PHILADELPHIA — Vice President Kamala Harris used what could be the only presidential debate with Donald Trump to speak to that segment of undecided voters who wanted to know more about her, often looking directly into the camera as she did so. The former president delivered a “greatest hits” performance of his rallies to his most ardent supporters.
The two candidates offered different styles and spoke to different audiences on Tuesday when they squared off in the National Constitution Center in the ABC News debate swith much at stake in a race considered to be dead even with just 55 days before the historic vote.
Ms. Harris, the first Black woman and Indian American to be the presidential nominee of a major political party, was able to talk about her efforts to reach out to the middle class and create “an opportunity economy.” She said her campaign was a place to “stand for country, to stand for democracy, to stand for rule of law.” And she hewed to the political middle, saying little that would make socialist U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders’ heart flutter — and explicitly inviting disaffected Republicans to join her campaign, saying, “There is a
place in our campaign for you.”
On the other hand, Trump, participating in his record seventh presidential debate, behaved as if he were at one of his massive campaign rallies, speaking to his loyal supporters and repeating familiar lines rather than speaking to the sliver of voters who will decide the election, telling them why he should be returned to the Oval Office.
Trump branded Ms. Harris a Marxist, accused President Joe Biden of corruption, and insisted that Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio, were eating their neighbors’ pets, even as city officials said there were no credible reports that dogs and cats were on anyone’s dinner plate.
It remains to be seen the impact the debate will have in an abridged presidential campaign with Election Day just 55 days away.
The two candidates clashed over issues of particular importance to the Keystone State, most notably fracking and the 2020 election in Pennsylvania.
The choice of venue for the debate showered even more attention on Pennsylvania, as the winner of the most populous battleground state likely will be the one taking the oath of office next January.
“It’s really one of the most important states in the nation,” said U.S. Sen. Cory Booker, D-N.J. “Where Pennsylvania goes, so will our country.”
Ms. Harris, who had opposed fracking when she ran for president in 2020, said she did not ban fracking as vice president, would not as president and noted she cast the deciding vote on the climate change and health care law that included new leases for fracking. She also said that domestic oil production had hit record levels during the Biden administration.
“Fracking? She's been against it for 12 years,” Trump said. “She will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania. If she won the election, fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day 1.”
Trump later made the same charges later, leading Ms. Harris to respond: “I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as vice president of the United States. And, in fact, I was the tie-breaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking.”
The former president continued to make false charges that the 2020 election was stolen from him in Pennsylvania and elsewhere. “We have so many facts and statistics,” he said.
The special counsel who indicted Trump, Jack Smith, cited, among other things, Trump’s false claim that there were “205,000 more votes than voters” in Pennsylvania, and his efforts to form a fake slate of electors.
Trump claims that his voter fraud lawsuits were dismissed on technicalities when dozens of judges threw them out because there was no evidence to support the claims.
“Our elections are bad,” Trump said.
He accused Democrats of trying to register unauthorized immigrants to vote, which is illegal under federal law.
Ms. Harris responded: “Donald Trump was fired by 81 million people. We cannot afford to have a president of the United States who attempts, as he has done in the past, to upend the results of a free and fair election, to deny court cases you have lost.”
During the debate, Ms. Harris used her time to tout her plans to lower housing costs, provide federal grants for small businesses, and increase the child tax credit.
“I intend to create an opportunity economy,” she said.
Trump continually returned to immigration, insisting that millions of criminals were crossing the border illegally. “She has destroyed our country,” he said.
And he asked why Ms. Harris didn’t act to put her policies in place as vice president.
“Why she didn’t do it?” Trump said. “We’re in a failing nation. We’re a nation that is in serious decline. We are laughed at all over the world.”
Trump claimed that Americans supported the repeal of Roe v. Wade so that states could decide for themselves whether or not to legalize abortion.
“For 52 years, they’ve been trying to get Roe v. Wade into the states,” he said. “We were able to do that.”
But in a CNN poll released in May, 65% opposed the U.S. Supreme Court decision repealing abortion rights, while only 34% approved it.
“A 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term? They didn’t want that,” Ms. Harris said.
Ms. Harris, who has been the Biden administration’s point person on abortion rights, said “the government and Donald Trump certainly should not be telling a woman what to do with her body.”
Trump also accused Ms. Harris and Democrats of supporting abortion as late as nine months into the pregnancy, or even after birth.
However, the health care research group KFF said abortions occurring just before or after birth “do not occur, nor are they legal.”
In fact, the foundation said, procedures done after 21 weeks account for just 1% of all abortions in the U.S., and are performed primarily if the life of the mother is at stake, if the fetus will die shortly before or after birth, or if barriers prevent a woman from getting medical help earlier.
The debate marked the first time the candidates have met each other in person. Trump skipped the January 2021 inauguration of President Joe Biden and Ms. Harris.
While Trump had opened up some separation in polls with Mr. Biden, albeit usually within the margin of error, most recent surveys now show Ms. Harris either deadlocked or slightly ahead of the former president.
The most recent one, an NPR/PBS/Marist College poll released Tuesday ahead of the debate, put Ms. Harris ahead by 3 percentage points, 51% to 48%, among those who said they definitely will vote in November. That was within the survey’s margin of error of plus or minus 3.6 percentage points.
Still, almost 3 in 10 of those likely voters — 27% — said the debate could make a difference in deciding which candidate they will support in November.
Gov. Josh Shapiro said Ms. Harris passed the test.
“I thought she did an outstanding job of not just reintroducing herself to the American people, laying out her plans and prosecuting the case against Donald Trump,” Mr. Shapiro said.
But Trump senior adviser Tim Murtaugh said the former president also accomplished what he needed to do.
“He successfully tied her to her crazy radical record, and pointed out all of the attempts she’s making to retroactively fix that record, and also tied her to the failed Biden administration and all the policies that are miserable failures there that are making Americans suffer,” he said “Those were the two goals.”
During Trump’s debate against President Joe Biden in June, the incumbent’s dismal performance reinforced voters’ concerns about his inability to run for and serve another four years in the White House. Mr. Biden dropped out the following month and endorsed Ms. Harris to replace him atop the ticket.
Trump “did a very good job in the last debate because it was relative things — the president was off his game, the president lost his focus, he was a little dehydrated, he didn’t look well and Donald Trump frankly did a very good job of staying disciplined or staying in the pocket as it related to the discourse of the debate,” said investor Anthony Scaramucci, who spent 10 days as White House communications director under Trump. “Today was the absolutely opposite of that. It was sort of the schadenfreude of the first debate. As bad as President Biden was in the first debate, that was President Trump this time.”
First Published: September 11, 2024, 3:39 a.m.
Updated: September 11, 2024, 6:50 p.m.
