Three days ago, former President Trump and current Vice-President Harris met for a televised debate. The outcome was pretty much as I expected, yet oddly many who claim to speak as experts seem to miss what happened in the greater contest of the Presidential election. This essay is intended to discuss some of the popular myths going around, and to examine why things may be very different than you are hearing in the media.
First, it should be remembered that this debate was broadcast on ABC, the network currently most hostile to Trump, and run by moderators known to be spiteful against Trump. Trump understood that Harris would be proclaimed the winner no matter what actually happened. Second, Harris was trailing in the polls going into the debate, and the media had worked hard to set expectations so low that Harris could be said to have exceeded them after the debate.
It should also be understood that while Trump did not perform nearly as well as his supporters hoped, missing apparent opportunities to prove Harris a liar and completely lacking credibility, and also allowing his emotions to show at times, the damage was not nearly as bad as the media claims, and Harris made serious mistakes which I will address in a little while.
But I said I wanted to discuss myths, and some of these are silly but popular. First is the idea that polls represent some kind of scoreboard, that a poll tells you who is “winning” at that time. Elections depend on votes, and even the best poll is just a snapshot of the mood at that moment. This matters because going into the debate, a lot of media folks talked about the race being tied or very close, without really going into the nuts and bolts of support, issues and what voters have said about their choices. The media uses polls as if they are news, but that’s just not true.
Next, there is a lot of confusion about the purpose of a political debate. People confuse political debates with the academic sort, where rules are clear and evenly enforced, and the judges declare the winner. In politics, a debate may have heavy impact on an election, none at all, or anything in between. The reasons include how close the election was at the point of the debate, how well candidates performed, and – as we will see here – whether candidates understood the needs at hand.
Finally, a lot of people imagine that the apparent winner of a debate gains the most from that debate, but in reality things sometimes play out differently. A lot of people, including some academics, will claim John Kennedy beat Richard Nixon in their famous 1960 debate, but a lot of the press at the time said Nixon won. More recently, a lot of people forget that Al Gore actually did very well in his 2000 debates against GW Bush, because the media made a big deal about Gore’s stage makeup. The original Orange Man, if you think about it, but I digress. My point is that you need to understand the situational context of a debate, before applying results to the election in general.
So with all that in mind, let’s revisit the debate. Trump did lose his cool in a few places, which did some damage in terms of the debate, but he started nicely and had a solid, strong finish. Harris, for her part, completely refused to answer the first question and basically ducked anything on the Economy, Crime, or the Border. Also, the moderators from ABC were more than obviously biased against Trump. That little stunt of ‘fact-checking’ Trump seven times, but never Harris at all? Turns out focus groups of undecided voters noticed that, and they did not like it. It also turns out that voters pretty much already knew Trump’s positions on the major issues, so many viewers turned in to hear Harris explain her policies and defend her record, but were unhappy she provided no substance to speak of.
One highlight of the media vs. reality effect may be seen from CNN, of all places. CNN released a poll on Thursday, which claimed most of their viewers thought Harris won the debate, but on the key issue of who would be better handling the economy (the top issue in this election by far), Trump not only continued to lead Harris but expanded his lead to 20 points on that issue (Trump also leads Harris by 23 points on the issue of immigration). This means that while media helped Harris get the ‘zing’ effect she wanted from the debate, and she may see a temporary bump in the polling as a result, Harris failed to sell her policies and credibility to undecided voters, in fact falling behind on key issues which may well do serious damage to Harris in the actual vote. This result was echoed by a number of focus groups who watched the debate then offered their opinions.
Additionally, ABC’s blatant bias has already begun to show effects. Multiple sources, especially on Social Media, have challenged the bias shown by moderators, and there has been at least one direct accusation that ABC not only gave Harris advance ‘sample’ copies of the questions to be asked, but also assured her that none of her answers would be ‘fact-checked’. This accusation should be taken seriously, considering that debate moderators did the same thing for Hillary Clinton when she debated Trump in 2016. However that scandal plays out, there is substantial reason to believe Harris will not gain any advantage in the election from her debate performance.
