Kamala Harris won huge plaudits for her debate performance last night although she avoided answering many of the direct questions and gave no indication how she would address the two most pressing issues of the day, climate change and economic inequality.
The New York Times (“Harris dominates,”) The Washington Post (“resounding win“), The UK Guardian (“Republicans dismayed“)and all of the talking heads on TV—including some folks on Fox News—agreed that Harris won the debate and that Trump’s performance was somewhere between dismal and embarrassing.
Harris did accomplish a key task: She looked in command, competent, and presidential. Trump looked as bad as he ever has in this type of setting.
Most polls showed overwhelmingly positive response by voters including swing voters.
Harris put Trump way on the defensive on abortion rights, which will be a key issue in November.
But Harris largely avoided climate issues, saying that she won’t ban fracking but offering few real alternatives. And nobody asked, and nobody talked about the vast economic inequality that has deeply damaged millions of Americans—including many who voted for Trump in 2016.
I get that progressive voters in California, New York, Oregon Washington, and Massachusetts don’t matter. Those states are going for Harris no matter what.
I get that western Pennsylvania is a key swing area, and a lot of the economy depends on oil and gas.
But voters in Wisconsin, Ohio, Minnesota, Florida, Georgia, and Pennsylvania are worried about the cost of living, the cost of housing, the cost of education, the cost of health care … and they could be key to the election.
The inflation rate is coming down, and Biden and Harris can claim some victory on that, but there’s still a lot of anger and resentment about people who lack a college degree and can barely make ends meet.
Offering them a $25,000 down payment on a house may sound good, but in most of the country, that’s 10 percent of a $250,000 house, and there aren’t that many houses that cheap, and you still have to qualify for and pay a mortgage.
You want those swing voters, it seems to me you have to talk about some of the issues Sen. Bernie Sanders talked about when he won some of those states in the Democratic primaries.
And if Harris gets into office and does nothing about economic inequality, she’s going to be a one-term president—and more important, the nation is going to more divided, and the economy will become less and less stable.
And if she does nothing serious about climate change, fires and heatwaves will continue killing people, and crops will fail, and the globe will hurtle even faster toward catastrophe.
Other than that, she did grand in the debate.
