Trump 'running away' from Kamala Harris after her 'exceptional' rollout: analysis

Former President Donald Trump is "running away" from Vice President Kamala Harris as she manages to consolidate her voting base and the aftermath of the debate in Pennsylvania begins to come clear, Heather Digby Parton wrote for Salon.

The former president is widely considered to have bombed the debate by fighting with the moderators and coming off as hostile as Harris criticized his record and baited him into promoting a right-wing hoax about Haitian migrants eating pets in Ohio.

Trump never saw this coming, Parton wrote, because he — like much of the mainstream press — saw Harris as a "mediocre" politician who had been promoted above her station.

But this was never the case, she said: "As a Californian, I have followed Harris' career pretty closely from the time she made a name for herself as the San Francisco district attorney and then state attorney general. I happily voted for her for the Senate. She always struck me as a talented politician who was very likely headed for higher office if the breaks came her way."

Everything came together rapidly after President Joe Biden dropped out of the race, said Parton — and the whole country could suddenly see her for the talent she really had.

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"The campaign rollout was simply exceptional, one of the best I've ever seen," said Parton. At a moment when a lot of pundits and some Democrats in leadership wanted a "mini-primary" process to replace Biden, "Harris personally worked the phones to get the party lined up behind her. They figured out a process to secure the nomination without any hiccups and with almost no time to prepare. They smoothly transitioned the Biden campaign apparatus (which was obviously very good itself) into the Harris campaign and immediately went to work."

The result was a huge wave of enthusiasm and a blitz of fundraising.

And now, as Trump is trying to back out of doing the second debate, Parton noted that voters are seeing Harris in a more positive light than ever: "The Bulwark's Sarah Longwell held one of her famous focus groups on the morning after the debate. When asked how they would describe Harris's performance, the most common response was 'presidential.'"