Debate Night

~ Laura

Tonight is the Harris/Trump debate. We’re looking a nearly tied race and Harris hasn’t been very visible. Debates usually have no impact on elections, but will this one matter? Are you watching tonight?

Published by Laura

9 thoughts on “Debate Night”

  1. Why do you say Harris hasn’t been very visible? She’s been campaigning hard just one state over from you. I agree it’s tough to get attention in the press because Trump seems to say something odd every day and get coverage, little of which seems to match the press’ obsessive focus on Biden’s age before he dropped out. One would expect some of the same attention given to the former president’s age and mental acuity, but that seems to have already been discounted. That said, you’re probably right that this debate won’t make much of a difference–I think many have already made up their minds.

    Like

    1. Harris isn’t on my TV. I don’t know if it’s because the media is ignoring or because she’s not doing enough to get the media’s attention.

      Debates, in general, don’t make a difference, according to the political science research. However, the last one certainly made a difference. The last debate led to the historic ousting of a presidential candidate that won all the primaries. But now that is over, will this one make a difference? I suspect not.

      Like

    1. We were in South Jersey over the weekend, which is the Philie media market. Steve just said that we saw Harris on the TV in a bar there. But here in Northern NJ, we’re in the NYC media market. She’s not buying ads here yet. She’s probably putting all her money in the battle ground states.

      Like

  3. No ads for either candidate here in Illinois. Once, on a channel I assume was going elsewhere, I caught one horrific ad whose message was that nonwhite people going to destroy you. Thank god I don’t have to watch any of those. I’d literally stop watching tv entirely for the next two months.

    I don’t watch cable news except every few months for some big event, so I don’t know about that. Not sure if I can stand to watch the debate or not.

    Like

  5. The thing is that Springfield, Ohio is a real place. I’ve been there, though not recently. This kind of attention has got to hurt the town’s reputation, for different reasons, with pretty much everyone.

    Like

  6. I watched the debate last night and found it fascinating. It reminded me a bit of the first presidential debate I ever watched, the Kennedy-Nixon one in 1960 (I was 8 and we were living in San Francisco, where my navy dad was stationed). I remember thinking Nixon looked dark and scary, while Kennedy exuded a kind of confidence and youth. While I think it’s true that debates don’t dramatically move the needle (the Biden-Trump debate being the obvious exception), I do think they have two functions, intentional or not. They help undecided voters make up their minds, and they offer candidates a way to present a short-hand version of themselves–a kind of meme, we might say now. That was certainly true in the 1960 debate. We all remember or have read about Nixon’s five o’clock shadow, his sweatiness, his shifty look (we should have known then!).

    In the Trump-Harris debate, Trump was clearly less in control of himself and the facts, and I think that will cause undecideds to move away from him. Second, because Harris deftly made Trump the incumbent, he was made to look like the past, a scary one at that; she could look like the future. I think that alone might cause her to take the election.

    But of course the country is divided (as it was in the 1960 election–we forget just how close it was) and the Trump supporters won’t abandon their man. Only the wobbly ones will, and that may be enough to determine the outcome. That’s the extent of my punditry for the day.

    Like

Comments are closed.