Future v. Past
We are rolling up to the big presidential debate on Tuesday night. I have never thought that this debate would happen. In fact, I have $10 riding on the notion that there would be no debate because Trump would no-show. At this point I think the odds of that outcome have fallen to below 50%, but I wouldn’t throw away my bet ticket just yet. I have been watching what the various pundits have been saying about the likelihood of Harris or Trump prevailing in the debate. The more that the press says that Harris will kick Trump’s ass, the higher the likelihood that my bet will come into the money. Trump only cares about winning. He doesn’t care what large parts of the nation thinks of him, so that would not factor into Trump’s calculus for participating in the debate. The only thing he will consider for that decision is whether he is likely to look good or bad and the likelihood that he will be perceived as the winner versus the loser. The more he thinks Harris might win the debate, the less likely it is that he will show up. There are a million excuses he might give if he chooses to no-show. There is probably even a small part of this brain that thinks that anything that makes him look like a renegade, like boycotting a debate run by a mainstream media outlet like ABC, would help him rather than hurt him. He does not need exposure in general, even though his nature is to crave any kind of exposure that is available to him. The electorate knows who he is after nine years and they know, for better or worse, what he stands for, so more exposure (especially the type that puts him in a box) does not advance his cause.
I’ve talked a fair bit about the importance of change in politics. Clearly both Trump and Harris are telling the American people that they are the candidate of change. Trump focuses on how Harris is part of the Biden/Harris history of which so many people find displeasure. Harris focuses on how the Trump playbook is tired and out of touch with what the American public wants. Both messages resonate well with the extreme bases of each candidate, but how well those messages connect with the 20% of the electorate that sits in the middle will be the true test of this election and this debate.
Another way to characterize this issue of change is to talk about it in terms of what people see as their preferred version of the future versus the past that they want to leave behind. One thing is for certain by now and that is that some of the policies pursued and successfully enacted by Trump in the past are galvanizing support away from him. The best example is the abortion issue and the degree to which the vast majority of the U.S. electorate support a broader definition of allowable abortion. An even better example is Project 2025, which is an extremely detailed roadmap for the future of a Trump administration. The Project 2025 document is a 30-chapter plan put together by many ex-Trump senior staffers based on what they learned in the first Trump administration and their failures in implementing all the policies they are pushing. In other words, despite any protestations to the contrary by Trump and his campaign staff, the 2025 document shows anyone who wants to look at it, the future that Trump represents or will at least try to implement. The degree to which he endorsed the work of the Heritage Foundation while they were developing Project 2025 and the high overlap with his Agenda 47, make it clear this is the Trump future. The fact that he is working so assiduously to deny any connection to the Project 2025 now that its clear that this vision of the future does not appeal to the electorate, is further proof that Americans do not agree with that vision of the future.
Kamala Harris has, in theory, had four years as Vice President, to organize her thoughts on the future, but let’s be serious, the vice presidency is simply not powerful enough to direct policy and can probably at most help shape policy at the margin. That means that in order to not be seen as unsupportive of the president’s program (a huge no-no for any Veep), the vice president needs to keep her own policy thoughts to herself. Kamala Harris has had since July 21 (less than 50 days) to come up with her own policies. Compared to the two years it took to develop and write Project 2025, during these 50 days, Harris has had only a fraction of her time available to develop her policy platforms, given all the organizational and campaign issues that she has been confronted with in this short-hop campaign. Nevertheless, she has done a good job of getting her “For the People” theme established and known by the public. There continues to be a gap between Harris and Trump as to how well the public at large understands what they each stand for. A debate is a good way for Harris to get her message about her vision for the future out to the electorate. A debate does little to help the public understand who Trump is at this point, and, in fact, since the real Donald Trump and the details of his policy agenda are less appealing, one could easily argue that the more people know about Trump, the less they will want to vote for him. The one thing that Trump can do, is to somehow make Harris look bad or muddled in her policy such that people remain or get confused about who she is and what she stands for. That is a challenging mission for Trump since, as much as he likes to go on the attack, he will undoubtedly be unable to allow the 90 minutes to be all about Harris, even if that is negative to Harris.
Harris will be focused on a future that uplifts the American Middle Class, supports labor, reduces the costs of living for that Middle Class, supports our globalist and allies-oriented international posture, promotes small business, supports the rule of law (including against Donald Trump), reinforces personal freedoms for women and LGBTQ people, promotes affordable education, and secures the platform of the nations’ safety net. Trump is nowhere near as committed to a vision of the future beyond what it means for him, but his minions and acolytes are far more ideological and it is clear that their vision of the future has large elements of recapturing a past and its white, Christian nationalist heritage. I’m not sure I have seen good statistics on how much of the population supports this Christian Nationalist cause, but its safe to say that it is an extreme minority view of the United States that is certainly no greater than 20% of the electorate. It is very telling that like Project 2025, this is not a vision that seeks massive exposure for that very reason. The less the electorate knows about it, the better for the cause since familiarity breeds contempt and they would much rather just spring all these changes on America and convince them after the fact that its all better for them in the long run. Nazis knew that the annihilation of the Jews was not openly popular, but they suspected that everyone would be happy with the outcome after the fact.
Donald Trump has nothing to gain and lots to lose in this debate. This is the basis of my bet. The thinking that may prevail that will cause Trump to take a last-minute pass on the debate is that his is a performative future and his most outrageous performance may well be to absent himself. That may be the most honest showing he can give the American public since a Trump presidency would be all about him abdicating to the crazed policy wonks on his team. That is a future none of us needs or wants.