To survive Tuesday’s debate, Vice President Kamala Harris needed only avoid an embarrassing smackdown. Harris far exceeded expectations, winning the debate after former President Donald Trump fell into every trap she set.

It began with a question to Harris that should and could have become Trump’s cudgel. ABC co-moderator Linsey Davis asked Harris, “when it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?”

Of course, they are not. Just ask them. This was a question Trump should have forced her to answer at every opportunity. It was a chance to expose her as radically left and economically challenged. Instead of making the debate about her, Trump made it about him — and it didn’t serve him well.

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Unsurprisingly, Harris neglected to answer the moderator’s first question. Instead, she told the audience how she believes in “the ambition, the aspirations, the dreams of the American People.” She has a plan to build an “opportunity economy.”

Harris spoke nothing more of the plan, instead telling of “a woman who helped raise us.” The woman owned a small business, and that’s why Harris loves small businesses. Trump and the moderators let it slide.

Harris branded Trump’s promise of more tariffs on foreign goods “the Trump sales tax.”

Trump should have unleashed a litany of data showing how average Americans are worse off than they were four years ago. He could have gone on the offensive, blaming Harris for crippling inflation, high taxes, a housing shortage and international instability. Just the facts would have served him well.

Instead, Trump donned an angry look that froze on his face until the end. He took the “sales tax” bait, going into a defense of his unpopular tariffs. From there, in the wake of the “four years ago” question, Trump clumsily stumbled into a rant about “millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums.”

He’s not wrong, but it distracted viewers from the economic question at hand — by far the most important topic for undecided Americans trying to choose a candidate. Viewers expecting Trump to own economic questions were disappointed.

By failing to blame Harris for her role in “Bidenomics,” Trump failed to define her. Not having to defend the Biden-Harris economy, Harris turned it on Trump by blaming him for pandemic-era unemployment numbers.

Harris claimed Trump would impose on the public a plan called “Project 2025” — devised by a think tank, not Trump or his campaign.

Again, Trump spent the next few minutes on the defensive. After distancing himself from Project 25 — saying he had not read it — he complained of getting too little credit for his handling of a pandemic everyone would like to forget.

Trump’s bizarre, undisciplined meandering set Harris up to declare: “So, Donald Trump has no plan for you.”

Then came abortion. Trump could have and should have pivoted quickly to any other topic that would pull him from the political tarpit of reproductive rights.

Instead, Trump allowed the moderators and Harris to drag him through several minutes of cringeworthy polemics that ended with Trump on the defensive about in vitro fertilization.

Throughout the night, Trump failed to expose Harris for making our country weaker, poorer and more vulnerable than when she took office.

By failing to expose his opponent’s extreme left-wing ideology, Trump squandered a chance to prove himself the strong, focused, presidential leader Americans crave. Only the election will determine the cost.

Colorado Springs Gazette Editorial Board