I’m currently abroad enjoying a much-needed holiday, and have been trying my best to avoid politics and the news, but after I saw a few clips of the recent Presidential debate between VP Kamala Harris and former President Trump, I had to check they were real. I’ve now caved and watched the whole thing, and holy shit.
My initial reaction after the debate concluded was that Harris was the clear winner, and a brief look over the headlines across the political spectrum confirms that Harris has unanimously achieved victory, amongst all not indoctrinated into Trump’s cult of personality.
Trump’s performance was notably and predictably light on policy detail and heavy on abject insanity, his slowly decaying mental faculties on full display. He claimed, amongst other things, that there were states in the US where babies were being executed directly after being born, and that Haitian migrants in Ohio were eating household pets, backing up his claims by saying he saw them on television.
Harris, on the other hand, did her best to introduce herself to the American people, demonstrating her fair-mindedness and policy chops to the world, not once letting Trump get under her skin. She spoke powerfully about continuing the reconstruction of the American economy, promoting fairness and equality, whilst setting traps for the former President which he gleefully seemed to fall for.
But as always with a Democratic ticket running against Trump, the most important thing about Harris is that she isn’t Trump. That, for me, is the bottom line. If does Trump does get elected, the only hope the world and the US may have is that he is so incompetent and inspires so much-infighting and chaos within his administration and wider party that he gets very little of what he has set out done. Not that he has shared much detail about what he plans to do.
Trump delivered a variety of personal attacks against Harris, as is his style, but Harris also did not shy away from calling Trump out on his flaws. She levied her own personal attacks on him, but whilst Harris was able to laugh off much of what Trump threw at her, Trump, with his ego as large and fragile as it is, could not let her comments about him go, and spent much of his time on tangents flimsily rebuking Harris’s accusations, or spreading nonsense such as the tripe mentioned above.
In short, anyone with a firm grasp on reality could tell from this debate who would make a better President, but the influence it will have on the election is less certain than who the victor was. The longer this campaign goes on for, the less confidence I have in Harris’s victory. It was always going to be close, but as impressive as Harris’s victory in this debate was, I don’t see it having much of an impact on the discourse at large.
These things used to change how elections were won and lost in years gone past. But when it comes to present times, most Americans don’t look to cable TV for their news. They look online. And whilst clips of this debate are floating in every corner of the internet, public opinion has not shifted one way or the other significantly a day after the closing statements were delivered. Harris needs more time to introduce herself on the national stage, and with the election just a month away, that is time she does not have.
stay safe
/e