Who will benefit from the TV debate: Kamala Harris or Donald Trump? Expert and columnist James Warren Davis analyzes the complex situation in advance.
Hardly anyone can analyze the USA, its politics and the upcoming presidential election better than he can: the American political scientist James W. Davis. He is a proven expert in US politics and international relations and has been teaching in German-speaking countries for decades. He regularly writes for IPPEN.MEDIA about the situation in the USA and the upcoming presidential election.
Ten weeks. That’s how long it’s been since the first presidential debate of this election cycle. For most of us, it feels more like ten months. Never before has a presidential debate been so momentous. Biden’s disastrous performance on June 27 set in motion a chain of events that would normally have taken years.
It usually takes a candidate for the highest office in the land years to plan a campaign, raise funds, build a staff and a national organization, win the party primaries, and finally run against the other party’s nominee. But as I suggested in those heartbreaking days in late June and early July, the Democrats were shaken out of their lethargy and embarked on a complicated choreography that led to the replacement of the front-runner and the nomination of a previously unknown but obviously talented and popular Midwestern governor as the vice presidential candidate.
Harris and Walz change the situation before the US election: The Democrats dream of victory – not only over Trump
Where the Democrats were previously despondent, they are now full of energy. After an electrifying party convention, the Harris-Walz campaign broke fundraising records, raising $361 million in August, three times the amount raised Donald Trump and his candidate JD Vance Young people are mobilized to a degree not seen since the first Obama campaign.
The nation’s largest youth mobilization organization, NextGen America, reports a 200 percent increase in volunteer signups since Vice President Harris was named the Democratic nominee. And where Biden trailed for months in both national polls and polls in key states, Harris now leads nationally and is trending positively in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania.
All of this is good news for Democrats, who now dream not only of winning the White House, but also of defending their razor-thin majority in the Senate and regaining control of the House of Representatives. If they can gain control of the executive and legislative branches, they might be able to make further progress in rebuilding the middle class, decarbonizing the economy, and controlling the decisions of what many consider to be the radically conservative Supreme Court. Or so they hope.
Trump is conducting an “erratic election campaign” – but he cannot be written off
But we’ve been here before! As we prepare for this Tuesday (September 10)’s second presidential debate – the first between Harris and Trump – it’s worth remembering where we were at this stage of the election in 2016.
On the eve of the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, Clinton was about 2 percentage points ahead of Trump in the national polls, with 45.9 percent to 43.8 percent. Today, according to the polling platform “538,” Harris is 3 percent ahead of Trump, 47.3 to 44.2.
It’s hard to believe, but after four years of a chaotic Trump presidency and an increasingly erratic campaign this summer, Trump continues to have a firm grip on his base. The Democrats have the energy and momentum on their side, but it would be foolish to write off Donald Trump.
► James W. Davis, US-American, is one of the most renowned experts on US politics and international relations.
► He studied International Relations at Michigan State University, received his doctorate in political science from Columbia University in 1995 and completed his habilitation at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munichwhere he taught until 2005.
► Since 2005 he has been Professor of International Relations and Director of the Institute of Political Science at the University of St. Gallen.
►Davis is the author of several books and has received numerous scientific awardsincluding visiting professorships and fellowships at renowned institutions.
To win this election, Kamala Harris still has to convince the roughly 15 percent of voters who have not yet decided who they will vote for. Certainly most have formed an opinion about Trump. But many who dislike him as a person tell pollsters that they might still vote for him if they believe he would be able to improve their personal standard of living sooner.
Harris has advantages in wrestling with Trump that Hillary Clinton lacked
The economy remains the most important issue for the American electorate. But Harris goes into the debate with numerous advantages that Hillary Clinton lacked. Firstly, she was able to analyze how Trump performed in the debates with Clinton and later Joe Biden.
She knows his playbook and will be ready to respond. As a former prosecutor and senator, Harris is a practiced rhetorician. She also has an issue where Trump is easily vulnerable and where she can go on the offensive. After all, it was the three Supreme Court justices appointed by Trump who voted to overturn a previous precedent that had guaranteed women a constitutional right to abortion.
Polls show that access to abortion is the second most important issue for most voters. In the lead-up to the debate, Trump has made some strategic mistakes that will help Harris. First, he has repeatedly told audiences across the country that the vice president is not very smart and that she cannot answer difficult questions.
Trump changes course on abortion issue – an opportunity for Kamala Harris?
In doing so, he has set the bar pretty low for her. Anyone who remembers Harris’ performance in the 2020 primaries or in the Senate knows that she will far exceed them. By changing his own position on crucial issues in recent days, such as whether or not there should be a national ban on all abortions, Trump has lost a line of attack against Harris.
Many Republicans accuse her of quickly changing long-held positions just to increase her chances of winning. If he attacks her now for that, for example because she changed her position on fracking, she will embarrass him with a question about whether victims of rape or incest should be forced to carry a resulting pregnancy to term.
Because even though Trump is trying to soften his position on the issue, his base is demanding that he stay hard line. Add to these specific advantages the fact that Trump is often dishonest and rambling, and too often focuses on his personal grievances rather than policy positions, and you have to conclude that Harris will win the debate on points. But the bigger question is whether she will win the visuals.
Harris must not appear “threateningly” intelligent in the TV debate
After all, we live in the age of TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and X. Just as memes of Joe Biden seemingly walking the wrong way at the G-7 summit contributed to the image of a confused old man that was then confirmed for many on June 27, images of Harris’ campaign appearance are repeatedly cut up, edited, and posted by her supporters and opponents alike.
With undecided voters still trying to form an opinion about her, Harris’ performance will be more scrutinized than Donald Trump’s.
For a woman, the challenge of a presidential debate is not just knowing the facts and capitalizing on your opponent’s weaknesses. It’s an unfair fact, but a woman who comes across as too strong is often criticized as “shrill” or “worse.”
So Harris has to appear confident, friendly, intelligent, but not threatening to the many men and women who will recognize that Harris is not only more educated, but obviously more intelligent than they are. I think Harris and her staff have thought about all of this. So I think she goes into the debate with a chance of a big win. But yes, she can also lose.
#Kamala #Harris #great #chance #debate #Trump #avoid #danger
