The US electoral contest may have a decisive moment on 10 September when the two presidential candidates face off in a debate in Philadelphia.
The US presidential election will be decided in just over two months. The outcome may well hinge on what voters think about the result of the upcoming presidential debate on 10 September in Philadelphia (starting at 3am South African time).
In her acceptance speech before the Democratic National Convention and then in a half-hour interview on CNN with Dana Bash, Vice-President Kamala Harris, (with her running mate, Minnesota Governor Tim Walz,) at least initially, successfully demonstrated the assurance, knowledge, poise and aptitude needed for her to be seen as a legitimate contender for the presidency.
During these two public moments, she answered the crucial question every candidate must be able to answer in an election — are they suitable for the job?
The next test looms in just over a week. Can she take the measure of and then master her opponent in an open contest where there are, effectively, no intermediaries?
It will be an event at which she must show knowledge, political nous, a spark of humour and real warmth — along with an unerring instinct for her opponent’s weak spots. She will need to do this in a way that doesn’t allow voters to regard her as mean, ignorant, duplicitous, feckless or all of those traits.
Read more: The Democrats’ convention was a well-oiled machine. Now comes the hard part
Harris will be facing off against an opponent, Donald Trump, who has consistently demonstrated he has no compunctions about making use of slash-and-burn attacks against his political opponents or belittling them with locker-room humour and insulting nicknames. No one on the planet expects Trump to be “nice” or show real warmth.
While many are certain Trump is ignorant of basic facts and prepared to make up whatever evidence he wants to, Harris must be able to call out such lapses, even as she must, simultaneously, successfully advance her case as to why she should be the electorate’s choice.
Presumably, her courtroom experience as a prosecutor should help in these tasks, but the real judge and jury will be in the homes of a couple of hundred million Americans, many of whom have already effectively made up their minds about who should be the country’s next chief executive. As a function of our social media age, many potential voters will ultimately make up their minds based on short snippets posted by others, rather than the entire debate.
Battleground states
So far, data from a variety of pollsters have indicated Harris is holding a small but growing lead in the national opinion, now slightly beyond the statistical margin of error. However, the specifics of who is ahead state by state is more important — and, most of all, in the battleground or swing states.
The actual selection of a US president is determined by the outcomes in the 50 states (plus the District of Columbia). Because those elections result in winner-takes-all outcomes in each state (save for Maine and Nebraska) for that state’s electoral vote — effectively a rough measure of each state’s population size — that process is what determines who gets to live in the White House for the next four years.
As a result, the contests in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Georgia, Nevada and Arizona (and potentially North Carolina and Virginia as longer-term demographic trends take hold) have major strategic, even outsized importance. This is because a majority of voters in most other states are reliably assumed to line up behind Democratic or Republican candidates. In total, there are 538 electoral votes and 270 of those secure a win.
Win most of those swing states, and thus their electoral votes, and the deed is done. This is why the two parties will be blanketing those states with media advertising and targeted electronic messaging, and the four candidates will be crisscrossing those states over the next two months, together with a phalanx of surrogates, or popular politicians who can draw a crowd, make their party’s case coherently, and generate enthusiasm among citizens to make sure they are registered to vote and then actually do so the right way.
A key but less commented-upon element is the growth in advance voting and voting by mail — a significant percentage of voters will have cast ballots well before the actual election day of 5 November, although no ballots will be counted until that date. As a result, getting voters’ attention as quickly as possible is paramount.
Read more: Letter from DC — Kamala Harris is spoiling for a fight, and she’s coming for Trump
Republican misfires
So far, as Harris and Walz have been inching into the pole position, the Republican candidate team of Trump and Ohio Senator JD Vance have been struggling to identify successful attack lines against their opponents. They are still railing about the “undemocratic-ness” of the increasingly popular Harris replacing the incumbent president as the Democrats’ candidate and implying the change in the top line was a kind of bloodless coup within the inner chambers of the Democratic elite.
They have also been struggling with how to approach the issue of women’s reproductive rights, especially given the broad national support for such policies despite the Supreme Court ruling two years ago that eliminated national protection for that under the earlier but now overturned Roe v Wade decision. Most awkwardly, increasingly restrictive proposals feature on several state referendums, such as in Florida — Trump’s current state of residence — which would restrict abortions to only six weeks following conception.
After wandering over the policy landscape, Trump has now effectively said he would vote for this referendum, even though he thinks it is too restrictive. Huh? Say what?
Similarly, Republicans have launched attacks on the circumstances of Walz’s military career. They have also attacked Walz’s policy choices as governor — such as providing free meals for public school students in Minnesota — and his organising student study trips to China while he was a teacher.
For the latter, their sub rosa accusation seems to be that Walz is, somehow, in some dark, nefarious way, a “Manchurian candidate”, poised to act on behalf of those evil but oh-so-clever Chinese. When in doubt, the China or communist card is always a possibility.
