The Debate

The Debate

By

Leonard Zwelling

I am not going to assess who won the debate in Philadelphia last Tuesday. I am not even sure what winning means. I certainly cannot guess how the debate will affect voters. Here is what I saw:

Ms. Harris started on the right foot by going over to the former President and introducing herself. Good for her.

She had her talking points ready and a plan. She was going to bait Mr. Trump into making foolish, lying statements. She achieved her goal when she got him to claim that immigrants in Springfield, Ohio were absconding with house pets and eating them.

She also constantly got him to perseverate on immigration when that was not the topic at hand.

Both candidates avoided answering questions they didn’t want to answer. Why has Ms. Harris had so many changes of policy and surely, as in Mr. Trump’s closing remarks, why hadn’t she done all this great stuff while she was in office?

By contrast, Mr. Trump too had four years in office. Why did he not secure the border?

Ms. Harris never threw President Biden under the bus, though she could have. She remained calm no matter how riled Mr. Trump got or what names he called her.

I think the real question is muddied by the four P’s of Washington, DC:

Policy

Process

Politics

Personality

In ascending order of importance.

Some people tuned in to assess Ms. Harris in these categories, particularly her policies. Because she is smart, rather than concentrate on the least important of these-policy-she tried to sell herself as competent, polished, smart, and commanding. She focused on personality and how hers contrasted with Mr. Trump’s.

I thought he came off as the old man on whose lawn your ball rolled who was yelling at you to get off. He was at times incoherent, and simply baffling as he was with the cats and dogs for dinner story.

It was only in his closing remarks that he struck the chord he should have been harping on all night. Basically, she’s had three and a half years to do something, why hasn’t she?

Now, I do have a scientific study with an N of 1 to report on. A conservative friend wrote me that he can no longer vote for Trump after the debate and what is he going to do? I told him to vote for Harris as she is the bridge to sanity in the GOP as her victory would free the Republicans from the MAGA nonsense and allow their great candidates to run in 2028.

I’m not sure anyone learned all that much at the debate other than that Ms. Harris had a plan and executed it to perfection. Mr. Trump had no plan and was all over the place.

It also must be said that the moderators were biased. They fact checked Mr. Trump, but not Ms. Harris. That was wrong on their parts.

Should another debate take place, I think it should be sponsored by Fox where the moderators will fact check Harris as the ABC moderators fact checked Trump. By the way, that’s not their job. They are there to ask questions and keep order, not determine who is telling the truth. That’s for the people to decide. It appears though that Mr. Trump is through debating.

As I said, I am not sure that anyone’s mind changed. However, over 300,000 people registered to vote via Taylor Swift’s web site after she endorsed Ms. Harris. Now that’s real political power.

In summary, America has a tough choice. Will the country go with him because it perceives the economy was stronger when he was in office or will the country gamble on a younger woman who is a largely unknown entity?

Only time will tell.