Even during the debate, Kamala Harris had only one problem: Kamala Harris. Every argument in her narrative does not hold up since it is built on denial of reality, attempting to present herself as “the new one” while for three and a half years she has been the incumbent deputy of Joe Biden, a president on whose inadequacy the Democrats themselves have spoken better than anyone else by hastily removing him from electoral contention.
A true original sin, which makes utterly unreliable any “we’re going to do it” or “I have a plan” to which Donald Trump has had an easy time responding “you’re the in the White House, why haven’t you done it these three and a half years?” Economy, immigration, foreign policy: the refrain was repeated throughout the ninety minutes, on every topic discussed, putting the Democratic nominee in an objectively uncomfortable position, moreover amply demonstrated by her body language.
During his opponent’s speeches Trump remained silent and impassive, while Harris’s facial expressions were characterized by continuous grimaces that betrayed a certain insecurity and in some cases even resentment, offering the millions of Americans in front of the telescreens an unbalanced self-image, while Trump managed to instill more confidence.
This does not mean that it was a walk in the park for Donald Trump, far from it. It is certainly no coincidence that yesterday I titled “Trump fight the media, Kamala herself” the article with which I introduced the debate, closing it with a figure: on the ABC, NBC and CBS networks, coverage of Kamala Harris is positive 84 percent of the time, while coverage of Donald Trump is negative 89 percent of the time.
A pattern that punctually occurred last night in Philadelphia, with Kamala who as explained above had to come to terms with her own history and the relative incongruence between words and deeds, and with Trump who also had to deal with ABC moderators who repeatedly intervened on his positions, being careful not to use the same yardstick with Harris on the numerous fake news stories she reiterated such as the – sensational – one about the “bloodbath” (which I dismantle in my book, to be read to understand the media’s attitude towards Trump, Ed.).
A context that at some junctures has unnerved the Republican candidate, leading him to utter a phrase about some illegal immigrants who would eat “cats and dogs” that is likely to go viral and be ridden by Democrats: very little, however, compared to the real bombs that Trump has been able to drop against his opponent. Such as when, speaking about Ukraine, he first firmly stated that he intends to “stop the war and save lives” and then, addressing Kamala, said that “they sent her to negotiate peace before the war started. Three days later, Putin came in and started the war because everything they said was weak and stupid. They said the wrong things. The war should never have started.”
Also objectively memorable was his response to Harris’s good intentions on the immigration emergency, urging her to leave aside proclamations and get busy now: “you call the President of the United States, get him out of bed, wake him up at 4 p.m., and tell him to come to the office and sign a bill.”
However tried and tested for weeks, attempts to provoke Trump have also seemed rather blunt: from his opponent’s supporters who would leave his rallies early “because they are bored,” to the events on Capito Hill being called the “worst attack on our democracy” forgetting that we are just hours away from the 23rd anniversary of 9/11.
A debate that in my opinion in electoral terms will not shift anything between the respective electorates, now largely crystallized, and that for the above reasons could significantly benefit a Trump who has succeeded in highlighting the failures of the Biden-Harris administration by using them as the perfect product placement for the solutions he has already shown he can implement: from the introduction to tariffs on China, to zero wars, to managing the economy.
If we wanted to, we could sum up the ninety minutes that just ended with Trump’s last speech “they had three and a half years to fix the border, three and a half years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why didn’t he do that?” and Kamala Harris’s response to the first question she was asked, ‘do you think Americans are better off than they were four years ago?’ and she, ”I was raised as a middle-class child…”