It is not clear how effective any of this has been in enhancing support for the Trump-Vance ticket (as opposed to revving up Trump’s Maga faithful). This is especially the case given the Republican candidate’s continuing inability to stay on message.
He continues to riff that he was cheated out of re-election in 2020, that the mob who tried to seize the Capitol Building on 6 January 2021 comprised idealistic patriots, and that there are important lessons to be learnt from the fictional Hannibal Lecter, or a Hobson’s choice of being killed by electrically powered boats as opposed to sharks.
Foreign interest
Interestingly, China and Russia appear to be taking increasing interest (or concern) in the election, presumably after having gamed out the idea that Trump was the likely victor. Because the contest is played out in public, the analysts have plenty of material to keep them busy.
Usually, based on past outcomes, they would probably predict more of the same, based on their ideological understandings of the US.
Similarly, the US and other governments spent time and energy trying to suss out who was gaining ground — or losing it — in secretive governments such as the old Soviet Union or contemporary China. Analysts would pore over photographs of the attendees on the reviewing stand on Red Square or in Beijing to see who was closer to or further from the premier’s authority, as well as to trace changes in policy through almost microscopic differences in the wording of official texts — all in an effort to help their governments predict things.
When Xi Jinping became the ruler of China, US analysts analysed the impact of Xi’s earlier time in Iowa on an international exchange programme and his interactions with a farming family for any light it could shed on the policies he might pursue. The internet — and social media — has made things easier, although the plethora of information can overwhelm analysis.
Just over the past few days, there have been reports about how the Chinese and the Russians are viewing the ongoing US electoral campaign and the increasing possibility Trump will not be moving back to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave in Washington, DC, after all. At the end of August, for example, The Economist reported on the way China is starting to view the election.
The magazine said, “Chinese officials and analysts are struggling. A woman who has never visited China and who has only briefly met its leader, Xi Jinping, has suddenly emerged as a serious contender in the race for the White House. The Democratic Party gathered from August 19th to 22nd to celebrate the nomination of Kamala Harris as its presidential candidate and her selection of Tim Walz as her running-mate.
“For China’s rulers, the ascent of the Harris-Walz ticket creates two difficulties. It challenges China’s nihilistic interpretation of American politics as racist and decrepit. And it has triggered a scramble to assess how a Harris administration might approach China relations, not least because Ms Harris’s credentials on dealing with China are limited, while Mr Walz has more experience of China than any vice-presidential candidate in decades.
“Cynicism about American politics abounds in China. The shake-up in the presidential race since June illuminates the limitations of China’s understanding of its rival. When Barack Obama was elected in 2008, his appeal upset the widely held belief in China, reinforced by relentless official propaganda, that America was so profoundly racist that a black person could not become president. China’s latest report on human rights in America, published in May, says racism is getting worse, while gender discrimination is ‘rampant’. But America could elect its second black president, and its first female one.”
They may also be steadying themselves for the growing possibility that Walz, a man with a deeper set of first-hand experiences in China than any other senior US politician, after having taught English and US history in a Chinese high school and leading many US student study tours of China over the years, may be at the right hand of power in the US soon.
Such an electoral outcome may even have an impact on how the Chinese see their own situation. As The Economist noted further, “For much of this year the Biden-Trump contest was a boon for Chinese propagandists, allowing them to portray American democracy as a fight between two men past their cognitive prime, whose attacks were redolent of playground bickering. By bowing out, Mr Biden has unsettled that narrative and encouraged some Chinese to wonder about their own system, in which Mr Xi, who is 71, appears set on remaining leader for life.”
Read more: Kamala Harris & the world — where does the presidential candidate stand on foreign policy?
And from the Kremlin, interesting noises are beginning to be heard as well. At the beginning of this month, Reuters carried a report saying, “Russia sees U.S. Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris as a more predictable opponent than Republican Donald Trump, though in any case there is no prospect of an improvement in relations with Washington, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said.
“In an interview with Pavel Zarubin, a TV reporter with favoured access to the Kremlin, Peskov also appeared dismissive of Trump’s boast that he could end the Ukraine war within 24 hours if U.S. voters returned him to the White House.
“Before Joe Biden announced his withdrawal from November’s election and threw his support behind Harris, Russian President Vladimir Putin had said that Moscow preferred Biden over Trump, describing the former as an experienced ‘old school’ type of politician.
“With Biden out of the running, Zarubin asked Peskov, laughing: ‘Then who is our candidate now?’ Peskov, also laughing, replied: ‘We have no candidate. But, of course, the Democrats are more predictable. And what Putin said about Biden’s predictability applies to almost all Democrats, including Ms. Harris.’”
Given how the polling data are trending, and depending on the perceived outcome of the 10 September debate, it would be fascinating to have access to diplomatic reporting back to foreign offices in Russia, China, the EU nations, Iran (via its UN mission), Israel and more than a dozen other strategically important nations.
The psychological profiles of the candidates being written by their intelligence and research offices back home would be even more fascinating to read. Anyone wish to share any of them with us? DM