Donald J. Trump’s America is a grim place, a nation awash in marauding immigrants stealing American jobs and eating American cats and dogs, a country devastated economically, humiliated internationally and perched on the cliff’s edge of an apocalyptic World War III.

特朗普口中的美国是一个阴森的地方，充斥着掠夺成性的移民，他们偷走美国人的工作，吃美国人的猫和狗。这个国家在经济上遭受重创，在国际上备受羞辱，濒临世界末日版第三次世界大战的悬崖边缘。 

Kamala Harris’s America is a weary but hopeful place, a nation fed up with the chaos of the Trump years and sick of all the drama and divisiveness, a country embarrassed by a crooked stuck-in-the-past former president facing prison time and eager for a new generation of leadership.

贺锦丽口中的美国是一个疲惫但充满希望的地方，这个国家厌倦了特朗普执政时期的混乱，厌倦了所有的戏剧性和分裂，这个国家因一个不诚实、活在过去、面临入狱的前总统而感到尴尬，它渴望着新一代领导人。

These two visions of America on display during the first and possibly only presidential debate between Ms. Harris and Mr. Trump on Tuesday night encapsulated the gambles that each candidate is taking in this hotly contested campaign. Mr. Trump is betting on anger and Ms. Harris on exhaustion. Mr. Trump is trying to repackage and resell his “American carnage” theme eight years later, while Ms. Harris is appealing to those ready to leave that in the past.

周二晚上，贺锦丽和特朗普进行了第一场、可能也是唯一一场总统候选人辩论，在辩论中展现的这两种美国愿景，体现了两位候选人在这场激烈的竞选中所下的赌注。特朗普赌的是愤怒，贺锦丽赌的是疲惫。八年后，特朗普正试图重新包装和兜售他的“美国浩劫”主题，而贺锦丽则在吸引那些准备把它抛在过去的人。

The question is who has a better read on the American psyche eight weeks before the final ballots are cast. For the past two decades, most Americans have told pollsters that they believe the country is on the wrong track, a prolonged period of national disenchantment that Mr. Trump has successfully channeled throughout his tumultuous political career. But Ms. Harris argues that Mr. Trump is the one who wants to take the nation back down a path to nowhere.

问题是，在最终投票前的八周，谁能更好地解读美国人的心理。在过去的二十年里，大多数美国人告诉民调机构，他们认为美国走在错误的轨道上，特朗普在他动荡的政治生涯里成功地引导了这一长期的国民失望情绪。但贺锦丽认为，特朗普才是那个想把美国带回一条死路上的人。

“She’s destroying this country,” Mr. Trump declared at one point during the debate. It was a line he recycled in one form or another 13 times in all — she or the Democrats destroying the country, the economy, the energy industry.

“她正在摧毁这个国家，”特朗普在辩论中一度宣称。这句话他以这样或那样的形式重复了13次——她或者民主党正在摧毁这个国家、经济和能源行业。

“Let’s turn the page and move forward,” Ms. Harris said for her part. She turned pages or moved forward at least five other times. “Frankly,” she added, “the American people are exhausted with this same old tired playbook.”

“让我们翻过这一页，继续前进，”贺锦丽说。她至少还有五次提到翻过这一页或者向前迈进这样的表述。“坦率地说，”她还说，“美国人民已经厌倦了这种老掉牙的把戏。”

Elections are, of course, about contrasts and the contrast between the candidates now on offer this campaign season is as stark as any in modern history — not just along ideological, cultural, temperamental, demographic or generational lines but in fundamental outlook.

当然，选举就在于对比，在这个竞选季，候选人之间的对比跟现代历史上的任何一次同样鲜明——不仅在意识形态、文化、气质、人口学或代际方面，而且是在基本面貌方面。

Mr. Trump has always been about extremes, articulating an all-or-nothing Manichaean worldview in which the country is a virtual paradise on earth when he is in charge and going to hell when he is not. “We had no problems when Trump was president,” he said, attributing the claim to a European autocrat. Now that he is out of office, Mr. Trump added, “the whole world” is “blowing up,” and “we’re a failing nation.”

特朗普一直走极端，他阐述了一种非此即彼的摩尼教世界观，在这种世界观里，当他掌权时，这个国家几乎就是人间天堂，当他不掌权时，这个国家就会下地狱。“特朗普当总统时，我们没有任何问题，”他说，并称这个说法来自一位欧洲的专制者。特朗普还说，现在他下台了，“整个世界”都在“爆炸”，“我们是一个失败的国家”。

前总统特朗普向来倾向于极端，他表达了一种非此即彼的世界观。

Ms. Harris offers subtlety and nuance in a political environment that does not always value either. She boasts of progress not perfection, promises seriousness not self-absorption. “What I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country,” she said, “one who believes in what is possible and one who brings a sense of optimism about what we can do instead of always disparaging the American people.”

