The Voice of Liberalism from Main Street, not Hollywood Boulevard
Wednesday, September 11, 2024
Rambling Man
Interesting pre-debate advice from a Republican:
Scott Jennings on tomorrow's debate: "I would advise him to answer all questions going back to one core issue 'If you want change I'm the change, If you want change on the economy I'm the change. If you want change on the border I'm the change' and this is how he wins."
Jennings believed before Tuesday's presidential debate in Philadelphia, and probably still does afterward, that Donald Trump's best approach would be to emphasize that he is the change agent. As a goal that probably is accurate. However the ex-President had a myriad of tactics at his disposal.
Consider a question from co-moderator Linsey Davis, who asked
Vice President Harris, in your last run for president you
said you wanted to ban fracking. Now you don't. You wanted mandatory government
buyback programs for assault weapons. Now your campaign says you don't. You
supported decriminalizing border crossings. Now you're taking a harder line. I
know you say that your values have not changed. So then why have so many of
your policy positions changed?
Harris first stated "so my values have not changed. and I'm going to discuss every one."
Predictably, she did not do so, instead proclaiming her support of fracking, then smoothlessly pivoting to her background as "a middle-class kid raised by a hard-working mother," and then talking about home ownership, sexual assault, Medicare, "and a perspective that is about lifting people up and not beating people down."
The last four items, which comprised approximately two-thirds of Harris' response, had nothing to do with the question asked. Even on that, however, the Vice-President chose, wisely, not to explain why her opinion had shifted.
As Jennings noted post-debate on CNN, you can't blame the referee (as Republicans immediately did) when you miss your jump shots. But as Jennings missed, Trump was given given a lane to drive the ball to the hoop and passed up the opportunity in order to shoot 18-foot jump shots, which missed wildly. Or as baseball fans would have it, whiffing on a hanging curve.
Trump's response to Harris' remarks about her shifting views illustrated the primary dynamic of the debate, an insistence that he never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Handed the ball on Harris' radically reversed ideology, the ex-President instead went on defense, first pleading
Well, first of all, I wasn't given $400 million. I wish I
was. My father was a Brooklyn builder. Brooklyn, Queens. And a great father and
I learned a lot from him. But I was given a fraction of that, a tiny fraction,
and I built it into many, many billions of dollars. Many, many billions. And
when people see it, they are even surprised. So, we don't have to talk about
that.
Except that he had just done so, without his opponent having brought it up at the time, and when you're explaining, you're losing. Then Trump got back on track- briefly- by stating
Fracking? She's been against it for 12 years. Uh, defund the
police. She's been against that forever. She gave all that stuff up, very
wrongly, very horribly. And everybody's laughing at it, okay? They're all
laughing at it. She gave up at least 12 and probably 14 or 15 different
policies. Like, she was big on defund the police.
This landed with a thud. Trump could have gone with a refrain:
Also, Medicare for All, legislation, which Harris once co-sponsored and now opposes. Never mind that on a few of these issues, Harris has less changed her mind than determined to keep quiet about it, and it's the responsibility of her opponent to identify those positions she will no longer defend.
If Trump wanted to avoid citing a litany of stances on which his foe at least has equivocated, he could have emphasized two, with numbers 5 and 6 likely to have the greatest impact.
A third option would have been for him to list those issues and add one- or emphasize this with one of the others..
.
Trump is going to Trump, one might say. Given a candidate offering acriticism-rich environment, he decided to ramble about election interference, dogs in Ohio, Harris' Marxist father, Fani Willis, and anything else popping up in his mind. It is Kamala Harris' great good luck to have an opponent who can't, or won't, focus on any of his opponent's vulnerabilities.
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