Scott Gurvey's Public Offerings

I did not rush to write after the second debate of this presidential election season, the first between vice-president Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump. I, along with the majority of the debate watchers, was not going to change my voting plans as a result of the ninety-minute session. I tuned in for the spectacle. And, it appears, I had a lot of company. The debate drew an impressive audience of 67.1 million viewers. This was a big increase from the 51.3 million viewers for the first debate, the one between President Joe Biden and Trump.

Now that the ratings from the more reputable tracking polls I follow are in, I observe that the debate had little impact. The 2024 election is still too close to call. The candidates are tied in the swing states within the margins of error.

After the first debate, you may recall, there was a significant drop-off in support for Biden. That led to panic among the Democrats, and Biden’s decision to withdraw from the contest. Biden recommended his delegates cast their votes for Harris, and shortly after they did just that, making her the Democratic nominee. That had an immediate effect, erasing the Biden vote deficit and returning the contest to a neck-to-neck horse race. The change to Harris as the Democratic standard bearer also stimulated a large increase in donations from Democratic loyalists.

For many, Harris was an unknown. She had to introduce herself to voters, and she had to hold her own against Trump. The polls say her performance in the debate won her only a slight additional bump. On the other hand, she avoided the Biden disaster. Trumps level of support stayed the same.

That said, viewer evaluations of the candidate’s performance generally followed predictable lines. Harris critics complained she often failed to answer the questions asked and when she did, her answers lacked specifics. Her supporters applauded her for aggressively attacking Trump on his policies, his frequent lies, his job performance during his first term, and baiting him about his public statements and his personal legal problems. They also praised her ability to ignore Trump’s personal attacks, designed to put her on defense, and to use her time instead for offense.

Trump was the known commodity, and he did not disappoint. For his supporters, he was the aggressor, the stronger of the two, and he hit his opponent with a barrage of attacks which Harris could not answer. For his detractors, he followed his familiar pattern of lying repeatedly, calling Harris names and proving unable to resist her personal attacks, which clearly annoyed and distracted him.

Then there was Trump’s baseless racist swipe at Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. Trump claimed these immigrants steal cats and dogs and eat them. “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs, the people that came in,” Trump said, “They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live there. This is what’s happening in our country, and it’s a shame.” A city spokesperson said, “There have been no credible reports or specific claims of pets being harmed, injured or abused by individuals within the immigrant community.” The city has suffered from bomb treats as a result of Trump’s lies. It has been forced to close schools and other public institutions and expended a considerable amount of money to increase security and investigate threats.

Since the debate, Trump has doubled down on this nonsense. He has also reacted to his poor performance with a string of excuses. First it was because the moderators were unfair. Then it was because Harris, he claimed, had the questions in advance. Next, he argued that Harris’ pearl earring was a secret communications device. Finally, he decided to proclaim that he won the debate, and that “everybody says so.”

JD Vance, the Republican candidate for vice president, has repeated the nutty Ohio story. In the same breath, Vance admits the story is false and says he will continue to lie. That came during an appearance on CNN’s State of the Union, where Vance said he felt the need “to create stories so that the … media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people”. That partly explains Vance’s obsession with children. Making stuff up to gain attention is something kids do.

You can make this up. But no one would believe you.

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