Preparation Paid Off for Harris

John Harris: “She plainly used her long days of debate prep in a Pittsburgh hotel to compile a rich anthology of taunts, putdowns and derisive one-liners against former president Donald Trump. The rehearsal was enough to commit dozens of them to memory — not enough to avoid sometimes sounding a bit stagy in delivery. At times, one could almost see the candidate flipping through a stack of neatly organized 3-by-5 index cards in her mind.”

“Harris’ strategy worked because Trump arrived at the National Constitution Center without much of a strategy — or at least not with one that could survive past the first 15 minutes or so of the encounter.”