The first (and possibly only) Trump-Harris debate has come and gone. Vance and Walz are due to debate on 10/1. Under discussion is a possible (but not probable) Trump-Harris debate on 10/23. What can be said about the outcomes of these past and future debates?
Kamala Harris has challenged Donald Trump to a debate on 10/23, and Trump, as of this writing, has declined. Based on the outcome of the first debate, both candidates are acting rationally.
By most accounts, Harris won the first debate—NOT because she offered superior public policy options with candor and clarity, but because she played Donald Trump more skillfully than Van Cliburn ever played the piano. First, she apparently caught Trump off guard by offering him a handshake in much the same way Ronald Reagan ambushed Jimmy Carter at the beginning of their 1980 debate. Then, with all the skill of a medieval bear baiter, she provoked Trump into silly tirades about her race, their respective crowd sizes, the 2020 election outcome, and cat-eating Haitians. And all the while she nimbly avoided any substantial discussion either of her own unworkable policies or of the unpopular Biden-Harris record.
What Harris understood—and Trump evidently didn’t—is that a real debate over inflation, the economy, or the border is one she wouldn’t be able to win. After all, polls still show that the public trusts Trump more than Harris on these issues. So she chose to divert Trump’s attention—as well as the public’s—from these issues by playing to his vanities and prejudices. Those who want Harris to win would be perfectly justified in saying, “Well played, Kamala. Well played.”
So shouldn’t Trump jump at the chance for a second debate and a second chance to play to his strengths—public trust in handling economic and border policies—and therefore Harris’s weaknesses?
If Trump could develop the self-discipline to present a sustained, substantive, organized critique of the Biden-Harris record, especially emphasizing that 70% of the public consider the Biden-Harris economy to be fair or poor, while only 29% rate it excellent or good, then Trump’s best course of action would be to leap at the chance to give Harris a good pasting. But that’s a big “If.” To date, Trump has shown no desire or ability to make his campaign any more than a pity-party or therapy session. Given his record of going down rabbit holes rather than focusing on Harris’s policy-related weaknesses, he’s probably right to avoid any further traps she’ll no doubt lay. His best course of action now is a sustained media campaign highlighting the many policy-related weaknesses of Harris and hope it works.
But there’s the upcoming Vance-Walz face off. How will that unfold? Of course, we’ll really have to wait and see, but a few predictions suggest themselves.
Walz, like Harris, will probably want to forego any sustained discussion of the Biden-Harris administration’s policies, other than abortion, one of the few policies on which the public clearly trusts Harris more than Biden (and therefore one of the few policy areas Harris is willing to discuss). But Walz may well choose to attack Vance’s preoccupations with the childless in general, and “childless cat-ladies” in particular. And Vance’s (and Trump’s) attacks on Haitians may earn particular attention—as they should. Trump and Vance, through their recklessness with the truth, have endangered a community that is politically weak and defenseless enough as it is. Vance can best help his ticket if he offers a sincere apology and retraction for his Haitian-related remarks, and then offer the sort of economic analysis of the Biden-Harris record which Trump can’t make and which Harris and Walz probably can’t answer effectively.
This dreary campaign has entered its final stretch. To date, Trump has the better issues, but Harris has the better tactics. What each candidate has done, and will do in the campaign’s final weeks, will help shape the strategies and tactics of those planning a White House run in 2028—a campaign for which plans no doubt are already being made, and coverage of which will begin a day after Election Day, 2024.
Malcolm L. Cross has lived in Stephenville since 1987 and taught politics and government at Tarleton for 36 years, retiring in 2023. His political and civic activities include service on the Stephenville City Council (2000-2014) and on the Erath County Republican Executive Committee (1990-2024). He was Mayor pro-tem of Stephenville from 2008 to 2014. He has served on the Board of Directors of the Stephenville
Economic Development Authority since 2018 and as chair of the Erath County Appraisal District’s Appraisal Review Board since 2015. He is also a member of the Stephenville Rotary Club, the Board of Vestry of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, and the Executive Committee of the Boy Scouts’ Pecan Valley District. Views expressed in this column are his and do not reflect those of The Flash as a whole.
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