It was Joe Biden’s failure to confront Trump on this level during their debate that led to the existential crisis among Dems. The biggest letdown was Biden's failure to stand up to Trump in a convincing fashion and instead let Trump run all over him.

In contrast, Harris confronted Trump as a “disgrace” twice, as “dangerous and unfit,” as “confused,” and as lacking the right “temperament” to be president. She derided him to his face as someone dictators know “they can manipulate … with flattery and favors.”

She often referred to him in the second person, a more charged and direct way of punching the bully in the nose. She called him out for warring against the rule of law and the Constitution and for his own criminally-charged conduct.

Trump has no affirmative case to make for being president. He can’t win over new voters, so his only path is to tear down Harris to make her an unacceptable choice. By that measure alone, Harris was able to turn the tables.

Morning Memo, finding catharsis where it can in these perilous times: morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com

The father of an Ohio child who died in a car crash begged Trump and Vance to stop using his son's death to demonize immigrants. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/father-of…

Johnson is treating the swelling opposition within his party as good, old fashioned, healthy debate rather than displeasure with another Trumpian hijacking of standard legislating, the sort of thing that's plagued his speakership and felled his predecessor talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-s…

What The Abuses Of Trump II Might Actually Look Like In The Real World->An important piece out this morning from my former colleague Greg Sargent that grapples with one realistic and less overtly authoritarian scenario for a second Trump term: talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/w… via Talking Points Memo

"A 2d Trump presidency could unleash a kind of lower-profile, slow-burn authoritarianism, something that unfolds much more quietly and largely behind the scenes. In its targeting of internal enemies and its efforts to carry out revolutionary changes via far-right governance..."

"...it could end up being much less dramatic, visible, or splashy—but at the same time, extremely insidious, difficult to track, and very challenging to mobilize against.

Morning Memo, girding each weekday morning for the potential national calamity of a Trump II presidency: morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com

A new episode of The Josh Marshall Podcast is live! This week, Kate Riga and Josh Marshall process the first (and maybe only) Kamala Harris-Donald Trump debate. Head to TPM to listen now! talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/listen-…

For years, Republicans have publicly supported the procedure, while also pushing fetal personhood ideology in legislation, like bills that declare life begins at conception. If such measures were to become law, IVF access would face an existential threat talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-s…

Trump-Vance Virulent Attacks On Haitian Immigrants Yield Predictable Threats->Days of xenophobic rhetoric from the GOP ticket toward Haitian immigrants have produced exactly the kind of threats, intimidation, and disruption you would expect. talkingpointsmemo.com/morning-memo/t… via Talking Points Memo

Here’s the lede from the Springfield News-Sun in Ohio, which has been ground zero for the baseless and comical claims that Haitian immigrants were eating pets:

We know exactly where this kind of rhetoric leads. We’ve seen it over and over in the Trump era. It incites those already vulnerable to persuasion to take action, and it always ends with Trump protesting that he can’t possibly be responsible for what other people did.

For the email version of Morning Memo, sign up here for free: morningmemo.talkingpointsmemo.com

The path the inflammatory rumors took from the fever swamps to the debate stage to an on-the-ground, Trump-fueled furor in Springfield is a new spin through a story arc that has become familiar in the MAGA era. talkingpointsmemo.com/news/how-jd-va…

Amid the chaos, the slo-mo deterioration of civic order, and the erosion of democratic institutions, there is an impending national election that remains far too close to call and upon which almost everything we take for granted in American public life depends. Quite a weekend.

All the way back in the Before Times of 2015 — when Swift was just a regular pop star rather than a billion dollar enterprise and Trump was just beginning his first presidential campaign — things were very different. talkingpointsmemo.com/where-things-s…