The bait debate revealed Trump hasn't figured out how to attack Harris.

Trump lacks the personal discipline to articulate the most potent case.

Kamala Harris’ debate victory over Donald Trump accomplished two central goals: It put to bed Democratic Party anxiety about her ability to stand toe-to-toe with the three-time Republican nominee and it made her a plausible commander-in-chief in the eyes of skeptical voters, especially when contrasted with an aging, cantankerous, conspiracy-fueled former president.

Read my post bait-debate takeaways for the papers HERE.

While the great premeditated baiting of Trump is attracting the lion’s share of attention, after a night’s sleep I woke up more struck by the muddled lines of attack he deployed against Harris.

The Trump tangents about cat eating and transgender illegal aliens were instant internet gold, further codifying Trump as an outlandish character willing to say anything on the grandest of stages.

But if you inspect his composite case against Harris, you see how confused he is about how to paint her.

Trump vacillated between:

• Kamala has no plans.

• Kamala IS Biden

• Kamala is a radical Marxist.

These are very different cases and the fault with the spaghetti-at-the-wall strategy is that low information voters won’t know which portrayal to believe, especially when considering the unreliability of the narrator.

If she has no plans, did she really used to oppose fracking?

If she has communist inclinations, how can she be Scranton Joe?

If she’s a Marxist, why’s she proposing a child tax credit?

Watch: The stakes are much higher for Kamala Harris

Search “Trump missed” in the X search engine and you’ll see a flood of conservatives bemoaning the Trump performance.

“This is a woman who bailed out BLM rioters and has amplified every race hoax for the last thirty years. Trump should have pointed that out. Some crucial missed opportunities tonight,” posted Matt Walsh, a conservative influencer, on X to his 3 million followers.

“Trump missed so many great opportunities to land knockout punches,” wrote John Cardillo, a Florida conservative.

So which path should Trump take?

Voters show themselves fine with flip-flopping, as long as a candidate presents a clear-cut confident vision going forward. Harris has improved in her certitude and disposition, even as she papered over policy specifics with vagaries.

No one believes a vibrant 59-year-old Black woman IS the equivalent of an 81-year-old sleepy Joe.

The obvious option is sometimes the smartest one.

Making Kamala an old-fashioned California liberal is the best ticket to sinking her.

Harris’ chief political problem is that she is perceived as far to the left of the average American voter. The numbers show this. In the New York Times/Siena College poll taken last week, 44% of voters labeled Harris as “too liberal or progressive,” compared to just 32% who feel Trump is “too conservative.”

What’s even wilder: In the same post-debate CNN snap poll that showed Harris cleaning Trump’s clock, she lost 2 points on which candidate would do better steering the economy.

That means even in the debate that most voters believe Trump flopped, they still found him more ideologically palatable than her.

Trump should have had some rehearsed lines that crisply demonstrated her long liberal past and then parlaying the case into an issue of trust.

Imagine him repeatedly deploying a line:

“How can you trust someone who is willing to switch her positions on healthcare, energy and immigration just to win an election?”

“When she’s in office, what will the next election require her to abandon?”

Right out of the gate, Harris obfuscated by ignoring a question on whether Americans feel better than they were four years ago. It was a prime opportunity for Trump to point out why she was scurrying away from the opening question.

How about?

“She’s not answering your question — because she’s trying to hide a long liberal record from the voters. Listen carefully to her tonight.”

But Trump is not the politician that popular lore has built him up to be.

He’s rusty, meandering and unfocused. At 78, those traits don’t improve.

It’s folly to render this debate a game-changer so quickly in its aftermath.

But if he loses in 55 days, historians will reflect on this to be the night Trump lost the election.