The lack of interviews throughout the presidential campaign appears to have been a strategy by Kamala Harris to gain time to prepare for the debate with Donald Trump, on Tuesday night (10), on ABC News. While the Democrat and her vice president, Tim Walz, gave only seven interviews, Trump and JD Vance exposed themselves 44 times to journalists in the context of the elections.
Vance even criticized Harris for avoiding the press. Biden’s surrogate in the election race has yet to hold a formal press conference with journalists, opting instead for quick, short meetings and private interviews with reporters on her campaign plane.
Despite the time she has been preparing for a confrontation, Harris has failed to clarify to American voters her commitments on key issues such as the economy, immigration and ongoing wars. According to the newspaper New York TimesHarris spent almost half of her speech attacking her political opponent, without delving deeply into her political agenda.
Much of the press attributed a victory to Harris, while members of the Republican Party criticized the debate moderators for alleged bias towards the former president, one of the reasons why Trump said on Wednesday (11) that he was “less willing” to participate in a new clash before the elections, scheduled to take place in less than two months.
Economy
The issue considered most relevant to American voters is the economy, according to electoral polls released to date.
One of the surveys, carried out by the broadcaster CBSshowed that eight in 10 adults consider the economy an important factor in their choice at the polls, surpassing other important issues such as abortion and climate change.
In this regard, Harris did not spend much time presenting her agenda, only touching the surface of what she intends to do: cut taxes, help the middle and working classes, and build more affordable housing.
“We know that we have a shortage of housing and housing, and the cost of housing is too high for people. We know that young families need support to raise their children, […] I intend to extend a tax cut for these families of $6,000, which is the largest child tax credit we’ve given in a long time. […]”, he stated.
To offset this tax cut for a portion of the population, however, she said she will raise corporate taxes.
Harris also avoided answering whether Americans’ financial lives are better under the Biden administration.
Within the theme, Trump took advantage of his time to attack the economic policies defended by Harris, saying that she does not have a real plan for the country and that she only copied President Biden’s ideas.
“She doesn’t have a plan. She copied Biden’s plan, and it’s like four sentences that say, ‘Oh, we’re going to try to cut taxes.’ That’s not a plan,” Trump quipped.
Over the weekend, a survey of the New York Times with the Siena College revealed that 60% of likely voters in the US (where voting is not mandatory) said they believed the country was headed in the wrong direction and did not know enough about Harris’s stance on key issues. One of them is the economy.
Migration crisis
Immigration is another fundamental issue that has affected the lives of Americans, becoming a point to be taken into account when choosing a candidate for president.
“[Biden e Harris] allowed the entry of millions of criminals, drug traffickers, who are now in the United States. […] Crime is falling in Venezuela and in other countries. Do you know why? Because the criminals left there and came to our country. This is one of the biggest mistakes in history, this permission, and they did it thinking they would win votes. […] are destroying the fabric that builds our society,” Trump criticized.
Kamala Harris, who is responsible for immigration policies in the Biden administration – whom Trump calls the “Border Czar” for this reason – did not present proposals for the problem, but preferred to criticize her opponent. According to the Democrat, Trump is responsible for intervening to nullify a bipartisan project aimed at combating chaos on the southern border. “Donald Trump picked up the phone, called his congressional friends and said: ‘don’t vote for this bill, kill this bill’, because he preferred to push this problem forward rather than end it.”
Among the points addressed in the bill are permanent restrictions on asylum and authorization for the country’s president to order the immediate deportation of foreigners when the border suffers from a record number of illegal crossings.
However, during the campaign, the candidate expressed support for a plan to grant citizenship to undocumented immigrants in the country.
The Democrat has tried to distance herself from a more progressive agenda on this issue, unlike what she defended in the 2020 elections. At the time, she promoted agendas favorable to illegal immigrants who cross the border, such as the possibility of decriminalizing irregular entry into the country and reforming the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Service (ICE).
Foreign policy
When it came to foreign policy, especially the ongoing wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, both candidates resorted to personal attacks. Trump claimed that if elected, Harris could make Israel cease to exist within two years. The Democrat admitted that “Israel has the right to defend itself,” but added that “too many innocent Palestinians have been killed.”
The candidate pledged to a two-state solution in the Middle East and to support Ukraine against the long-running Russian invasion. However, she did not elaborate on how she intends to achieve this goal. “What we know is that this war [em Gaza] must end. It must end immediately […] We will continue to work tirelessly on this,” Harris said.
The vice president also spent her time on this topic attacking her opponent, stating that, if it were up to former president Donald Trump, Russian dictator Vladimir Putin would have already taken over the capital of Ukraine.
“If Donald Trump were president, Putin would be in Kiev right now,” she said in response to questions about the war in Ukraine. The Democrat added that Putin’s “agenda is not limited to Ukraine” and that if it were up to Trump, Putin would also be “looking at the rest of Europe, starting with Poland.”
Kamala Harris’ argument was aimed directly at Polish-American voters, who are particularly concerned about the war in Ukraine and who have significant weight in the state of Pennsylvania, where the debate was held and which is one of those that could decide the election because it does not have a clear preference for one of the two major American parties.
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