Unlike the debate between Donald Trump and Joe Biden in June, Tuesday’s much-anticipated showdown between Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris had a much different loser.

This time it was Donald Trump.

And it wasn’t particularly close.

Trump and Harris went into Tuesday’s debate locked in a tight race — much tighter than the one between Trump and Biden. In North Carolina, the race is nearly even, polls show.

Harris is a much bigger threat to Trump than Biden was. And based on his performance on Tuesday, he knows that. It only took Trump a few minutes to unravel in spectacular Trump fashion, his responses littered with falsehoods, conspiracies and grievances that grew more bizarre by the minute.

Unlike Biden, Harris was in control of Tuesday’s debate from start to finish. A prime example: a little over 30 minutes into the debate, Harris made a dig about people getting bored at Trump’s rallies and leaving early. It had its intended effect, and then some — Trump forcefully defended attendance at his rallies before embarking on an unhinged, bizarre rant about undocumented immigrants “eating the pets” of people in towns. Seriously?

A few minutes later, Trump made another ridiculous claim about Harris wanting to perform “transgender operations on illegal aliens who are in prison.”

Another area in which Harris succeeded: the issue of abortion. Harris was at her strongest when talking about abortion, saying firmly, “The government and Donald Trump shouldn’t be telling a woman what to do with her body.”

Trump, meanwhile, repeated outlandish lies about people executing babies after birth and tried to connect abortion to the Biden administration’s student loan cancellation plans.

Trump also passed up opportunities to try to redeem himself in the eyes of swing voters by refusing to express regret for Jan. 6, dodging questions about whether he wants Ukraine to win the war against Russia and repeating his Big Lie about the outcome of the 2020 election. Each would have been a perfect opportunity for Trump to show moderate voters that he isn’t the candidate Harris and Democrats say he is, or that he isn’t as extreme as some voters may fear he is. But he refused.

Once again, Trump has proven that his real opponent in this race is himself. For the past several weeks, his job has been simple: just sound normal. He’s failed to do so every time, and Tuesday’s debate was no exception. That’s just not going to work for undecided voters in a close race. Rather than appealing to those voters, Trump appealed to those who have already made up their minds — telling those who support him exactly what they want to hear, and giving those who don’t yet another reason not to vote for him. That makes his job in battleground states like North Carolina much more difficult moving forward.

To be clear, there were areas where Harris could have improved. She sidestepped several questions about her past policy positions and actions taken by the Biden administration — questions that some voters likely would have wanted answers to. But Trump was so unhinged that she was able to get away with it. She didn’t find herself getting stuck in defensive mode, because the vast majority of Trump’s attacks failed to even land.

The Trump campaign sent out a statement declaring that he had won the debate before it was even over. Shortly after its conclusion, Taylor Swift announced her endorsement of Kamala Harris on Instagram. That alone should tell you how the night turned out.

The biggest takeaway from the debate is this: Harris is the right person to beat Trump. She’s much stronger than Biden in polls, on the debate stage and on the campaign trail. Trump seems to wish he was still running against Biden, because it’s a much different game when he’s not.

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Paige Masten is the deputy opinion editor for The Charlotte Observer.

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