The Presidential Debate – Comrade Harris vs. Convicted Felon Trump

by Vijaya Chandrasoma

The long-awaited first and possibly only U.S. Presidential Debate was held at 9.0 p.m. EDT on Tuesday, September 10, at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. A historic museum in Philadelphia’s Independence Mall, devoted to the U. S. Constitution and the Liberty Bell. An appropriate venue for a momentous debate, which could well indicate the political future of the nation, whether the USA would remain the Leader of the Free World or become an authoritarian dictatorship, carrying water for the Putins and the Xis of the world.

The debate was held under the aegis of ABC, the moderators being the channel’s senior anchors, David Muir and Linsey Davis. The rules governing the debate had already been decided upon by both parties and strictly enforced during the debate, which had a TV/radio audience of over 200 million worldwide.

Incredibly, this was the first occasion on which these two presidential candidates had ever met face-to-face in their lives. While Trump is by far the more experienced debater – he has already participated in seven presidential debates: three with Hillary Clinton in 2016, three with Joseph Biden in 2020 and the seventh with Biden in June 2024, after which Biden withdrew from the race.

Although Harris has no presidential debate experience, she more than held her own during her single Vice-Presidential debate with Mike Pence in 2020. She also participated in the Democratic primaries’ debates for the presidential nomination, also in 2020. Even more importantly, she has over 30 years’ experience in the courts of California – as a Prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney and Attorney General. Add to that her two years’ experience in the U.S. Senate and nearly four years as the Vice-President of the United States. She is second only to Hillary Clinton in governing experience, as a U. S. presidential candidate.

Kamala’s opponent was the same Republican who defeated Hillary in 2016. Donald Trump won that election with a majority in the Electoral College (though a popular vote loss of more than three million votes), with the same bag of tricks like collusion with Russia and various electoral illegalities he is carrying today . But this time he has the added “attraction” of a disastrous first term with the criminal mismanagement of a pandemic which cost over 650,000 avoidable American deaths, the addition of $1.7 trillion to the national debt, an economy on the cusp of recession and two impeachments; a post-presidency record of adjudicated sexual harassment and financial fraud, 34 convicted felony charges awaiting sentencing and 57 more felony charges, including obstruction of justice, inciting an insurrection, sedition and espionage, awaiting trial.

Amazingly, in spite of all this criminal baggage, he remains the candidate of the Republican Party, newly-reconstructed in his own racist image. Such is the flailing power of white supremacy.

Recent racist Trump comments about Kamala’s ethnicity – that she had portrayed herself as a South Asian Indian until she “suddenly turned black” – she has made no secret of the fact that her father was Jamaican, mother South Indian – made me wish she would appear at the debate in a beautiful blue saree, in my Sri Lankan opinion, the most elegant of women’s dresses. She certainly has the looks to carry off such an outfit perfectly.

But she chose the outfit most certain to scare the hell out of Trump and appear as who she is – a strong, black woman. Which she did beautifully, looking most Presidential in a black power suit and a blouse with a classic lavalliere neckline, accessorized with pearl earrings. Trump looked old and tired, his usual obese self, with the floppy blue suit with overlong red tie, and the blonde weasel hairweave. Looking like the defeated, convicted felon he is.

With the polls projecting no clear win in November, Kamala and Trump have been prepping for this most consequential debate with varying strategies.

Vice-President Harris has been traveling to Pittsburgh last week for debate rehearsals, including mock debates with an adviser playing the role of Trump, adapting strategy to adhere to debate rules, which included keeping the candidates’ microphones muted when they were not speaking, focusing on presenting their policies clearly and contrasting them with Trump’s.

Trump, on the other hand, took a more casual approach. As one of his main advisors, Jason Miller said, Trump’s debate style will be unpredictable – like preparing for a fight against Muhammad Ali. You wouldn’t know at what angle he would float and how poisonous his sting would be. A pretty obese butterfly with the sting of a foul-mouthed b….

Trump assured supporters in Pennsylvania last Saturday that what seemed like incoherent ramblings were instead proof of his brilliant mind. As he explained, “I do the weave. You know what the weave is? I’ll talk about, like, nine different things that they all come back brilliantly together”. And friends of mine, like English professors, they say, “it’s the most brilliant thing I’ve ever seen”. Like when his doctors told him he had one of the finest minds in history when he aced a Dementia Test!

Timothy O’Brien, author of TrumpNation, says that the reason Trump is “now offering these convoluted explanations of his speech patterns is because he’s hyper-aware that he’s making even less sense than he used to. What we’re seeing is a reflection of someone who’s very troubled and very desperate”.

The consensus before the debate was that Vice-President Harris will win the debate just by showing up. Which, from the moment she stepped on the stage, strode confidently up to Trump and made him shake her hand, she did. As if to say, “I am Vice-President Kamala Harris and I am in charge”.

She continued with all guns firing, preempting Trump’s pet economic strategy going forward – increased tariffs resulting in increasing revenues. She correctly called these “sales taxes” as, contrary to Trump’s lies and/or misconceptions, import tariffs are paid by the American importer, not the (Chinese) exporter, who passes these on to the American consumer, resulting in inflation and high prices.

She needled Trump on his many weak positions, primarily on women’s reproductive freedom, a subject he has been all over the place in recent weeks. He had been very proud to have overturned Roe v. Wade, the Supreme Court ruling which has proved to be extremely unpopular with all women, Republican and Democrat. He has tried to weasel his way out of this very radical legislation by trying to soften his stance and accusing Democrats of late-term abortions, even executing babies after birth, a preposterous lie he has been spreading over the years. The single most powerful moment of the debate was perhaps Kamala’s emotional defense of the woman’s right to choose, declaring “I would proudly sign the protections of Roe v. Wade back into law”.

