I Watched the U.S. Presidential Debate So That You Wouldn't Have To

Opinion editorial.

A chronological breakdown of today’s debate

The debate in Philaedelphia opened with, perhaps, the greatest item on Americans’ minds: the post-COVID economy and plans for recovery. While Harris evaded the opening question regarding the state of the economy the past four years, Trump instead shifts focus to the role that illegal immigration plays in not only compromising national security, but the livelihoods of everyday Americans as well, pointing to illegal immigration and the Biden-Harris Administration’s failure to sufficiently manage border control as a root cause for layoffs, inflation, and housing crises. Moderators, at this juncture, seem partial in their tone and instructions, instructing that Trump moves on from what they portrayed as a rambling digression and ‘back to what we’re discussing right now… we’ll get to immigration later’ — despite Trump’s evident delineation of immigration as a sub-point under his remarks about the economy.

Harris pointed to Trump’s handling of COVID as a signal of his weak position on the international stage, an argument she would frequently return to later in describing his relationship with world leaders Putin and Zelensky, as well as his negotiations with the Taliban. Throughout the debate, it is notable that Harris balances undermining Trump’s credibility with pushing her own rhetoric and ‘look-to-the-future’ campaign values, while Trump seemingly adopted a strategy more geared towards tearing down the Biden-Harris administration for all its shortfalls the past four years.

Moderators Muir and Davis then shifted the focus onto reproductive rights — questioning Trump’s seemingly back-and-forth stance even in his home state, Florida, where six-week abortion is currently being considered for repeal with a ballot measure seeking to overturn the state’s abortion ban. Harris remains staunch in her pro-choice stance, stating that neither Donald Trump nor the government has the right to ‘tell a woman what to do with her own body’. Interestingly, one of Harris’ techniques today has been to make sweeping statements conflating Trump’s campaign with broader conservative ideology — first adamantly insisting that Project 2025 was Trump’s project, then also lashing out at Trump’s pro-life rhetoric as not uplifting ‘victims of incest…’, when Trump had previously given public statements supporting exceptions to abortion rules, specifically including cases of incest.

In response to Harris’ allegations about the extreme rhetoric expressed in Project 2025, Trump responded that he ‘has not read the document, and… does not want to read it’, once again distancing himself from what Democratic speakers and media have tried time and again to tie to Trump as a weight to sink his presidency bid.

“President Trump supports exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother,” campaign spokesman Steven Cheung said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Such strawman attacks were more so anticipated to be coming from Trump, especially regarding Harris’ history of ‘wokeness’ in her work as a public prosecutor. Those lines of argument were noticeably absent from today’s debate, with Trump choosing to focus on attacking Biden’s character and family — bringing up Hunter Biden — and straying away from discussing Harris’ background entirely.

On the contrary, it was Harris herself who never failed to remind viewers of her childhood being raised by a single-parent household, careening into a discussion about her avid avowal of support for small businesses because of a family friend who had helped raised her throughout her childhood when asked about whether the economy was indeed performing worse than it had been four years ago.

Harris played an interesting angle tonight, treading carefully between strengthening her Democratic supporter base — which admittedly has not been the strongest — and winning over swing electorates and moderate Republicans. When discussing gun control, she said: ‘nobody is trying to take your guns away’, a clear bid to reach out to Republicans and Moderates who think she is too liberal.

When discussing foreign policy, a central tenet of the nation’s aspirations granted the increasing geopolitical volatility breaking out globally, three key conflicts were discussed: Ukraine, Gaza, and — ever-so-briefly — Afghanistan. Trump rehashed his stance towards Ukraine as much of ‘getting the war over and done with as soon as we can’, seeking to broker a peace deal to reduce the loss of lives. He made a promise to end the conflict within 24 hours of becoming president-elect, even before he steps into office, citing the Biden-Harris administration’s ineffectiveness and failure to cultivate good relationships with key players such as Putin as a cause of the lack of successful peacemaking. Harris, however, points to Trump’s priorities as what she describes to be a clear deviation from American ideals, stating that Trump would end the conflict by ‘giving up’. It is interesting to observe Harris’ bold narrative of upholding Ukraine’s democratic sovereignty, seemingly at all costs, when American forces had just pulled out of what most consider to be a never-ending war of losses in Afghanistan just weeks prior.

