She Came, She Saw, She Conquered!

'The consensus was that the debate was between looking backward and looking forward.'

'Trump, with his great enamourment of his own 'achievements,' was obviously looking backward, while Harris, nearly 20 years his junior, was focussing on the future, with hope,' notes Shreekant Sambrani.

She came (late into the 2024 American presidential contest).

She saw (Joe Biden out of the race).

She conquered (Donald J Trump in the first presidential debate between them).

But Vice-President Kamala Harris is not the American Caesar, not yet anyway. Given what we saw, we shouldn't be surprised if she is, come November 5.

Since the first John F Kennedy-Richard M Nixon debates in 1960, these rites of passage in American politics have evolved into elaborately staged exercises, where major candidates undergo extensive preparation, including mock drills.

They are subject to explicit rules which are meant to ensure that no candidate gains an unfair advantage our of the conduct of the debate.

These rules have gradually become more stringent. For example, Trump moved around his opponent Hilary Clinton in the 2016 debates, often getting behind her, which seemed rather unsettling.

This time around, except for the initial handshake, Harris and Trump remained behind their respective lecterns.

The time they were allowed to speak was also subject to strict limits and the mikes of the non-speakers were muted so as to allow no untoward interruptions.

The exact questions are not communicated in advance, but the broad agenda is not a secret, since the media and the candidates have long engaged in discussions of what are considered to be the major issues in the election.

For the September 10 debate, the state of the economy, especially as it affected the average American family, abortion rights, immigrants, current conflicts in the Middle East and Ukraine and the past in Afghanistan (and the role of the United States in them) and climate change were broadly expected to be the issues.

The debate began with Harris being asked what changes she saw in the US economy now as compared to four years ago.

After a terse statement about how the Democrats had inherited a bad economy in 2021, she embarked upon a narration of elements of her economic policy -- encouraging families to buy houses with a mortgage subsidy, increase in child allowance and incentives for small businesses.

My first reaction was that she missed an opportunity to highlight the economic achievements of the last four years, but soon realised that she was following a well-thought-out strategy in not doing so.

Whatever the government data may show, inflation is very much a problem American households face.

Grocery and fuel costs are higher now than ever before. So Harris did well to tiptoe around the price situation and highlighted instead what she would do to help improve the economy further, which also gave her a chance to attack Trump who planned to reduce taxes on upper income families -- 'his billionaire friends'.

More importantly, throughout the debate, Harris adopted a stance which allowed her in effect to have her cake and eat it, too.

So she could claim credit for the Biden administration achievements by using the first person plural 'we', and distance herself when needed, as she told Trump, 'You are running against me, not Joe Biden.'

Likewise, she never made an issue of her gender and race identity.

Trump was probably told not to refer to these, which wise advice he (fortunately for him) followed.

Had he not done so, Harris would have made a grand reassertion that she represented all Americans, regardless of gender, race or religion.

Yet there was no mistaking her strong allusion to American sisterhood on the abortion issue.

Similarly, only a totally insensitive listener would not have heard echoes of Martin Luther King's 'I have a dream', when she repeatedly used, 'I have a plan', while elaborating her economic agenda.

In effect, Harris made herself the challenger and reduced Trump to being the incumbent, although he ceased being that four years ago.

He was on the defensive throughout about what he had done in his time in office.

He tried feebly to point a finger at Harris by asking her why she didn't do anything during the last three-and-a-half years about the problems she had enumerated.

She simply ignored that, as also the barb that Biden was either holidaying on California beaches or in deep sleep (implying that Harris was in reality running the government).

Trump made two enormous faux pas; first, he referred to states that permit abortions allowed them until the ninth month of pregnancy, and even after child-birth, meaning infanticide.

That was simply not true; no state allows such gruesome acts. Harris's facial revulsion was eloquent enough to need no verbal riposte.

Trump's reference to illegal immigrants in Ohio stealing pets in the neighbourhood to eat them was equally cringeworthy.

That lead balloon was first floated by his running mate Senator J D Vance of Ohio with no factual basis whatsoever.

Trump added cats to Vance's mention of dogs, another self-inflicted would, because that immediately reminded the audience of Vance's categorisation of Harris as a childless cat woman (the pop idol Taylor Swift endorsed Harris immediately after the debate, with a picture of hers and her cat Benjamin Button, signed Taylor Swift, childless cat lady).

