Sixty-seven million Americans watched an ABC presidential campaign debate last week between former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris.

Trump spoke for about 43 minutes. Harris spoke for about 38 minutes. She was poised, confident and generally effective. He was dour, snarly, and as usual, undertook many windy exaggerations.

She somehow succeeded in distancing herself from her past image as a San Francisco liberal and managed, at least at times, to present herself as a positive, moderate centrist. The moderators may have gone easy on her.

Trump mostly repeated his familiar themes America is in great decline, immigrants are ruining our country and the Biden-Harris administration has been a disaster on border control and foreign policy.

Trump’s strategy, it appears, is to scare people and convince them he is the one who can save the nation from decline, World War III and bloodbaths.

He later, in familiar Trumpian style, said the debate was rigged, that he was fact-checked too much and he even hinted Harris had been given the questions in advance.

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One of Trump’s traveling companions suggested the loony idea she had a listening device in her earring that whispered answers to her.

Trump did not look as though he enjoyed being there. Harris smiled, exuded confidence and enjoyed the debate — even though she had to endure Trump’s insults and lies. Trump boasts he won the debate, and it was his best debate ever — yet he says he doesn’t want a second debate with Harris. Enough with prosecutors.

Both candidates dodged answering important policy questions. Both did their best to highlight the questionable policies or failed politics of each other’s administration in the White House.

Debates that provide a candidate just a minute or two to outline their economic and national security positions leave a lot to be desired. Thoughtful observations are invariably sacrificed to smearing, or at least questioning, the character of one’s opponent.

Vice President Harris won this debate not so much on issues as because Trump came across as snarly, petulant and too negative. He seemed reluctant to shake her hand when it was offered. He refused to look at the vice president, which made him seem angry or scornful.

This was a major test for Harris. She had to present herself as confident, knowledgeable, tough and willing to separate herself from President Joe Biden and his administration.

She met most of these tests and impressed many watchers who took away that she has presidential stature.

She defended United States assistance to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. She made the case for reproductive freedoms for women. She defended Obamacare, and she presented new proposals for helping small businesses.

Harris is helped by the fact inflation is gradually coming down and the unemployment rate is at acceptable levels. The high rate of inflation has been a good issue for the Republicans, yet it is less so today than six months ago.

Former President Trump’s strongest issue is immigration has caused major problems and the Biden-Harris effort to fix immigration has been too late and lame.

Harris blames Trump for undermining a recent bipartisan effort to address border control issues. But she should have been able to present fresh proposals and more persuasive arguments about how her administration would be more effective on border control.

Trump hit hard on the immigration issue but brought it up too frequently.  He would invariably bring up immigration when he was stumped by other questions.

Trump hurt himself when he continued to claim he won the 2020 presidential election against Biden. He also repeated the false claim he had no responsibility for the atrocious attack on the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

Trump seemed weak when asked about Obamacare. He has said for years he is working on a better health care plan for America, but he has failed to produce and lost credibility on this issue.

Trump hedged on the issue of whether the Ukrainians should win their war against Russia. All he kept saying was he would end the war, without saying how he would do it.

Both candidates stooped to unwarranted name-calling and character innuendos. It got ugly.

Trump called Harris the worst vice president in U.S. history.

Harris, on the other hand, said foreign leaders all over the world laugh at Trump.  Both misspoke or were factually wrong at times.

American voters deserve better answers on policy questions than Harris and Trump were giving. Candidates should take a higher road when it comes to assertions about an opponent’s character weaknesses. Trump calling Kamala Harris a Marxist was a low point. Trump’s gratuitous insults about Biden were classless.

Voters deserve more specifics about how the candidates would lower the national debt and deal with the challenge of Artificial Intelligence (AI). We heard virtually nothing new from either Harris or Trump about new national security strategies.

Harris seemed to enjoy reminding viewers of all of Trump’s court indictments and convictions. Trump, as always, insisted he was innocent and a victim of the Department of Justice.

Trump triumphed in his debate against Biden in late June. Indeed, he knocked Biden out of the race. He won that debate because Biden’s health problems highlighted Biden’s growing ineffectiveness.

Harris won this debate because Trump hurt himself. He failed to make the case she should have more to show for her past three-and-a-half years serving as Joe Biden’s vice president.

More important, Trump looked and sounded more negative than his opponent. He offered next to no new proposals. His defense of tariffs was unconvincing. His claims of hungry immigrants catching and eating American pet dogs and cats seemed weird.

Most observers and reliable polls indicate Harris won this debate. But experts point out Mitt Romney bested Barack Obama in a presidential debate in 2012 — and Obama went on to win the election. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were other presidential candidates who won debates but lost the election.

Winning a presidential debate does not guarantee anything. Still, doing well in a debate, like the one we watched Tuesday night, typically gives the winner at least a bounce of two points or so in national polls.

Harris needs this kind of bounce. She will also be helped by the timely endorsement of celebrity singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, who enjoys an even bigger fan base than Kamala Harris.

Do celebrity endorsements matter? Not much. However, Harris is more advantaged by having Swift, Oprah Winfrey and Liz and Dick Cheney in her corner than Trump is having Hungarian strongman Victor Orban and Hulk Hogan in his.

But there are 50 days or so until Election Day. Those 50 days will provide more tests for both candidates. Voters already know about Trump, but the country is just beginning to learn about Harris.

A large segment of the voting public wants to learn more about her and what kind of leader she might be in the future. She has passed a few initial tests such as winning the nomination and a debate. She will be tested and scrutinized much more in the weeks to come up to Election Day, and she should be.

Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy are political columnists who write about Colorado and national politics.