On Afghanistan itself, the Republicans seemed to have failed at landing blows as hard as they had intended: the GOP had been attempting in recent weeks to draw public attention to the end of the war in Afghanistan as a foreign policy debacle to haunt Biden to the end of his term, and Harris throughout her campaign. Over the weekend, the Republican-led House Foreign Affairs Committee released a lengthy report about the withdrawal from Afghanistan, laying the blame for all of the bad that happened at Biden’s feet — and by extension, at Harris'. Democrats responded, called it partisan. It is difficult to say that the report, the product of a two year investigation, has had the impact that Republicans hoped it would. Both nationally and in the debate tonight, the issue of Afghanistan, and America’s messy withdrawal, seemed to have been washed over as other international crises such as Gaza and Ukraine rose to the forefront.

Moving on to healthcare, the debate exposed what some may consider one of the greatest failures of Trump’s first terms: the promise yet lack of delivery on a healthcare system better than Obamacare. While Harris hammered in her support for the incumbent arrangement with policies designed to build off the Affordable Care Act, Trump vowed to only overturn Obamacare if his administration could put a better system in place. When pressed for details of his new healthcare plans, he was only able to give broad outlines of efforts to work towards such a plan, offering no concrete details on what the plan entailed. This is likely to work against his credibility, as voters tuning in to the debate had hopes of hearing the candidates elaborate upon electoral promises with greater transparency and detail. While Trump made a salvaging return in attacking Harris’ lacklustre attitude in improving private health insurance, the moderators, once again, forcibly moved on to the next topic.

On climate change, a topic core to the concerns of most young voters, the debate was rushed and perfunctory, barely acknowledgements of the issues with no in-depth explanation of how each candidate planned to tackle climate issues faced by Americans and people worldwide. It is also noteworthy that both candidates talked about increasing U.S. production of fossil fuels — which are the primary drivers of climate change. Headlines rolling out concurrent to the debate’s progress include: ‘In a first, Phoenix hits 100 straight days of 100-degree heat’ and ‘You just lived through the most humid summer on record’. A more rigorous plan from both candidates focusing on reducing tangible climate impacts rather than solely discussing the potential benefits of various energy options, or going on a back-and-forth on whether Kamala Harris supports fracking, would be useful in garnering greater support from the younger electorate.

Concluding remarks

Finally, a note on the differing styles of the two candidates’ argumentation: while Harris constantly sought to appeal to authority, citing expert support for her economic plans from professors from leading national institutions such as the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School and defense analysts’ backing of her security and border plans, Trump has not mentioned his endorsements from Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard. While Trump’s well-maintained composure throughout today’s debate and refusal to engage with accusations of prior comments made about Harris’ racial profile lend him a significant advantage, other aspects of Trump’s debate strategy are questionable.

“You haven’t done it, and you won’t do it,” he says. “I just ask one simple question: Why didn’t she do it?” he says.

Trump’s final statement was not about him or what he would do. It was all about tearing Harris down — or rather, tearing her down in a Biden-esque fashion. Trump had repeatedly brought the conversation back to Biden, who is no longer on the ballot. He has complained to advisers repeatedly in recent weeks that it was unfair he beat Biden so badly in the debate, that Biden dropped out, and now he has to face Harris. What was clear was that today, he was using some of the attacks he would have used against Biden.

‘You are Biden’, Trump states in a repeated bid to link Harris to Biden throughout the debate.

Trump’s focus on critiquing Harris’ plans and capacity to carry them out, largely based on her failures in her past four years as Vice President, could be an erroneous move playing straight into her narrative of there being two visions for America: one looking towards the past, and one looking towards the future. The outcome may swing in Trump’s favour, however, ultimately hingeing upon whether Americans believe in Harris’ dream, or lack so much faith in her abilities that the contents of her dream fail to be relevant at all.

In response to Harris’ statement pointing out that Trump’s plans fell short as compared to her own, which enjoyed support from professors at Wharton,

Trump replies: ‘I graduated from Wharton’.