On the Harris-Trump Debate – by Natalia Marques

The second presidential debate between the nominees of the two major parties in the US ended late last night, with many, even key supporters and sympathizers of Donald Trump, conceding a victory to Harris. Even Elon Musk, who interviewed Trump a few weeks ago and 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 made this assessment is telling. The final post-debate poll also shows Harris winning this debate, in stark contrast to Biden’s horrible performance in july he actually got thrown out of the race by his own party. In a CNN flash poll63% of debate viewers said Harris outperformed Trump. This could be decisive for Harris in terms of securing victory, as polls just before the debate showed her almost tied up with Trump.

Major topics of discussion were immigration, cost of living and foreign policy, which of course also included US policy towards Russia and China. On these points both candidates tried to position themselves as the most conservative on both issues.

Both candidates have failed working people

During the debate, Trump failed to effectively attack Harris on a very fundamental point: Harris is the vice president of a sitting administration, and under that administration, material conditions for working people remain extremely poor. The U.S. Census Household Pulse Survey consistently shows that the vast majority of people have struggled to pay for their usual household expenses in the past seven days. Prices for basic products like eggs are shot up under Biden’s administration. Tens of millions of peopleincluding almost five million childrenhave been withdrawn from public health care because additional public services offered as a result of the COVID-19 emergency have been rolled back.

It certainly doesn’t help that Trump himself doesn’t have a good program for working people. After all, Trump is a former president and his administration oversaw one of the largest wealth transfers (2 trillion dollars) from the working class to the ultra-rich in the form of Trump’s infamous tax cuts. Trump’s administration also oversaw the dramatic mismanagement of the COVID crisis, resulting in the US having the highest recorded death toll from the disease in the world, as well as the brutal state repression of the mass movement against police brutality in 2020. Without a clear plan to improve people’s lives, conservatives like Trump have turned to fear-mongering about immigration and crime to sell their political platform.

Who is the strictest on asylum seekers?

The debate was marked by extreme racist and xenophobic comments against immigrants that have recently been circulating in right-wing media. A day before the debate, Trump’s Vice President J.D. Vance said disseminated debunked claims about Haitian migrants eating people’s pets in Springfield, Ohio. The claims were quickly disproved refutedby Springfield city officials. During the debate, Trump stumbled through a litany of this racist mythology, proclaiming that, “In Springfield, they eat the dogs. The people that come in. They eat the cats. They eat—they eat the pets of the people that live there.” Trump also reiterated debunked claims about Venezuelan gangs taking over apartment complexes in the city of Aurora, and says, “Look at Aurora, Colorado. They’re taking over cities. They’re taking over buildings.”

While Harris avoided Trump’s racist, unsubstantiated claims about migrants, he appeared to try to outdo Trump’s conservatism rather than present a platform that defends the human rights of migrants.

Neither candidate mentioned that many who come to the US do so in response to the US’s own economic, social and political destabilization of their home countries, as is the case with the extreme US sanctions against Venezuela or a continued policy of the U.S. invasion, occupation and exploitation of Haiti. But Harris’ first official points on immigration were to boast that she is in fact tougher on migrants than Trump, claiming, “I am the only person on this stage who has prosecuted transnational criminal organizations for trafficking weapons, drugs and people.”

“The United States Congress, including some of the most conservative members of the United States Senate, came up with a border security bill that I supported,” she continued. “And that bill would have put 1,500 more border agents on the border to help the people who are working there now do their jobs. It would have allowed us to stem the flow of fentanyl coming into the United States.” She then blamed Trump for killing this so-called “border security” bill, which she had previously scooped up was supported by the US Border Patrol itself, an agency responsible for imposing abuse and terror on migrants seeking asylum.

“Weakness” of foreign policy

On foreign policy, the bickering between the two candidates was largely the same: a battle over who was more conservative. “She hates Israel!” Trump claimed of Harris, saying that “she didn’t even want to meet Netanyahu when he went to Congress to give a very important speech.”

Harris, for her part, continued to reiterate that she would always protect Israel’s “right to defend itself,” even after 11 months of genocide against Palestinians in Gaza, in which Israeli forces slaughtered more than 40,000 people. “The one thing I will always assure you is that I will always give Israel the ability to defend itself, particularly with respect to Iran and any threat that Iran and its proxies pose to Israel,” Harris said, without saying anything about determining the billions of dollars the US is sending to aid Israel, even as Israel remains the biggest obstacle to ceasefire negotiations.

Much of the same back-and-forth was played out over US policy toward Russia and China, with both candidates claiming the other was “weak” in the face of US adversaries. Trump insisted the war in Ukraine would never have happened if he had been president, while Harris claimed that Trump said of Putin that “he can do whatever he wants and go into Ukraine.”

No plan to stop climate change

On the environmental front, Harris appears to have completely abandoned her previous stance against the extremely environmentally damaging practice of fracking under pressure from conservatives. She stated, “I will not ban fracking. I did not ban fracking as vice president of the United States. And I was actually the deciding vote for the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened up new leases for fracking.” This did not stop Trump from repeating the accusation that Harris opposes fracking, which conservatives support because of claims that it would boost the American natural gas industry. Completely absent from the debate was any discussion of how either candidate would attempt to end the life-threatening crisis of climate change, beyond Harris’ promotion of a vague idea of ​​”clean energy.”

Harris’ campaign is likely to get a big boost from this debate, but it probably won’t stop her from increasingly playing to the most right-wing rhetoric in politics while doing little to address the major crises facing working people while she’s vice president.