that she was a stronger candidate than Biden. But she did not really distinguish herself from Biden. She pointed out that Trump was running against her, not Biden, but she did not say a word about how her presidency would differ from the one America is suffering through.

ABC News worked overtime to help Harris get away with her many deceptions. The contrast between CNN’s honesty and fairness in moderating the Trump-Biden debate in June and ABC News’s partisan hackery on Tuesday was stark. But the path ahead for conservatives is clear. They must expose Harris’s record and her agenda. Trump and his campaign must do a better job.