Will the debate held last night in Philadelphia between the two really be able to change the electoral campaign? Donald Trump And Kamala Harris? We’ll have to see. Surely the Democratic candidate will now enjoy positive media attention for a few days following the endorsement she received from the singer Taylor Swift a few minutes after the conclusion of the televised debate. However, it is difficult to believe that this debate will be able to give a sensational twist to the electoral campaign. Of course, the CNN poll gives the clear winner as Harris (63% to 37%). However, on closer inspection, the situation is perhaps a little more complex.
The Democratic candidate’s strategy has mainly been to provoke her opponent to push him to over-the-top reactions. Trumpalthough he did not go into a rage, he got nervous more than once: a circumstance that did not help him. Harris however, she did not shine. Overall, she held her own, but at the same time she seemed very pre-arranged, often glossing over the questions that were most uncomfortable for her. Although she managed to irritate her opponent several times, she was not able to deliver the knockout blow that she needed last night, to relaunch an electoral campaign that, in the last two weeks, has begun to show clear signs of suffering.
More generally, Trump He has moved along three main lines of attack: he has criticized his opponent for not having adopted any of his current proposals during her term as vice president, he has painted her as a left-wing extremist and, above all, he has tried to tie her closely to the unpopular figure of Joe Biden. A strategy, this, which, at a certain point, clearly made the Harris. “It is important to remind the former president that he is not running against Joe Bidenbut against me,” she said. The vice president also found herself in greater difficulty on economic issues, to which she did not provide very concrete answers. And on foreign policy, especially regarding Gaza and Afghanistan, she also had to scramble for space.
There Harris she was instead decidedly more combative on abortion and the storming of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, attacking her opponent. The clash was then particularly heated on illegal immigration. Trump was criticized by moderators for claiming that illegal immigrants in Springfield would kidnap and eat pets. The Democratic candidate, for her part, basically glossed over the matter when asked about the task, which was entrusted to her by Biden in March 2021, to defuse the structural causes of migration flows, working diplomatically with the countries of Central America. A task that the interested party has not been able to complete, given that, with the Biden administration, a record number of irregular immigrants arrived at the southern border of the United States.
As mentioned, the next few days will see some media excitement mainly due to Swift’s endorsement. But last night’s debate is unlikely to substantially change the fundamental aspects of this electoral race. It is unlikely that the televised debate has changed the minds of those who do not trust the Harris on the economy and the Middle Eastern crisis. Just as it is unlikely that those who criticize will change their minds Trump on the termination of pregnancy. Structurally, however, the main weakness remains more linked to the Democratic candidate who, as vice president in office, objectively finds it difficult to distance herself from Biden and the administration of which it is part. For this reason, the Harrismuch more than Trumpneeded to clearly win the debate, not just tie it.
Finally, one must also be cautious when evaluating the endorsement of the Swift. American political history shows that celebrity support can be useful in terms of fundraising, but it is much less useful in terms of actually moving consensus. In 2016, Hillary Clinton had the support of a large part of the star system (starting from Beyonce) and we all know how it ended. By the way, in May a survey commissioned by Newsweek noted, yes, that an endorsement of the Swift would have prompted 18 percent of Americans to vote for its beneficiary. However, he also found that it would have prompted 15 percent of respondents to act against it.