贺锦丽在一个并不总是重视微妙表达和细微差别的政治环境中提供了这些特质。她赞美进步而不是完美，承诺认真而不是自我陶醉。“我要为我们的国家提供的是新一代领导人，这样的领导人相信一切皆有可能，对我们所能做的事情抱有乐观态度，而不是总在贬低美国人民，”她说。

The former president’s vision is built partly on a foundation of fictions. So much of what he said over the course of an hour and a half onstage in Philadelphia was false, misleading or seemingly made up out of whole cloth that it could take a team of fact-checkers all night just to catch up. Crime is “up and through the roof,” he said, except that the authorities report that it is actually near its lowest level in decades. Ms. Harris and President Biden “got rid of” the petroleum industry, except that U.S. oil production has risen to record highs.

前总统的愿景部分建立在虚构的基础上。在费城舞台上的一个半小时里，他所说的很多内容都是虚假的、误导性的，或者似乎是完全编造出来的，以至于一个事实核查小组可能要花一整夜才能查清。他说，犯罪率“上升到冲破天花板”，不过当局报告称，犯罪率实际上接近几十年来的最低水平。他说贺锦丽和拜登总统“消灭”了石油工业，然而美国的石油产量已经升至历史新高。

Most head-snapping was Mr. Trump’s decision to latch onto a bizarre tale of Haitian immigrants supposedly snatching and devouring pets in Springfield, Ohio, an internet rumor debunked by incredulous local authorities. “They’re eating the dogs,” he asserted. “The people that came in, they’re eating the cats. They’re eating — they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” When David Muir, one of the ABC News moderators, pointed out there was zero evidence of that, Mr. Trump simply shrugged and said he heard it on television so it must be true.

最让人大跌眼镜的是，特朗普决定抓住一个离奇的故事不放，据说海地移民在俄亥俄州斯普林菲尔德抢走人们的宠物并将它们吃掉，这是一个被较真的地方当局澄清的网络谣言。“他们吃狗，”他断言。“那些外来的人吃猫。他们吃——他们在吃住在那里的人的宠物。”当ABC新闻持人之一戴维·缪尔指出没有证据证明这一点时，特朗普只是耸耸肩，说他是在电视上看到的，所以肯定是真的。

It is not a new shtick, although it seems more pronounced than ever. Mr. Trump debuted his first presidential campaign in June 2015 with dark talk of Mexican rapists flooding over the border and took office a year and a half later with his famous promise to halt “American carnage.” The risk is that it may feel stale to voters after nearly a decade, as Ms. Harris maintained.

这并非什么新手法，尽管它似乎比以往任何时候都更加明显。2015年6月特朗普首次竞选总统的时候，他曾发表过墨西哥强奸犯大量越过边境的阴暗言论，一年半后，他以停止“美国浩劫”的著名承诺上台。这么做的风险在于，将近十年之后，选民可能会觉得它已经过时了，而这正是贺锦丽所坚称的。

Ms. Harris, who ducked some questions, gave vague answers to others and at times stretched the truth herself, though not as brazenly as her opponent, kept the focus on Mr. Trump. Americans, she said, have grown tired of all the “belittling and name calling” even as she threw some of his own favorite belittling insults back at him, calling him a “disgrace” and “weak.”

贺锦丽回避了一些问题，对一些问题给出了模糊的回答，有时也会夸大事实——尽管不像她的对手那样肆无忌惮，但她还是把焦点放在特朗普身上。她说，美国人已经厌倦了所有的“贬低和辱骂”，甚至她还把特朗普最喜欢用的一些贬低性侮辱回敬给他，说他“软弱”，是一种“耻辱”。

Appropriating another of his regular lines, she said “world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump” and added that dictators “can manipulate you with flattery and favors” and foes like President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia “would eat you for lunch.”

她借用了特朗普的另一句常用台词，说“世界领导人在嘲笑唐纳德·特朗普”，还说专制者“可以用奉承和恩惠来操纵你”，俄罗斯总统普京这样的敌人“会把你当午餐吃掉”。

Perhaps most cutting, she took aim at his obsession with crowd sizes at his campaign events, declaring that his act had grown so tiresome that “people start leaving his rallies early out of exhaustion and boredom.”

也许最尖锐的是，她把矛头指向特朗普对竞选活动中人群规模的痴迷，宣称他的行为已经变得令人厌倦，以至于“人们开始因为疲惫和无聊早早离开他的造势活动”。

“Donald Trump actually has no plan for you,” she told the television audience, “because he is more interested in defending himself than he is in looking out for you.”