Kamala also baited him about his being fired by 81 million Americans in 2020, his obsession with crowd sizes at campaign rallies and windmills causing cancer.

Trump rambled on about how he saved the world by providing ventilators during the pandemic; the wonderful economy he created during his first term. He harped on the millions of immigrants streaming through the Southern border opened by the Biden administration, the latest fictional tragedy being Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs, pets of the residents of Springfield, Ohio, a lie immediately denied by the Springfield Town Authority.

Kamala stated that during her travels representing the United States in her capacity of Vice-President at various international meetings and conferences, the leaders of foreign nations and traditional allies had expressed their misgivings, even fears, at the re-election of Donald Trump. She claimed that they are “laughing at Donald Trump”, calling him a “disgrace”.

Trump bristled at this claim, saying that he was the most respected leader in the world. In fact, Trump quoted Viktor Orban, the dictatorial Prime Minister of Hungary, who said, “Why is the whole world blowing up? Because you need Trump back as president. They were afraid of him. China was afraid of him. Russia was afraid of him”. Trump said he enjoyed the utmost respect of world leaders like Putin, Orban and Xi.

It’s as if Thomas Dewey, when contesting FDR in the 1944 US presidential election, gave Hitler and Mussolini as his character references!

Trump also refused to answer the question whether he wants Ukraine to win the war against Russia. It was pointed out to him that he had once said he would stop aid to Ukraine, withdraw from NATO, that Russia could do “whatever the hell Putin wants” unless the European member nations of NATO paid their fair share of their dues for the defense of Europe.

Kamala reminded him that Putin will not stop after the conquest of Ukraine. He will then cast his eyes on other Eastern European nations of the old Soviet Socialist Union like Poland, an ambition which would not sit well with the 800,000 plus Pennsylvania voters of Polish origin.

In fact, Kamala, with a little help from the moderators, was able to keep Trump babbling incoherently so efficiently that little time was left for her to answer at length questions on her own weaknesses and those of the Biden administration. Like the disastrous withdrawal from Afghanistan, the immigration problems at the Southern border, the continuing war in Gaza, inflation and her plans to improve the economy of the country. Kamala was also allowed to get away with her own meaningless word salads, her soulful little anecdotes about “when she was a li’lle girl in California” unchecked. Won’t happen again.

There is talk of a second debate. Trump has ruled out the possibility of a second debate, with the lie even his closest allies don’t believe, that he won the first debate. The reality, of course, is that he knows that Kamala will spank him again, and he will not risk a second beating. Harris’ campaign, flush from success, is supposed to be eager for another showdown. They should leave well alone. True, she set a masterful trap to which the blustering Trump succumbed completely. Kamala may have won this debate, but the problems facing her at the November election have not gone away. A second debate will only give Trump and his allies another bite at the apple. Why risk that? Let’s play their game for a change, and kick them when they are down.

We will never get another track tailored to our strengths like last Tuesday’s debate. Trump may not fall into these traps again, and Kamala may have to answer tough questions without help from the moderators. Tuesday’s convincing win, which probably clinched the November election, is all we wanted. Even Trump’s closest allies accept that. We have eight weeks to consolidate our position, making sure not only of the White House but governing majorities in Congress.

Significant Endorsements

Taylor Swift ended a long tweet after the debate, “Like many of you, I watched the debate last night…As a voter, I make sure to watch and read everything about their policies and plans for this country… I will be casting my vote for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 Presidential Election. I am voting for Kamala Harris because….she is a steady-handed, gifted leader and I believe we can accomplish so much more in this country if we are led by calm and not chaos… With love and hope. Taylor Swift….Childless Cat Lady”.

To many of us, an endorsement by a musical phenomenon may not seem to be a big deal. But Taylor Swift has an Instagram fan base of 283 million, with 100 million “likes” for the beautifully written endorsement. 300,000 new voter-registrations have also been listed since her endorsement. She is not just a celebrity but a role-model for the super-modern young woman in America. The teenagers of yesterday, but the voters of today!

It was first thought that Kamala’s other significant recent endorsement by former Republican Vice-President, Dick Cheney, would provide a useful, if antithetical, bookend of endorsements for the November election. Bookends of the role model for modern young women in Taylor Swift with that of Dick Cheney, the role model for the stuffiest and most cruel of old white farts in America.

On second thoughts, I feel we would be better off without the endorsement of one of the greatest war criminals of the century. So thanks, Mr Cheney, but no thanks. We will manage without your blood-stained vote.

Remembering 9/11

The day after the debate was the 23rd anniversary of the worst terror attack on the shores of the United States, when Americans came together, bonded by sadness and patriotism, to pay their respects to the nearly 3,000 Americans who lost their lives to evil on that day of devastating tragedy.

The threat of foreign terrorism has now been replaced by the evil of domestic terrorism, represented by the neo-Nazi, white supremacist violence of Donald Trump’s revamped Republican Party. This threat remains, the polls for November are still deadlocked, and the radical right movement shows few signs of abatement. Even an electoral loss may not prove to be decisive, as Trump and his cult will never concede defeat, and will resort to nation-wide post-election violence.

The complete annihilation of Donald Trump at Tuesday’s Debate was a welcome start. Presidential victory in November will be the next step, followed by capture of majorities in both Houses of Congress.

Finally, and most importantly, there is an urgent need to institute a constitutional process that the US Supreme Court will lead the Judiciary in ensuring that the Justice dispensed in the United States in the future is Fundamental Justice faithful to the Rule of Law and not venal Justice polluted by political corruption.