There’s still everything to play for in America’s election

The first presidential debate of 2024 changed history by killing off Joe Biden’s career. The second presidential debate was nowhere near as dramatic, for the simple reason that it did not feature the President.

Instead, Kamala Harris, Biden’s Vice President and now the Democratic party’s nominee, stood on stage at the National Constitution Center in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night and presented herself as a sort of change candidate for continuity, or perhaps a continuity candidate for change. This audacious move ought to be highly implausible, yet so far she seems to have got away with it. Certainly, by any fair measure, she won the debate and was duly rewarded with an endorsement from Taylor Swift and her cat on Instagram.

Republicans had dared to hope that, having avoided proper scrutiny since she suddenly emerged as the nominee over the summer, Harris would at last be exposed. They forgot that when it comes to one-on-one intellectual sparring matches with candidates who aren’t senile, Donald Trump tends to be very bad indeed.