About the Debate: A Lost Opportunity
A 90-minute debate, with charge and countercharge flying back and forth, is complex to unpack and fact-check in a short article. We will leave that to others. This is being written right after the debate. We have not listened to other commentaries as it will muddy our own impressions.
We want to examine the goal and context of the debate. The Presidential race is very close and will be decided by independents and uncommitted low-information voters.
Those who love Trump love him and his performance will not change their minds. For those committed to Kamala Harris, her positions were largely unknown. Polls show that up to 70% of her supporters don’t know her positions on a variety of topics. She has been an intellectual lightweight and prone to “word salads” when asked questions, so expectations for her were low.
Going into the debate, news broke about an ACLU questionnaire that she filled out in 2019 expressing many radical left-wing positions. Even CNN commentators were stunned. It looked like a night when the PR front could be shattered.
She rose well above those low expectations. She got under his skin about the size of his crowds, his multiple legal battles, and the defection of some prominent never-Trump Republicans.
The objective of the debate for Harris was to strengthen her base, protect herself from the failed record of the Biden/Harris years, and obscure her radical and extreme leftist ideology. Both candidates needed to convince the marginal fence-sitters and undecided. Trump missed some key opportunities to expose her and draw the undecided heavily toward him. Harris exceeded the low expectations the media and her side had set for her.
Trump was often so defensive he did not strongly unmask her as the radical she is, so the low-information voter is left with emotional impressions. The impression was that she was more competent than supposed, and he was the same grumpy guy recalling the 2020 election loss.
From January 6th to Charlottesville, the “bloodbath” of the auto industry, she repeated many falsehoods. However, she was on the offensive, and Trump looked irritated throughout much of the debate. She smiled and was seemingly empathetic, but he failed to expose her extreme positions. She did not cackle or filibuster. She knew her lines and delivered them.
As she rolled out these falsehoods, the ABC panel sat on their hands while actively challenging Trump on many points. It was as if Trump was debating three people instead of one. That said, ABC’s bias is widely known. Trump accepted the risks but did not seem to have a strategy to counter the bias.
Her face did tell when Trump landed a point, but she remained calm and sounded almost rational.
Trump seemed to have decided to wing it. He landed several strong punches and memorable statements about his opponent’s failings, but he did not crush her to achieve a commanding lead going forward.
He did make some good points about inflation and weak foreign policy, especially regarding funding Iran’s reign of terror. But again, people will remember impressions more than positions. He was particularly good on immigration issues and inflation, the two critical issues where he clearly has the advantage with most voters.
For her, there were few convoluted sentences. She was well rehearsed. Instead of Trump unmasking her as an extreme San Francisco liberal, she put him on the defensive for the chaos of his first term. He, in fact, often as he does, uses elliptical sentences that don’t land squarely on the question being asked.
Of course, the chaos of Trump’s first term was engineered by Democrats and our intelligence agencies. Still, though, she exploited people’s memories. Remember, the mainly undecided get their news from the corporate news networks, so she brought back the false media-driven impressions of those years.
She was particularly influential on abortion, painting Trump as an extremist, even though some in the right-to-life movement are mad at him because of his more moderate position.
The last point is important because Trump is weak with urban women. Instead of pointing out that Democrats are defining women out of existence with their radical transgender agenda, he said the states would deal with the abortion issue following the SCOTUS overturning of Roe v. Wade, which left him vulnerable to the claim that “women will have to go out of state to get healthcare” canard.
I wanted to reach through the television screen and say, “Donald, land some haymakers.” A key strategy could have been to ask her what she knew about Biden’s failing mental condition. If she had said he was healthy and capable, he could have asked, “Then why are you here?” If she said she was concerned about it, Trump could have asked why she lied continuously about his actual cognitive condition for over three years.
Or, he could have said, “How can she be supportive of women when she and her administration are legally defining them out of existence?” Notice these are not long sentences.
He asked who was running the White House but did not follow up and paint her as an essential conspirator, hiding the actual mental condition of the President from the public.
I am not saying the debate was a disaster. Trump has momentum and there is still time. But it was a setback in establishing her as the radical she truly is.
She came off better than expected. He missed some key opportunities to expose her failed incumbency and well documented far-left ideology.
He failed to reach out to the middle and the undecided. From that perspective, he did not advance his cause.
My emotional response was one of disappointment because a critical pivotal point in the campaign was somewhat squandered.
This opportunity is important because Kamala is being sold like soap, with slogans and advertising. Much like Biden, she has been in hiding. She finally came out, and Trump failed to put her on the defensive for almost four miserable and damaging years of governing.
Are we entering a period in which we now elect figureheads, political holograms, so to speak, that are really election tokens? At the same time, party bureaucrats and the deep state govern.
I am afraid so, and that is why this debate was so important.
Like him or not, when you vote for Trump, you know what you are getting and who will at least attempt to be in charge of the Washington blob.
With Kamala Harris, we will continue to pretend we choose our president, but others will do the real governing. Who are they? The people who ably prepared Kamala are just in charge of maintaining the false front. The “blob” continues to grow behind the facade.
Needless to say, this was not the outcome of the debate that I had expected. The job of unmasking Kamala Harris must continue. If the American people can learn of her truly radical positions, we still have an excellent chance to win.
Photo credit: Gage Skidmore
