Podcast / See How They Run / Sep 14, 2024

Harris Crushed Trump. Will It Matter?

On this episode of See How They Run, Jeet Heer on the debate and where we go from here.

The Nation Podcasts
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Kamala Crushed Trump. Will It Matter? | See How They Run
byThe Nation Magazine

On this episode of See How They Run, D.D. Guttenplan is joined by Jeet Heer to discuss the last presidential debate and where we go from here.

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Republican presidential nominee, former U.S. President Donald Trump, during the presidential election campaign at The National Constitution Center on September 10, 2024 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

(Win McNamee / Getty Images)

That sound you heard at around 10:45 Eastern time on Tuesday night was a collective sigh of relief from Democrats across the country. Kamala Harris had debated Donald Trump, and, unlike Joe Biden, she had survived. Not just that—she was widely declared the winner, having successfully provoked Trump into a series of incoherent rants for most of the debate’s 90 minutes.

Experts love telling us that debates don’t matter that much—that they rarely shift the dynamics of a campaign. We know that the Biden-Trump debate was a hellish exception to that supposed rule. But what about the Harris-Trump debate? Did Harris turn this into a different kind of race? Will Trump’s meltdowns hurt his chances? Or are giddy Democrats tempting fate, 2016-style?

On this episode of See How They Run, we’re debating the debate. And standing at the lectern opposite mine is our national affairs correspondent Jeet Heer.

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D.D. Guttenplan

D.D. Guttenplan is a special correspondent for The Nation and the former host of The Nation Podcast. He served as editor of the magazine from 2019 to 2025 and, prior to that, as an editor at large and London correspondent. His books include American Radical: The Life and Times of I.F. Stone, The Nation: A Biography, and The Next Republic: The Rise of a New Radical Majority.

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