Best news of the day, especially since the New York Times fails to recognize its failure. In a piece that's mainly intended as fluff, the Gray Lady falls back on nearly as many clichés as its subject while getting nowhere near the real issues she faces. 

The NYT headline and subhead provide a good crystallization of their shallow approach:

Harris, After a Debate Success, Confronts a Battleground ‘Game of Inches’

Her campaign is riding high, but still sees the race as an exceedingly close grind. Her aides have new hopes of focusing the race squarely on Donald Trump’s fitness for office.

A game of inches, eh? Did her team come prepared to play? Do these two teams really not like each other, too? I bet they think Kamala is peaking at the right time too, and that they have to remember what got them into the playoffs.

Actually, Kamala defaulted into the playoffs after missing the entire pre-season. One reason she got the start was that the old veteran ran a terrible playbook and nearly cratered with it, even before his home office fired him after his first game. Joe Biden and Democrats spent all year trying to make this race about Trump's fitness for office, and it didn't work then, and polling since the conventions shows that it's still not working now. 

Even the NYT's own focus group told them that much, but they clearly aren't listening. What they and other focus groups (especially Reuters) expect is a case for why they should trust Harris with the presidency, especially after the last-minute benching of Biden and her complete lack of transparency on policy or outcomes. Or, for that matter, her refusal to answer questions, and not just in the "debate success" that the NYT highlights but also from reporters. 

To give the Clichéd Lady some credit, they almost make that point:

But Ms. Harris remains a key part of an unpopular incumbent administration in a nation where many voters say they want a decisive change and have expressed unhappiness with President Biden’s leadership.

Her quandary was encapsulated in the debate’s very first question, when Ms. Harris was asked if she thought Americans were better off now than they were four years ago. Instead of giving a direct answer, she talked about her middle-class upbringing and her plans to help working families. It was almost as if she felt it would be unwise either to embrace Mr. Biden too closely or to obviously distance herself from him.

The ultimate challenge for the Harris campaign dating to when it was Mr. Biden’s operation is less about moving Mr. Trump’s numbers — which have barely budged since 2016 — than it is about lifting hers. The bet her team is making is that some key voters who are leery of both candidates will back Ms. Harris if she can disqualify Mr. Trump in their minds.

Almost ....

Polls show that Mr. Trump retains a high floor of Republican support. Surveys in the battleground states show vanishingly tight contests.

Not just vanishingly tight, but also trending back a bit toward Trump. The only poll taken since the debate in a battleground state, a Michigan survey by Insider Advantage, shows Trump up a point since Harris' attempts to disqualify Trump with voters. Harris got a burst of momentum from her appointment as nominee and from the convention, but it has dissipated as she has attempted to play the DQ strategy and hide from the media to win the general election as a "default" choice, too.

If Harris had come up with a new way to "disqualify" Trump, this might make some sense. But she's got nothing except Biden's old playbook and less credibility and skill to execute its plays. 

Fox News also tracked the debate with a focus group provided by Maslansky + Partners, with live reactions from seventeen voters, with a D+2 sample. The results probably won't surprise anyone reading this post, but it would likely shock the Paper of Record:

Independents tracked almost perfectly with Republicans during the debate

🔴= Republican
🟡= Independent
🔵= Democrat

On the major issues — economy, inflation, illegal immigration, energy — independents sided with Republicans

Democrats weren't huge fans of some of her answers pic.twitter.com/Z25a2VuNDU

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) September 12, 2024

Lee Carter, pollster and president of Maslansky + Partners, said she was shocked to see independent voters tracking with Republicans so closely on the issue.

"I was really, really surprised because the intensity of the independent support was there for Donald Trump and I didn't expect it," Carter said Wednesday on "The Faulkner Focus."

"Independents are tracking very much with Republicans. They're looking for a couple of things. They're looking for answers on immigration, they're looking for answers on the economy. They want to hear that things will get better for them and they also want change from what is happening right now," Carter continued. "One of the most important things they were looking for last night from Kamala Harris is how are you going to make it different?"

Pay attention to the parts of the debate featured in this clip. The Harris responses aren't about what she will do, but are all about attacking Trump to "disqualify" him. The Democrats in the focus group loved it ... and they were completely alone on that score. 

Harris will double down on the DQ strategy, not because it's working, but because that's all she has. Harris had plenty of opportunities in 90 minutes to answer for her policies, her flip-flops, the performance of the Biden-Harris administration, and what she means by "a new way forward." Instead, all voters got was the same old playbook, the same old opacity, the same old shell game, and this time from a walk-on clearly out of her depth on the field. Only a media outlet deep in the tank on that blue line could possibly miss that.