On the Harris-Trump Debate

Harris and Trump Fight Over Who Is the Most Conservative Candidate

Image credit: BBC

The second presidential debate between the nominees of the two major parties in the US concluded late last night, with many, even key supporters and sympathizers of Donald Trump, conceding a Harris victory. Even Elon Musk, who interviewed Trump a few weeks ago and has expressed support for many of his most extreme policies, wrote, “While I don’t think the debate hosts were fair to [Trump], [Harris] exceeded most people’s expectations tonight.”

The fact that even conservatives have made this assessment is significant. The latest post-debate polling also indicates that Harris won this debate, in stark contrast with Biden’s abysmal performance in July that essentially got him booted from the race by his own party. In a CNN flash poll, 63% of debate watchers said that Harris performed better than Trump. This could prove decisive for Harris in terms of securing victory, as polling just before the debate showed her virtually tied with Trump. 

Key areas of discussion included immigration, cost of living, and foreign policy, which of course included US policy regarding Russia and China. On these points, both candidates tried to position themselves as the most conservative on either issue.

Both candidates have failed working people

Throughout the debate, Trump failed to effectively attack Harris on an extremely basic point: Harris is the Vice President of a sitting administration, and under said administration, material conditions for working people remain extremely dire. The US Census’ Household Pulse Survey consistently indicates that the vast majority of people have difficulty paying for usual household expenses within the last seven days. Prices for staple groceries such as eggs have skyrocketed under Biden’s administration. Tens of millions of people, including nearly five million children, have been disenrolled from public healthcare benefits as the additional public services provided as a result of the COVID-19 emergency have been rolled back.

It certainly does not help that Trump himself does not have a good program for working people. Trump is, after all, a former president, and his administration oversaw one of the largest transfers of wealth (USD 2 trillion) from the working class to the ultra-wealthy in the form of Trump’s infamous tax cuts. Trump’s administration also oversaw the dramatic mismanagement of the COVID crisis which resulted in the US having the highest recorded deaths from the disease in the entire world, as well as the brutal state repression of the mass movement against police brutality in 2020. Without a clear plan on how to make people’s lives better, conservatives, such as Trump, turn to fear mongering about immigration and crime to sell their political platform.

Who is the toughest on asylum seekers?

The debate was marked by exceedingly racist and xenophobic remarks against migrants that have recently been making the rounds on right-wing media. A day before the debate, Trump’s Vice President JD Vance spread debunked claims about Haitian migrants eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. The claims were quickly refutedby Springfield city officials. During the debate, Trump stumbled through a litany of this racist mythology, exclaiming that “In Springfield, they’re eating the dogs. The people that came in. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live there.” Trump also repeated debunked claims about Venezuelan gangs taking over apartment complexes in the city of Aurora, stating, “You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings.”

Despite avoiding the racially charged, baseless claims parroted by Trump against migrants, Harris appeared to be trying to outcompete his conservatism rather than present a program that defends the human rights of migrants. 

Unmentioned by both candidates was the fact that many who come into the US do so in response to the economic, social, and political destabilization of their home countries by the US itself, such as the case of the extreme US sanctions against Venezuela or a continued policy of US invasion, occupation, and exploitation of Haiti. But Harris’ first official points on immigration were bragging that she is in fact tougher on migrants than Trump, claiming, “I’m the only person on this stage who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for the trafficking of guns, drugs, and human beings.”

“The United States Congress, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, came up with a border security bill which I supported,” she continued. “And that bill would have put 1,500 more border agents on the border to help those folks who are working there right now over time trying to do their job. It would have allowed us to stem the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States.” She goes on to blame Trump for killing this so-called “border security” bill, which she previously bragged was endorsed by US Border Patrol itself, an institution responsible for inflicting abuse and terror upon migrants seeking asylum. 

Foreign policy “weakness”

On foreign policy, the sparring between the two candidates was much of the same—a battle for who is more conservative. “She hates Israel!” Trump claimed about Harris, stating that “she wouldn’t even meet with Netanyahu when he went to Congress to make a very important speech.”

Harris, for her part, continued to repeat that she would always protect Israel’s “right to defend itself,” even after 11 months of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza which has seen Israeli forces massacre over 40,000 people. “The one thing I will assure you always, I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, in particular as it relates to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel,” Harris said, saying nothing about conditioning the billions of dollars that the US sends to aid Israel, even as Israel continues to be the chief obstacle to ceasefire negotiations.

Much of the same back and forth was had regarding US policies against Russia and China, with either candidate claiming that the other was “weak” on the US’s adversaries. Trump maintained that the war in Ukraine would never have happened if he was president, while Harris claimed that Trump said of Putin that “he can do whatever the hell he wants and go into Ukraine.”

No plan to end climate change

On the environment, it appears that under pressure from conservatives, Harris has now fully abandoned her previous position against the extremely environmentally damaging practice of fracking, stating, “I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as Vice President of the United States. And, in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking.” This did not stop Trump from repeating the accusation that Harris is against fracking, which conservative support due to claims that it would boost the US’s natural gas industry. Completely absent from the debate was a discussion on how either candidate would seek to end the life threatening crisis of climate change, beyond Harris’ promotion of a vague idea of “clean energy”.

Harris’ campaign is likely to receive a significant boost from this debate, but it is unlikely to stop her from increasingly pandering to the most right-wing rhetoric in politics while continuing to do little to address the major crises facing working people while she serves as Vice President.