“The disaster of asset“. “Trump’s biggest problem… was Trump.” “Trump’s missed opportunity.” “A disastrous debate for Trump.” “Trump lets Harris off the hook.” “There was a clear winner in the debate, but the election is not decided.”
All the above mentioned headlines correspond to conservative media. And there doesn’t seem to be much doubt: it was Kamala Harris who beat Donald Trump in the presidential debate held Tuesday night in Philadelphia. And not for a performance star of the vice president – she is not a particularly brilliant speaker and she has avoided questions that were not appropriate for her to address – but because of Trump’s irregularity and anger. A version of the former president who, as the magazine announces PolicyHarris was desperate to bring it out.
Hence the trolling—claiming that people are abandoning his rallies because they are boring—the disqualifications as “weak” and the rags like the one he put in front of him when he said he was the laughing stock of other world leaders. Instead of avoiding the pitfalls and focusing on all the uncomfortable questions that could have been thrown at Harris, the Republican Party candidate He chose to defend his ego while disqualifying his rival again.
“It was a disaster for him, far worse than his campaign could have imagined,” he wrote a few hours later in The Wall Street Journalthe conservative consultant Karl Rove.
“It seems clear that on Tuesday night, Vice President Kamala Harris won what may be the only debate between her and former President Trump,” he said. Douglas SchoenFox News commentator shortly after the event and before attacking ABC News moderators for acting with favoritism, an accusation that spread among some conservatives after the debate and that Trump himself endorsed by saying it was three to one.
Nevertheless Jim Geraghtycolumnist for conservative magazine National Reviewdownplayed the accusations, saying that yes, it was clear the moderators didn’t like the former president, but that ultimately “What Trump had to do was go out there and present his best version”. On the contrary, “he threw a tantrum at us, taking the bait that Harris threw at him again and again.”
However, beating Trump in the rhetorical duel in Philadelphia does not imply having gained a substantial advantage in the polls.
The crux of the problem lies in the voter the candidates are addressing in this type of debate: the voter who has not yet decided how to vote. He may have sympathy, sure, but he still does not see it clearly. In other words: Trump and Harris were not addressing those who attended their rallies on Tuesday, but rather the skeptical citizens who, according to most polls, will play a central role in deciding who will occupy the White House for the next four years.
The question is, then, how did this specific type of voter perceive what they saw on television?
“It was very disappointing.” The sentence corresponds to Sharon Reeda 77-year-old retired teacher who watched the debate with her husband Bob from the Pennsylvania farm where they live. As reporters from New York Times who knocked on their door, hoped to end the evening knowing who to vote for. Nothing could be further from the truth. More precisely, they were looking for answers to their economic woes. What they found, however, were slogans, promises, a broad plan and very little in the way of a program.
A mother of three teenagers named Shavanaka Kelly He commented from Milwaukee that Harris had been a much better president than Trump. He was turned off by the former president, he said, because he put himself forward during the infamous attack on the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. The problem, he said, is that Harris has done little to explain why her term will be different from Trump’s. Joe Biden. And it is assumed, based on her statements, that Kelly will not opt for her until she does.
The university student Samira Ali She said, speaking from Wisconsin, that she turned off the television with as much hesitation as she had at the start of the debate. He was not impressed at all by Harris, he added, because he failed to address one of his main concerns: how he intends to regulate housing prices.
These are three examples among thousands that reflect what the entire world saw on Tuesday’s already historic night. Harris won against an angry and unbold TrumpYes, but that doesn’t mean he’s convinced who he needs to convince to become the most powerful person in the world.
