The night that everyone has been anticipating has come to pass: the dreaded debate between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.
This election cycle has contained more twists than an M. Night Shyamalan movie. While no one was excited at the prospect of another Biden administration, the Democratic Party pushed him forward nonetheless, resulting in a catastrophic debate. Biden did the only logical thing and stepped away from the race, going on to endorse Harris as the Democratic nominee. At the very least, this would save the progressive party further embarrassment, and give them a candidate who could clear the very low bar of debating Trump. This decision was ultimately rewarded when the new debate rolled around.
Who won the debate?
As to be expected, the debate had all the topics of contention between the two parties. Immigration, abortion, and January 6 were all on the docket. The debate opened with a softball, as the moderator asked if both candidates felt that the economy was in a better place than it was four years ago. As typical with politicians, neither candidate answered the question. Harris instead talked about how she would handle the economy while Trump instead opted to talk about immigration. Despite this setback, a winner soon emerged and it began with Harris’ strongest policy, reproductive rights. After Trump claimed that everyone wanted to gut Roe V. Wade, Harris set him straight.
“You want to talk about this is what people wanted? Pregnant women, who want to carry a pregnancy to term, suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because her health care providers are afraid they might go to jail and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot? She didn’t want that.”
That was one of the most efficient ways to take Trump to task and many experts agreed. Jon Stewart continues to be the shining light in this darkness we call American politics and he put it expertly on his debate round-up for The Daily Show.
“Holy s****, she crushed that.”
Meanwhile, Trump did not help himself when he later went off the rails on immigration and the attempted insurrection. Trump gains grounds with his supporters by fear-mongering with details that are unequivocally false. He failed the debate when he made several wild claims that the moderator refused to let stand. One of his more wild allegations was the Haitian immigrants in Springfield, OH, were abducting and eating dogs. As the moderator pointed out there was no evidence of this.
“ABC News did reach out to the city manager there, he told us there had been no credible reports of specific claims of pets being harmed, injured, or abused, by individuals within the immigrant community.”
Trump immediately doubled down on the statement, insisting that he saw it on television. That crystallizes the issue of conservatives as eloquent as anything can. There is a consistent belief that because something is on television, that automatically makes it true. This is how so many false claims can circulate with such intense belief. Trump further dug himself into a grave when the subject of January 6 came up. Insisting that he had no part in riling up conservatives to invade the Capital is a false narrative that has documented evidence against it. By the end of the debate, the tables turned for the Democrats, showing Trump as an angry and argumentative candidate amid his 2020 election lies.
Even though Harris was the obvious winner, it is unlikely that this will turn the tide for the election. Most polling reports the fight between the two parties to be razor thin and no one will be able to predict the outcome until November.