Main Edition
US
FR
September 11, 2024 - 1:00pm
Heading into the first — and possibly only — debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump, polls showed a stubbornly close contest. Though Harris gained back much of the ground that President Joe Biden had lost among core Democratic constituencies, she and Trump continue to split an all-important group: independent voters, who are likely to decide this year’s election. Recent polling averages find Harris leading with them by just 1.7 points.
Part of the problem for the Vice President is that many voters perceive her to be too liberal for their liking, no doubt a product of the myriad Left-wing positions she adopted during her 2020 presidential campaign. New polling from the New York Times found that while half of all voters thought Trump was “not too far” to the Left or Right, just 41% said the same about Harris. Meanwhile, a plurality — 44% — believed Harris is too liberal compared to just one-third who said Trump was too conservative.
Throughout yesterday evening, Harris worked to soften this image, which started with the economy. She touted her tie-breaking votes in the Senate to allow Medicare to negotiate the price of prescription drugs and to cap the cost of insulin for seniors, as well as her endorsement from the United Auto Workers. Harris also used these examples to set up a contrast with Trump, whom she painted as a man of the elites by attacking the tax cuts he passed during his first term that disproportionately favoured the wealthy and corporations. In doing this, she worked to disabuse Americans of the idea that Trump is an economic populist and to speak to working-class voters’ biggest concerns.
Immigration was also a big topic during the debate. For most of this year, voters have identified the issue as a top problem facing the country, and according to the Times poll they trust Trump over Harris to handle it by a 10-point margin. Here, Harris knocked Trump off his game, leading to a bizarre moment when he pushed debunked claims about migrants killing people’s pets to eat them — a talking point unlikely to register with “normie” voters. It also allowed her to sidestep more uncomfortable questions about her past support for decriminalising border crossings.
Of course, one of the biggest questions coming out of the debate is whether these rhetorical appeals to the centre of the electorate will make a difference during the campaign. While it will take time to capture any movement in the polls, one of Harris’s clearest vulnerabilities continues to be the credible charge that she has flip-flopped on several issues, and thus many voters find it hard to believe what she says. The answer her campaign appears to have landed on — that her “values” have never changed, a claim she repeated in the debate — may not be all that assuring to some. Then again, most politicians, including Trump himself, shift positions throughout their careers, especially when confronted with the reality that one or more of their views are not popular.
Harris seems to understand that running to the Left, as she did in 2019, is a losing proposition in a general election. If voters believe her pivots to be sincere, she may very well receive a boost from the debate. But if not, it will be a sign that too many voters still aren’t convinced, and it will leave her with a lot of work to do to change that reality in an increasingly short amount of time.
Join the discussion
Join like minded readers that support our journalism by becoming a paid subscriber
To join the discussion in the comments, become a paid subscriber.
Join like minded readers that support our journalism, read unlimited articles and enjoy other subscriber-only benefits.
SubscribeBiden campaigned on being a moderate, the adult in the room. Why anyone would believe Harris being a centrist is beyond me.
The people who hate Trump do not care which way or even if Kamala pivots.
Keir Starmer was elected with a landslide despite his extreme left opinions and track record of support for all kinds of violent antidemocratic movements. Why wouldn’t Harris enjoy the same outcome?
A landslide victory based on getting roughly a third of the actual votes (34.6
%) on a 60% turnout. That means only 1 out of 5 people eligible to vote actually voted for Labour. Not exactly a resounding endorsement of their manifesto let alone the stuff which they’re now saying they intend to do which wasn’t in the manifesto (winter fuel payment taken away from 10 million pensioners being just the start.)
I’m not sure that it would be possible for any US presidential candidate to get elected on similar numbers even with their electoral college system.
Starmer had the advantage of being light-years less Left Wing than Corbyn, which enabled him to look like a centrist.
Starmer
had the advantage of beingpretended to be light-years less Left Wing than Corbyn.Starmer is a convinced Trotskyist for whom it is a perfectly acceptable tactic to masquerade as a social democrat in order to achieve power.
There’s a 50-50 chance she will.
You have an odd definition of a “landslide”…
Which “extreme left” opinions? But if Starmer has extreme left opinions, so does much of the British public. Of course it may well be at the British public is deluded on some at least of the economic left-wing ideas, but then again we are a democracy, albeit an imperfect one. (And of course we might have to factor in the fact that you consider any opinion left wing of yours as extreme left!)
