Harris’s media technique, which isn’t to do a lot media, was backfiring. If she possessed such prosecutorial prowess, reporters legitimately requested, then why was she being shielded from the press? Forward of the controversy, as The New York Instances/Siena Faculty ballot revealed, greater than 1 / 4 of doubtless voters felt they didn’t know sufficient about her.
Her encounter with Trump allayed a lot of these lingering considerations. Although she wasn’t completely convincing in early exchanges on the financial system, the paramount subject for voters, she was impassioned on abortion, her signature theme for the reason that Supreme Courtroom overturned Roe v Wade in 2022. It helped, too, that Trump spoke of “the genius of six Supreme Courtroom justices” who handed down the Dobbs ruling, which turned again the clock on reproductive rights to the early Nineteen Seventies. Like a lot of his utterances on debate evening – his extensively debunked riff about Haitian immigrants “consuming the canines” and “consuming the cats” in Springfield, Ohio, will take pleasure in an extended afterlife on YouTube – it can certainly hang-out him.
Debates aren’t solely received on the evening, however within the days afterwards as soundbites and screenshots harden into memes. Harris, suffice to say, is crushing it on social media. The web, the place feline movies have at all times been king, is now raining cats and canines.
Since 2015, I’ve watched each minute of each debate that Trump has participated in, from these early encounters with “Low Vitality” Jeb Bush and “Little Marco” Rubio, to his showdowns with Hillary Clinton and Biden. No person has outwitted him fairly so skilfully, or acquired underneath his pores and skin fairly so effortlessly, as Harris. Baiting him on how MAGA rally-goers usually head for the exits earlier than Trump has completed talking was a masterstroke. Her “Hannibal Lecter” jibe – buying and selling on Trump’s compulsion to say the fictional, cannibalistic serial killer – was one other winner. Certainly, as cable commentators on CNN and MSNBC lined as much as say how she had served up Trump’s derrière on a platter, Staff Harris could possibly be forgiven for toasting her success with an iced chianti.
Definitely, her command efficiency arrested an emergent media narrative that she is a word-mangler, unable to convey a transparent and cut-through message.
Loading
But in a rustic as chronically divided as America, every thing turns into a Rorschach check. Thus, its purple and blue bastions will have a look at the identical debate however see wholly various things. The previous president’s wistfulness concerning the pre-COVID financial system, with its low-cost gasoline and low rates of interest, could have resonated with voters fighting the price of residing. The mockery of Trump at all times revs up his base. The condescension of America’s media elites, which fuels a way of shared victimhood, has lengthy served as a bonding mechanism with the MAGA brethren. Unsurprisingly, then, right-wing blowhards on Fox Information instantly bemoaned media bias, and attacked the ABC Information anchors, who moderated the controversy, for fact-checking Trump in actual time. It was three in opposition to one, they cried.
Debate winners, additionally it is value noting, don’t at all times find yourself as election winners. Simply ask Mitt Romney, who dominated Barack Obama of their first encounter in 2012. Or Clinton, who in 2016 racked up a trifecta of victories in opposition to Trump.
Given how methodically Harris executed her sport plan, it was noteworthy that she selected to spell out her opponent’s lengthy historical past of racism, as if litigating a case in court docket. Trump is polling unexpectedly properly with Black males, historically a loyal Democratic constituency, and Harris desires to win them again. But emphasising race – one thing she has to date downplayed, as Obama did in 2008 – runs the danger of enjoying into her opponent’s fingers.
Loading
For the reason that late Sixties, all of the profitable Republican presidential candidates have performed the race card for the duration of their campaigns, usually from the underside of the pack. Over the many years, Richard Nixon’s “southern technique”, geared toward exploiting white racial anxiousness, got here to be nationalised, after which Trumpified. Whether or not it was Ronald Reagan championing “states rights”, a canine whistle to white southern voters, or George Herbert Walker Bush benefiting from the infamous Willie Horton advert which drew on Black prison stereotypes, the fissile politics of race helped Republicans win all however one presidential election between 1968 and 1992.
Right here there’s a key distinction between America’s first Black president and Harris. When Obama made historical past in 2008, and received once more in 2012, he was up in opposition to two honourable Republicans, John McCain and Romney, respectively, who refused to resort to race-baiting. Harris is up in opposition to probably the most outstanding determine within the birther motion, who rejected the very legitimacy of Obama’s presidency and who has already questioned Harris’ racial id.
Loading
Seldom, if ever, has a marketing campaign had so many narrative switchbacks. It was solely 9 weeks in the past, bear in mind, that Trump survived an assassination try, which made him look invincible. In a race that appears headed for a photo-finish, anomalies additionally abound. Cheneys are voting Democrat. Essentially the most well-known scion of the Kennedy dynasty is backing Trump.
It was John F. Kennedy, the primary ever winner of a presidential debate, who spoke of the torch being handed to a brand new technology. This week, Kamala Harris, in her climactic showdown with Donald Trump, used it like a cudgel.
Nick Bryant, a former BBC Washington correspondent, is the creator of The Eternally Conflict: America’s Endless Battle with Itself.
Get a weekly wrap of views that can problem, champion and inform your personal. Join our Opinion publication.