This business of immigrants eating pets has not so subtle overtones of racism -- illegal immigrants are people of colour who kidnap the good pets of solid middle class American (read white) families.

Talk about landing one-two punches on yourself!

Harris was in her full prosecutorial form all the time.

She went at Trump on almost all of his record as president (she never referred to him as Mr President, a common courtesy Americans observe while addressing even their former presidents) and now as a candidate for that office again.

She talked of his efforts to undo the affordable health care act while he was in office, reducing him to mumbling that he had to either let it rot or 'do something to improve it.'

He claimed that he had a concept of a plan (not a whole plan, please note) but failed to mention anything further.

She also talked about the birther controversy, where for long years, Trump had doubted that Barack Obama was an American by birth.

The only time Trump had an edge was when he referred to the hasty retreat of American forces from Afghanistan, leaving behind 'beautiful' equipment worth $85 billion.

Harris had tried to draw first blood by mentioning that Trump had invited the Taliban leadership to meet with him at Camp David, the presidential retreat to which she alluded in reverential terms.

But one must chalk this up to Trump, if only because it was one of the very rare moments he seemed to prevail in the 90-minute long debate.

Trump, as is his wont, tried to flaunt his achievements.

He said he was an alumnus of the prestigious Wharton School and many of its professors thought that his economic plan was 'brilliant', without naming a single academic.

He also said that had he been in office, Russia would never have dared attack Ukraine and that the Middle Esat situation would not have gone out of control.

He said many world leaders held this view, but named only Viktor Orban of Hungary, not exactly a paragon of democracy or a world leader of any standing.

It is generally believed, for very good reasons, that when Trump is attacked, his support gets further consolidated.

But the Harris camp believed that no matter what they do, they would not be able to dent the die-hard Trump base which fervently believes that he will Make America Great Again.

They targetted, rightly it seems to me, that large swathe of the electorate which is still undecided.

Attacking Trump strongly by highlighting his many flaws, especially his tall claims, would be of some value and would cause no incremental harm to the Harris cause.

Two sidelights of the debate might be of some tangential interest.

Trump said that he had no role to play in the January 6 insurrection; he was merely invited to speak to a group of protesters.

Harris admitted to being a long-time owner of a handgun, for "personal protection."

Trust American media to be fact-conscious. Every television channel and newspaper worth the name had armies of checkers for all the mentions the candidates made.

CNN came up with 33 errors by Trump and one by Harris. She said Trump had left the economy with the worst rate of unemployment 'since the great depression'.

The 6-plus per cent unemployment at the end of 2020 was merely the highest in that decade and in some significant part caused by the pandemic.

I also noted that she said they had created 'over 800,000 new jobs', when the actual number, much in the headlines these days, is under 793,000. But that's mere quibbling.

The consensus was that the debate was between looking backward and looking forward.

Trump, with his great enamourment of his own 'achievements,' was obviously looking backward, while Harris, nearly 20 years his junior, was focussing on the future, with hope.

So the debate, which the punditry had expected to be an even battle, ended up being a lop-sided victory for Harris.

The CNN poll had her winning it by a margin of 63 per cent to 37 per cent for Trump.

It is an ironic coincidence that this is the exact reversal of the outcome of the earlier debate between Trump and Biden, when Trump was the victor according to 63 per cent of those polled.

But this does not put Harris in the White House or even make her a strong favourite to win the November election.

The next seven weeks will be marked by a strong, no-holds-barred campaign.

Analysts also always expect an 'October surprise'.

Remember, Hilary Clinton had won all the three debates in 2016, was ahead by nearly 6 percentage points in polls going into the election week and yet she lost.

My late brother-in-law (my sister-in-law's husband) was a very well-educated and respected engineer and administrator. He was also a staunch believer in astrology and had studied it in detail.

When he read what I had written about Kamala Harris after she became Joe Biden's vice-presidential candidate, he called me to say that Harris would be president one day.

I asked him whether it would be because Biden, given his age, would not last his full term.

My brother-in-law's instant response was that "No, she will be president in her own right."

Would these be prophetic last words, I wonder!

Feature Presentation: Aslam Hunani/Rediff.com