I think as many of the comments indicate on this forum, the right wing is just absolutely all over the place in its response to progressivism, and just ends up sounding completely deranged much of the time. Doesn’t Trump, for example, think of pausing for a second before referring about that pet eating meme? But it’s not just him: people high on the adrenaline of political conflict but with zero strategy.
Not much pausing and reflection going on I’m afraid…. And so the progressives and hyper liberals continue their dominance.
If Harris had been up against a competent opponent, she would have struggled. But she was up against an angry old man with a taste for conspiracy theories. Eating pets? Infanticide? I mean, really?
All she had to do was come across as a normal human being. In that at least, she succeeded.
You should actually do some research before dismissing apparently outrageous claims out of hand because those so called outrageous claims turn out to be true. (Indeed, in the US it is very likely that the more outrageous the claim to our English sensibilities, the more likely it is to be true). The Federalist, for example, has just posted Police audio indicating residents directly complaining and seeing Haitians kill and carry gease and ducks away to eat (with their necks broken). Not hard to believe given the mores in Haiti, and really not hard to imagine them going after cats and dogs. When people have no money for food and are desperate they will eat pets, as would you. All the easier to do, when said pets are considered food in many countries in the world, including China and no doubt Haiti. As for infanticide, perhaps read the law that Walz, Harris’ VP nominee, signed into law: if a baby survives a botched abortion there is no requirement anymore that anything be done to save the child and in Minnesota they are just left to die. Is that common. Of course not, but it has occurred and not been prosecuted, and is indeed legal under current Minnesota state law. Interestingly the democrats tried to pass a similar law in Maryland recently. So when you say “really?” just bear in mind that a lot of outrageous stuff can happen in the US (as I’ve learnt having spent the last 35 years there – very different from London where I grew up).
Perhaps very telling with regard to the abortion question is that Harris refused to answer whether she would allow abortions (except under exceptional circumstances such as the life of the mother) at 7, 8 or 9 months. That should tell you exactly how extreme Harris is on this matter. Recall that in the UK the upper limit for an abortion is currently 24 weeks as it is in the Netherlands, and these are the longest in Europe. The limits in France, Germany, Belgium, Austria and Italy are 14, 12, 12, 13 and 12 which from Harris’ perspective would obviously be considered very illiberal and unconscionable, yet all the countries listed are pretty liberal as far as most things go.
There is a world of difference between eating “gease” and ducks, and eating cats and dogs.
Precisely.
I am not saying Harris is a great or strong candidate. Trump, though, reminded me of Senator Iselin, from the film “The Manchurian Candidate”. He was the ‘anticommunist’ booby who was being manipulated by his Russian spy wife.
I won’t try to justify Trump’s pet comments, but is there really a difference. Is there a difference for Haitians, who have grown up in the most deprived country in the western hemisphere?
Within the context of this situation, there is exactly zero difference.
Not if they are your domesticated ducks and geese.
There was a very good chinese takeaway near where I lived in the 70’s which was closed down and the owners prosecuted and, I believe, jailed for serving up those very animals in there meals. The fact that it was highly rated and very popular rather points to there not being a great deal of difference.
You don’t believe in late third trimester abortion of viable fetuses, some born alive? That shows how well the powerful abortion lobby owns the media. Have you not heard of partial birth abortion bans? That’s been an ethical issue for 35 years. Bill Clinton famously vetoed a partial birth abortion ban as President. Partial birth abortion is infanticide. In a D&E abortion, the baby is partially delivered. As the baby’s head emerge the birth canal the abortionist stabs into the baby’s neck with scissors and snips the spinal cord. The advantage to the abortionist is that with the baby in one piece, there is no risk that you leave baby parts in the womb. This contrasts with the abhorrent D&X abortion where the abortionist has to rip the babies limbs off while the living baby is still in the womb. Far more difficult to guarantee you get it all, but nonetheless a guarantee that the baby won’t be born alive- which is, after all the whole point of the procedure, to deliver death. Don’t let the mother realize that she killed her infant.
It’s amazing we still pretend to believe in this theatre
She’s lied to us for four years about Dementia Joe. Now she swears she’s telling the truth.
How many years does someone have to lie before before they are a liar ?
Sure, but politicians often “lie” in this sense: ie shift their position. In fact doesn’t some notion of democracy depend on politicians shifting their positions somewhat to mainstream public opinion? Trump also routinely lies and comes up with endless ludicrous comments. It’s unedifying but probably makes sense politically in consolidating one’s base in a polarised political climate.
A communist never changes their cackle.