The vice president managed to undermine his opponent in the expected debate, the research doctor estimated.
In the United States, the Republicans only hoped from Tuesday night’s debate that Donald Trump would be able to stay on point and not be provoked by Vice President Kamala Harris’ barbs.
This is where Trump failed. Postdoctoral researcher at the John Morton Research Center of the University of Turku Niko Heikkilä considers the Republicans’ fears to have come true.
– Yes, that’s clearly what happened here. The general setting of the debate was that Harris clearly put Trump on the defensive on many of these key issues, he says.
– Harris threw a lot of baits in Trump’s direction and Trump caught almost every one of them, such as Harris’ throws about audience numbers at campaign events, inherited property or the events of January 6.
Harris managed to undermine Trump, for example, on the issue of immigration. Heikkilä reminds that, according to opinion polls, the majority of citizens trust Trump more than Harris.
However, Harris caused Trump to derail his strong election theme when, after defending the line of President Joe Biden’s administration, he inserted a barb at the end of his speech that Trump’s campaign events are boring.
– Harris turned Trump’s attention from immigration to his audience numbers. Trump then picked up on this, went all over the place in his own answer and started talking about immigrants eating dogs and the like, says Heikkilä.
– This was repeated for several questions, but this section on immigration particularly stuck in my mind.
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump couldn’t contain himself in the debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. REUTERS
Harris as prosecutor
In polls published before the debate, Americans had expressed that they do not know enough about Harris. Answering this was one of Harris’ main goals for the argument.
According to Heikkilä, Harris’ performance showed that the vice president and his campaign team were clearly well prepared for the meeting with Trump.
This was part of the picture Harris was trying to build.
– He was well prepared. Of course, he talked about his own values and his own politics, but he really turned the attention to Trump quite a lot in many questions, he says.
– In general, a much clearer picture of Harris formed now than before. Especially since he hasn’t given many interviews and hasn’t been a presidential candidate in debates before.
After the debate, it was considered on social media that Harris, as expected, took the role of the prosecutor in the debate and turned the debate into a question about Trump’s eligibility to be president.
– Yes, I would also interpret it this way. Right from the beginning, Harris made this a Trump election, so to speak, so in that sense that view is apt, says Heikkilä.
– Harris’s background as a prosecutor shone through anyway, and he also knew how to use it in arguments.
Vice President Kamala Harris managed to turn the debate into a question about Trump’s eligibility for the presidency. REUTERS
Little meaning
In many cases, the actual content of the debates is not remembered afterwards, but rather the individual moments remain in people’s minds, one famous example of which is from 1992, when President George HW Bush looked at the clock in the middle of a debate against Bill Clinton. This was interpreted to mean that Bush could not wait for the debate to be over.
Often individual comments also survive. Many remember that four years ago, Biden was hurt by Trump’s talk, which made him wish that he would keep his mouth shut.
Heikkilä did not notice that any single moment or throw would have emerged in the combination of Harris and Trump. However, one question summed up Tuesday night’s debate.
– The conversation about immigration really stuck in my mind the most, he says.
Heikkilä does not want to judge the actual winner of the debate, but points out that the reactions of the campaign teams speak for themselves.
– Harris’s camp quickly asked for a new debate, which of course tells you what they think about how the debate went this time. There, they are obviously satisfied with the results of the debate, while the atmosphere in Trump’s camp is mixed, he says.
– The general picture is that Harris put Trump on the defensive and thus was more in control.
In conclusion, Heikkilä reminds that the real meaning of the arguments is ultimately minor. For example, Hillary Clinton was considered to have beaten Trump in all three debates, but Clinton famously lost the election.
– Succeeding in debates does not directly guarantee election success, that is, their role may remain minor in terms of the final result, he points out.
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