Last night, it felt like the country went backward.
No, not because of Donald Trump’s erratic and meandering performance, though that will deservedly get most of the attention today. Trump gave a masterclass in how not to debate, carrying out missteps like he was systematically making his way through a list of them.
He wouldn’t give a straight “no” when asked if he would veto a national abortion ban. He brought up the bizarre and made-up right-wing rumor that Haitian migrants are eating people’s pets. He repeatedly attacked President Joe Biden, who is no longer in the race. He once more spent precious debate minutes defending his claim that the 2020 election was stolen. He did damage control over his comments questioning his opponent’s racial identity, only to immediately express doubts about her racial identity again.
It was clear Trump had soundly lost the debate by the sheer number of pro-Republican influencers who took to social media to whine about the debate moderating. What polling we have shows that the public agrees.
But we are used to this from Trump at this point. What made the night so dispiriting was that his opponent, Vice President Kamala Harris — the one who is meant to be the fresh, exciting face brimming with energy and new ideas, who would take the country into a new, more hopeful chapter — turned in the kind of substanceless performance that has characterized her campaign so far, seemingly deliberately designed to keep the country from knowing what she would actually do if she ever gets in the White House.
The debate confirms both Biden’s and now Harris’s overall rightward pivot is now firmly set in stone.
But is this really all that a post-Biden Democratic campaign was meant to accomplish?
To be clear, this may very well work for her. At heart, Harris had one job last night: to seem competent and normal, which she capably did.
Trump, by contrast, failed his baseline requirement of not coming off as…
La suite est à lire sur: jacobin.com
Auteur: Branko Marcetic
