Harris dealt with many of Trump’s lies and wild stories simply by assuming a posture or expression. It was quite effective.

Donald Trump whined that the debate was “stacked” and he and his supporters complained about him having been fact checked in real time. On the other side, Kamala Harris challenged him to a second debate. That must mean that in some way, both sides felt that Trump got the worse of the event. 

I, personally, found myself overwhelmed by the mountain of lies and hysteria that Trump heaps on his audiences. He spewed one lie after another. He made racist claims such as that Haitian immigrants are killing and eating neighbors’ cats and dogs. He showed his narcissism time and again. Trump’s performance called to mind a story a plumber I knew once told me: A work mate of his hadd taken apart a drain pipe in the basement of a high-rise apartment building in which he was working in San Francisco. Despite the warning to the tenants, one of them flushed their toilet and this plumber was covered with a load of untreated shit. That’s how I felt listening to and watching Trump. He leaves any thinking person numb. This works to his advantage as it’s difficult to keep track of all his lies and outrageous comments. It’s similar to the approach of Hitler’s propagandist Goebbels. Throw enough mud at the wall and some of it will stick.

From the moment she walked on stage, Harris took control of the optics. Here, she seized the initiative by striding over to Trump to shake his hand.

Trump’s approach works to his advantage with some. According to the NY Times, the “undecided” voters were not so sure who came out on top. In fact, Reuters reported  that in a sample survey of ten “undecided” voters, six said they were moving closer to voting for Trump after the debate.

First question
The debate started off with the question: “Are you better off today than you were four years ago?” That is the issue that is foremost in voters’ minds, and Harris was unable to satisfactorily answer it for two reasons. One is the fact that Harris had no real explanation of why most people are worse off economically. As Oaklandsocialist has explained “During the pandemic both production and the supply chains were severely restricted. However, the impact was cushioned by the fact that the government gave a total of $814 billion to households in covid relief money. Normally, much of such money would be spent on travel (meaning increased use of gas among other things), entertainment, etc. Once the severity of the pandemic ended, or seemed to end, the pent up demand increased. That was true globally. Biden added the $850 bn. Infrastructure Spending Act, of which$350 bn. has already been allotted to various states. So increased demand met constricted supply and every industry behaved as capitalism expects they would do: They raised prices. So far, US inflation is 2.9% this year. It is forecasted to be 5.9% globally.” In other words, in the modern era, capitalism has the choice between high unemployment of high inflation. Because she cannot explain this, Harris has no convincing answer to that question.

Also, this issue tends to overwhelm everything else because Harris did not clearly spell out what is at stake as far as “democracy”, what is happening around the world, or even climate change. She failed to make it sufficiently clear what Trump’s approach to these issues means for the lives of the overwhelming majority of people in the US. Of course, it says a lot about the consciousness in the United States when tens of millions of voters dismiss the significance of Trump’s plans to impose a one person dictatorship. 

Here are some examples of how Harris  countered Trump’s lies and propaganda:

Harris did not adequately emphasize the degree to which Trump is under Putin’s thumb.

Foreign policy
U.S. elections are very rarely decided by foreign policy issues, but Harris was on strong ground in this arena, including on the issue of Ukraine. She also talked forcefully about Trump’s chummy relationships with different dictators around the world, although she failed to mention Hungary’s Viktor Orban, whose support Trump bragged about. She got off a good zinger when she described how easily Trump is manipulated by flattery by various heads of state. “What is known as a dictator, who would eat you for lunch,” she said. Trump avoided answering whether he favors a Ukrainian victory in repelling Russia’s invasion. But how much will voters remember all of that? In addition, Biden’s delaying and delaying sending Ukraine all the weapon types it needs when it needs them and his imposition of constraints on their use has meant the invasion has dragged on and on with no end in sight. This has opened up the door to the feeling here at home that we should not be helping  Ukraine at all. (Jill Stein and Cornel West join Trump in playing on this view.)

Abortion
On the issue of abortion, Trump clearly was on the defensive. His fall-back position was to let the states decide. Harris attacked that position by explaining what the results have meant – a pregnant young woman bleeding in her car in a hospital parking lot, for example. But what is the origin of “let the states decide”? It’s the “states’ rights” argument of the defenders of segregation. It means that where it’s politically possible, let those states trample all over black people. Let them be denied the right to vote, denied access to public facilities, and even lynched. And it’s the same thing for Trump’s “let the states decide” argument. 

