The Republican candidate took the unusual step of appearing after the debate in the press room, where he assured that he had won “by a lot”, but even his staunchest supporters conceded defeat. “Let’s be clear. Trump has had a bad night – said analyst Brit Hume on Fox News shortly after the televised duel -. We’ve only heard the old grievances that we all know are not winners.”
The face-off started with an awkward handshake, but soon the awkwardness was only on one side of the set at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia: Trump’s. Over the course of 90 minutes, the vice president not only cornered a television animal like Trump, but also paid for the bad drink that the Democrats experienced after Joe Biden was left like a frail old man during the CNN debate.
The solidity of the Democrat, who knew how to control the initial nerves visible in her voice, has positioned her as the winner of the debate. The subsequent poll published by CNN indicated that 63% of viewers considered that the vice president had won, compared to 37% favorable to Trump. Harris managed, therefore, to fulfill the first goal of the night. But it wasn’t the only thing he had.
Although a defeat would have burst the bubble of Democratic euphoria, Harris’s biggest challenge was defining himself to voters tuning into the campaign for the first time. The vice president did not allow Trump to manage to define her with his adjectives, such as “communist”, but she also did not take advantage of the space to specify her proposals. Harris has 55 days to convince voters that his mandate will not be a repeat of Biden’s.
“I’m the only person who really has a plan,” Harris said, aware that the contrast with the previous debate between Biden and Trump is so stark that he could afford to talk about a “plan” without going further to show- se as the order candidate. However, the first reactions of the viewers of the debate seem to go the other way. While CNN’s post-debate poll shows voters came away with an improved view of Harris compared to before the debate, few changed their opinion of Trump. And this Democrat improvement did not translate into key issues like the economy and the border.
After the debate, Trump has maintained a 20-point lead over Harris on managing the economy, 55% to 35%, a slightly wider margin than before the debate. The economy will be a key issue on Nov. 5, and it appears to be becoming the elephant in the room for Democrats. A survey published last week by New York Times highlighted that there were still 18% of voters in the hinge states who had not decided their vote and that the main issue that worried them was inflation.
Economic proposals
The vice president’s team is aware of this and has been quick to focus some of its campaign promises on economic issues. Some measures that try to show the population that Harris is listening to complaints about inflation and the increase in the price of the shopping cart. The debate on the ABC News channel was a golden opportunity to present new proposals or specify those already presented. But it didn’t happen, and that seems to have created some frustration among undecided voters, whom Harris does want to reach. After the debate some of these voters expressed al New York Times who felt that the vice president had not finished answering their questions.
Harris, who continued to choose to remain in the abstraction of hope, did take the opportunity to consolidate the new perspective with which the Democrats want to present Trump since the Chicago convention: the idea is to portray- him as an egomaniac who only thinks about himself. In less than 30 seconds, Harris erased him under that label and hurt him where it hurts the most: rally attendance. The Republican, used to being the political star for whom his supporters line up rain or snow, takes Harris’s summoning ability very seriously. The jab was so accurate that Trump fell right into the trap, offended: “People don’t leave (my rallies). My rallies… We have the biggest, most incredible rallies in history of politics”.
The mogul ended up derailing with one of the biggest falsehoods of the night: he claimed that migrants eat the pets of Ohio citizens. “The people who enter our country are eating the dogs, the cats, the pets. This is happening in our country, it’s a shame.” The debate moderators had to step in to correct it. It wasn’t the first or the last time, unlike what happened at the CNN debate with Biden.
“The best debate ever”
Although after the debate Trump proclaimed that it had been his “best debate ever”, the faces of his team did not say the same. After a month of nervousness and disorientation within the party, it remains to be seen how he digests his candidate’s performance. It’s also not a surprise, coming from someone who is still proclaiming himself the winner of the 2020 election. It’s also another example that Trump is confident that it will be enough with the support of his own in such a contested election and in which the configuration of the electoral college tends to favor the Republican candidate. It is what happened in 2016: Hillary Clinton defeated him in the electoral debate and won the popular vote at the polls, but Trump ended up being president.
