How Harris gained much-needed momentum | CRONIN & LOEVY | Opinion

Last week, 67 million Americans watched a presidential campaign debate between former President Donald Trump and current Vice President Kamala Harris on ABC.

Trump spoke for about 43 minutes. Harris spoke for about 38 minutes. She was poised, confident and overall effective. He was dour, snarly and, as usual, full of over-the-top remarks.

Somehow she managed to distance herself from her previous image as a San Francisco liberal and portray herself, at least for a time, as a positive, moderate centrist. The moderators may have been a little too lenient with her.

Trump largely repeated his familiar themes: “America is in decline, immigrants are ruining our country, and the Biden-Harris administration is a disaster when it comes to border control and foreign policy.”

Trump’s strategy seems to be to scare people and convince them that he is the one who can save the nation from ruin, World War III and bloodshed.

Later, in typical Trump fashion, he said the debate had been rigged, the facts had been checked too thoroughly, and he even suggested that the questions had been sent to Harris in advance.

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One of Trump’s traveling companions came up with the crazy idea that she had a listening device in her earring that whispered answers to her.

Trump didn’t look like he was enjoying his time there. Harris smiled, exuded confidence and enjoyed the debate – even though she had to endure Trump’s insults and lies. Trump brags that he won the debate and that it was his best debate ever – and yet he says he doesn’t want a second debate with Harris. Enough with the prosecutors.

Both candidates avoided answering important policy questions. Both did their best to highlight the questionable policies or failed policies of the respective administration in the White House.

Debates in which a candidate has only a minute or two to present his economic and security positions leave much to be desired. Careful observation is inevitably sacrificed to defaming or at least questioning the character of the opponent.

Vice President Harris won this debate less on substance than because Trump came across as snappy, irritable, and too negative. He seemed hesitant to shake her hand when she offered it. He refused to look at the Vice President, which made him seem angry or contemptuous.

This was a big challenge for Harris. She had to present herself as confident, knowledgeable, tough and willing to distance herself from President Joe Biden and his administration.

She passed most of these tests and impressed many observers who concluded that she had the stature to be president.

She defended US aid to Ukraine in its conflict with Russia. She spoke out in favor of women’s reproductive freedoms. She defended Obamacare and presented new proposals to support small businesses.

Harris is benefiting from the fact that inflation is gradually declining and the unemployment rate is at an acceptable level. High inflation has been a good issue for Republicans, but it is less important today than it was six months ago.

Former President Trump’s most important issue is immigration. It has caused major problems, and Biden and Harris’ efforts to tackle the immigration problem have come too late and been weak.

Harris accuses Trump of undermining recent bipartisan efforts to address border control problems, when she should have been able to come up with new proposals and more compelling arguments about how her administration could make border control more effective.

Trump has been tough on immigration, but he has brought it up too often, raising immigration only when he was stuck on other issues.

Trump harmed himself when he continued to claim that he won the 2020 presidential election against Biden. He also repeated the false claim that he bore no responsibility for the horrific attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021.

Trump appeared weak when asked about Obamacare. He has spent years saying he is working to create a better health care system for America, but he has failed to deliver and has lost credibility on the issue.

Trump avoided the question of whether the Ukrainians should win their war against Russia. He only said he would end the war without saying how he would do it.

Both candidates were subjected to unjustified insults and innuendo about their personalities. It got ugly.

Trump called Harris the worst vice president in US history.

Harris, on the other hand, said that foreign leaders around the world were laughing at Trump. Both had sometimes made mistakes or been factually incorrect.

American voters deserve better answers to political questions than Harris and Trump have given. Candidates should be cautious about making claims about an opponent’s character flaws. Trump’s labeling of Kamala Harris as a Marxist was a low point. Trump’s baseless insults about Biden were tasteless.

Voters deserved more details on how the candidates would reduce the national debt and address the challenge of artificial intelligence (AI). We have heard almost nothing new about new national security strategies from either Harris or Trump.

Harris seemed to enjoy reminding viewers of all of Trump’s charges and convictions. Trump, as always, insisted that he was innocent and a victim of the Justice Department.

Trump triumphed in his debate against Biden in late June. In fact, he knocked Biden out of the race. He won that debate because Biden’s health problems highlighted his increasing ineffectiveness.

Harris won this debate because Trump damaged himself. He failed to prove that she could have achieved more in the last three and a half years as Vice President under Joe Biden.

More importantly, Trump seemed and sounded more negative than his opponent. He made virtually no new proposals. His defense of the tariffs was unconvincing. His claims that hungry immigrants would catch and eat American pet dogs and cats seemed odd.

Most observers and reliable polls believe Harris won that debate. However, experts point out that Mitt Romney beat Barack Obama in a presidential debate in 2012 – and Obama won the election. Hillary Clinton and John Kerry were other presidential candidates who won debates but lost the election.

Winning a presidential debate is no guarantee, but a good showing in a debate like the one we saw Tuesday night usually gives the winner at least a two-point lead in the national polls.

Harris needs this boost, and the timely support of famous singer-songwriter Taylor Swift, who has an even larger fan base than Kamala Harris, will help her in this.

Does celebrity endorsement matter? Not much. However, Harris has a bigger advantage in having Swift, Oprah Winfrey and Liz and Dick Cheney on her side than Trump, who has Hungarian dictator Victor Orban and Hulk Hogan on his side.

But there are still about 50 days until election day. In these 50 days, both candidates will be put to the test. The voters already know Trump, but Harris is just getting to know the country.

A large portion of the electorate wants to know more about her and what kind of leader she could be in the future. She has passed some early tests, such as winning the nomination and a debate. She will be tested and scrutinized a lot more in the weeks leading up to Election Day, and that’s how it should be.

Tom Cronin and Bob Loevy are political columnists who write about politics in Colorado and nationally.