Democracy

The America First Policy Institute is leading the way in planning to overturn the election results if Trump doesn’t win. Those plans went unmentioned at the debate.

Harris raised the different generals who had been in Trump’s administration who are now condemning him. Trump countered that he’d fired them because they were incompetent. What Harris failed to explain was that, in fact, they’d been fired because they dared to disagree with Trump. What was the source of their disagreements? Number one was they disagreed with Trump wanting to in effect declare martial law. Former chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Mark Milley publicly opposed  this threat.

Harris failed to call upon the voters to use their imagination and envision what martial law means, with soldiers standing on street corners throughout the country, marching through every community. Is that really what people want?

January 6 and Trump’s plans to steal the election
Harris attacked Trump for his inaction in the crucial hours during which Trump’s mob had invaded the Capitol on January 6. In connection, she pointed out how his legal team’s attempts to get the results thrown out in courts had been rejected. What Harris failed to do was warn voters that Trump has spent the last four years refining and systematizing that plan, that he now has at least 70 election deniers on election commissions, that his stand-in in Texas, state attorney general Paxton has raided the homes of Latino election activists and in at least one case the home of a candidate for office… This and a lot more. Oaklandsocialist has documented  all of this.

Harris’s problem is that the Democrats’ plans to counter this are inadequate. Clarifying the extreme danger that Trump poses would alarm people and lead them to start to organize on their own.

Trump’s plan to deport 11 million people
It was similar with Trump’s stated intent to deport 11 million undocumented immigrants. Harris failed to call on viewers to envision what that would mean in practice – thousands of US troops sweeping through every working class community in the United States. Martial law in all but name only. Nor would it stop with sweeping up “illegal immigrants”. It would also mean suppressing all rights to “peaceful” assembly, the right to strike, etc. And as for the “illegal immigrants” – that would include tens of thousands who were brought here as babies and have no connection with their country of birth at all. Is all of  that really what people want? Again, explaining that would ring alarm bells too loudly.

Trump denies the fact of human/capitalist caused global warming. This issue should have gotten greater emphasis at the debate and for the last 30 years or more.

Climate change
On the issue of climate change, Harris attacked Trump’s claim that it’s a “hoax”, which he did not deny. The problem is Democrats’ decades of completely inadequate response to this actual threat to human society. It is only recently, for example, that the capitalist mass media has started explicitly linking up different weather disasters with climate change. It’s the same with the disastrous wildfires. And where this will lead in the future is only vaguely explained.

Israel/Palestine
It was similar regarding Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza and ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. Only the most general reference was made. Harris has a problem here: Americans have been subject to 75 years of propaganda about Israel being “the only democracy in the Mid East” and denialism of the fact that the “Jewish homeland” has meant ethnic cleansing and mass murder of Palestinians. That leaves millions of voters ignorant of what Israel really stands for. To explain what Israel is really doing today would run against the tide of tens of millions of voters. Also, it would have opened up the question “why should the US support Israel at all?”

How Harris handled time
Some might object that Harris simply didn’t have time to comment on all of these issues. That is true to an extent, but Trump was allowed to frequently interrupt the moderators, and Harris never really tried to do that. The result was that according to CNN, Trump spoke for nearly 43 minutes while Harris spoke for a little over 37 minutes.

Overall
Overall, the debate was a net positive for Harris, but because of the limitations imposed upon her by the fact that she’s a capitalist politician – one who must be dedicated to trying to preserve political stability in the United States – she did not deliver a knockout blow to Trump’s chances. The result is that the demented, fascist-connected Trump could still win or steal the election.

Taylor Swift’s support for Harris could be huge.

Maybe the biggest – and most influential – event of the evening was the endorsement of Harris by Taylor Swift. We must not underestimate that. Two years ago, a friend in Philadelphia reported to me that family members of his had decided to vote for Democrat John Fetterman, because OprahWinfrey supported him. That’s a statement on the sorry state of affairs in the mentality of most Americans, but it’s better than their supporting the fascist connected Republicans.

Harris dealt with many of Trump’s lies and wild stories simply by assuming a posture or expression. It was quite effecitve.