“特朗普实际上没有为你们准备任何计划，”她对电视观众说，“因为他更感兴趣的是为自己辩护，而不是为你们着想。”

副总统贺锦丽把目标对准了特朗普竞选造势集会的人群规模。

Nothing seemed to rattle Mr. Trump as much as the jab about his beloved rallies, and he let it distract him from a discussion of illegal immigration, an issue that is one of Ms. Harris’s prime political vulnerabilities. “People don’t leave my rallies,” he insisted. “We have the biggest rallies, the most incredible rallies in the history of politics, that’s because people want to take their country back.”

似乎没有什么比抨击他所钟爱的集会更让特朗普感到不安的了，这一嘲讽分散了他对非法移民问题的注意力，而这本来是贺锦丽的主要政治弱点之一。“人们不会离开我的集会，”他坚称。“我们有最大的集会，政治史上最不可思议的集会，那是因为人们想要夺回他们的国家。”

Ms. Harris got under his skin repeatedly, needling him and putting him on the defensive. Indeed, while judges have scolded him and prosecutors have accused him, no one in years has trolled Mr. Trump to his face on a public stage quite like she did. His Republican primary opponents went easy on him, and Mr. Biden was spectacularly ineffective at taking him on during their debate on June 27 before the president dropped out of the race.

贺锦丽一再激怒他，让他陷入被动。的确，尽管法官斥责过他，检察官也指控过他，但多年来，没有人像她那样在公开场合当面奚落特朗普。他的共和党初选对手对他很客气；6月27日的辩论中，拜登在较量中表现得过于无能，随后宣布退出竞选。

By contrast, Ms. Harris, the former prosecutor, calmly and confidently poked at Mr. Trump’s sensitive spots time and again, litigating the political case against a candidate who was convicted of 34 felonies, indicted three other times, found liable of sexual abuse in one civil trial and of business fraud in another and tried to overturn an election that he lost. He scowled much of the evening, refusing even to look at her.

相比之下，前检察官贺锦丽一次又一次冷静而自信地戳中特朗普的敏感点，对这位被判犯有34项重罪，另遭三次起诉，在一次民事审判中被判犯有性虐待罪，在另一次民事审判中被判犯有商业欺诈罪，并试图推翻他所输掉选举的候选人提起政治诉讼。整个晚上他都皱着眉头，甚至不愿看她一眼。

Whether many voters change their minds one way or the other as a result of the back-and-forth remains to be seen. Mr. Trump’s strong support from his Republican base has been locked in for months, largely unaffected by events, favorable or otherwise. He has not been losing many voters nor gaining them, although he remains unable to crack the magic 50 percent threshold.

许多选民是否会因为此次交锋而改变主意还有待观察。特朗普的共和党基本盘对他的大力支持已持续数月，基本上没有受到有利或不利事件的影响。他既没有失去很多选民，也没有赢得很多选民，尽管他的支持率仍然无法突破50%的神奇门槛。

Ms. Harris, on the other hand, had more to gain or lose on Tuesday night as the new candidate in the race, reintroducing herself to tens of millions of viewers evaluating her as a potential commander in chief for the first time.

另一方面，作为竞选中的新候选人，贺锦丽在周二晚上有更多可以得到或失去的，她要向数千万观众重新介绍自己，这些观众将第一次将她作为潜在的三军统帅来评估。

A CNN flash poll found that she won by a nearly two-to-one margin and the professional commentariat seemed to agree, including some conservatives. By any measure, she did better than Mr. Biden, whose shaky performance in June was so bad that it forced him from the race. But as Hillary Clinton can attest, debates do not always translate to victory in November.

CNN的一项即时民意调查显示，她以接近2比1的优势胜出，包括一些保守派在内的专业评论人士似乎也同意这一观点。无论以何种标准衡量，她的表现都比拜登好，后者在6月的糟糕表现迫使他退出了竞选。但正如希拉里·克林顿证明的那样，辩论并不总能转化为11月的胜利。

If there are no more debates, then the two candidates will now separately crisscross their two Americas for the next 55 days in a high-stakes, this-is-for-all-the-marbles test of which one has a better sense of the country. And then it will be left to voters who are angry and voters who are exhausted — and those who are both — to decide which America they see and what kind of America they want to live in.

如果接下来没有辩论的话，那么两位候选人现在将在接下来的55天里分别穿梭于他们的两个美国，进行一场高风险的、孤注一掷的测试，看看哪位候选人对这个国家的认识更深刻。然后，交给那些愤怒的选民和疲惫的选民——以及两种情绪都有的选民——来决定他们看到的是哪一个美国，以及他们希望生活在一个什么样的美国。