Donald Trump has made a career of running for president by understanding that details don’t matter but channeling unfocused feelings does. “People are saying,” “No one has ever seen anything like it.” “It’s a disgrace.” “The worst thing that’s ever happened to our country.” These are empty phrases intended to avoid the need for messy details. That is their appeal. They channel feelings. Emotion. Grievance. They’re not meant to offer solutions, solve problems or point ways forward. They’re expressions of inchoate fear, bluster, injustice, prejudice. To adorn this emotion with plans, details, complications or nuance is to miss the point. Unfocused rage is seductive, luxurious, addictive.
Tuesday night’s “debate” was the grievance channeler-in-chief against the public servant trying to grapple with the world as it is. You might not buy Kamala Harris’ solutions or even her diagnoses, but she at least offers a vision of a future that begins with how things are. Trump came out controlled (for him) and restrained. It lasted all of about ten minutes. One benefit of simply channeling feelings is that it doesn’t matter if you just make shit up. Trump let loose a torrent of claims that were half-baked fantasies, following them up with vague, unfocused “remedies” as improbable and impractical as the untruths they were meant to address.
Didn’t matter.
Pointing it out doesn’t matter. Reality is besides the point. Facts are beside the point. A good narrative is. And so, as Trump got more and more agitated as the evening went on, more impassioned about his many grievances, and further and further away from reality, his fans were likely cheering. But then, Trump hasn’t cared, even a little bit, about expanding his base, reaching out to those who might be persuadable to ideas the Democrats aren’t espousing. This was – as usual – a performance for the base, for those who just want someone to go to Washington and break things. His calculation is that there are enough angry people out there to vote against the traditional politics.
Harris did fine. Better than fine, even, drawing comparisons between her and her chaotic, shambolic opponent, even needling him about his failures and shortcomings and inability to tell the truth. She could have done more. She missed the opportunity to hit him after he lavishly praised Hungary’s strongman president Viktor Orban. She could have taunted him with mounting examples of his infirmities of age, the misspeaking, memory lapses and cognitive fantastical failings. It likely wouldn’t have mattered.
She tried to present herself as the future, as someone who wanted to embrace everyone, to be the president who unites and is president for all the people (in itself a bit of a fantasy, though a more noble one). In decades past that would have been a given for any major candidate for president. That the idea is such a stark contrast with Donald Trump, whose candidacy is built on fear, on scaring people with immigrants stealing and eating pets, of “millions” of criminal insane migrants flooding across the border, and claims of record crime rates while the rest of the world has become more peaceful because presumably all the bad guys moved to America, thanks to Joe and Kamala.
Does anyone actually believe this stuff? Doesn’t matter. They “feel” that it’s true, and Trump would only spoil the buzz with actual facts and evidence. Pressing him with fact checks, even mildly as the serviceable moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis attempted from time to time, seemed almost beside the point. He not once responded by meaningfully clarifying his fraudulent claims. He didn’t care.
So will this debate make any difference? Likely not. Harris stood up well, made her case, and even managed to slip in a few biographical details for those Americans who don’t know her. She prosecuted her case with workmanlike, even poised precision. She didn’t take his baiting or get drawn into childish back and forths (no, you’re the puppet!). Sure, that definitely matters after the Biden debate fiasco.
Democrats spent the month of August in a haze of joy, an almost palpable relief to have a younger, more vigorous, energetic candidate who could speak to the future. The polls have moved, but not nearly so much as one might hope given the disparities between candidates and the very real flaws of Trump and his enablers. Maybe Trump is right and there are enough Americans who for whatever reasons are invested in tearing down American norms and see in him as the avatar to do it. Harris is the clear alternative, appealing to our better nature. Whether that’s a message that will win over the grievance warriors, we’ll just have to see.
