Neither Trump nor Harris are strong candidates, but media must not repeat 2016 and 2020 mistakes
The records of the Trump and Biden presidencies are better than Kamala Harris and Donald Trump were prepared to concede during last week’s debate about each other’s time in office.
Yet it remains accurate, if cliched, to say it is astounding that the richest, most powerful nation on the planet could not produce two better candidates.
Trump, as his debate performance showed, is a deeply self-centred person with an unfocused, undisciplined mind. He could not prosecute a simple case against Harris.
She, on the other hand, has changed her most fundamental political positions on important issues facing the US since she was a candidate for the presidency in 2020. And she has failed the main task President Joe Biden gave her as Vice-President almost four years ago: the role of border tsar.
Trump’s lack of preparation showed. Harris spent a lot of time prepping and that showed too – especially in the way she was able to bait her opponent about the size of the crowds at his rallies or suggestions the former president was an object of ridicule among military leaders and foreign heads of government.
But will it matter on the first Tuesday in November?
This column twice wrote that Trump could win in 2016 in the weeks leading up to that election. It pointed to concerns in Middle America about unchecked illegal immigration. Such concerns are even more evident in the US today.
This column also referred to the likelihood at the time that published polling was underestimating the Trump vote because of the so-called “shy conservative’’ factor.
Polling before the 2016 election underestimated Trump’s vote by 2.2 per cent, and in 2020 by 3.3 per cent.
Remember, too, Hillary Clinton was a bad candidate in 2016. She foolishly berated some of her own blue-collar voters as the usual “basket of deplorables”.
If the press underestimated Trump in 2016, it took him much more seriously during his presidency and at the 2020 election.
The establishment liberal media poured millions of words into the false Russiagate conspiracy story, trying to destroy Trump. It happened again in the weeks before the 2020 election as Obama-era intelligence experts claimed the Hunter Biden laptop story published by the New York Post, since found to be true, was just more Russian disinformation.
Mainstream media business models, left and right, benefited from the flow of consumers to sources of Trump information they agreed with. The New York Times used Russiagate to build its subscriber base to all-time highs, while conservative sources such as Fox News benefited from being seen to be more open to Trump.
Yet, much journalistic wisdom about Trump is wrong.
His use of race politics against Harris and Barack Obama may have been crude, but economic history shows Trump was good for the prosperity of African-Americans. Before the pandemic hit, unemployment in black America was at its lowest point since World War II.
Trump’s claims on Wednesday about his economic success as president are also partly true – at least before the pandemic. His January 1, 2018, tax cuts did supercharge growth and employment.
But Trump’s claims the US economy is now in the worst shape in history are silly. US inflation on Thursday last week fell to 2.5 per cent; the Conference Board on August 19 said its leading indicators do not suggest recession is coming; the sharemarket is near its all-time record; and unemployment sits at 4.2 per cent, compared with a long-term average of 5.7 per cent.
Trump is on firmer ground discussing the failures of Biden and Harris in foreign policy. This column accepts Trump’s claim that both Russia and Iran have been emboldened by the weakness of the Biden presidency.
While legitimate doubts exist about whether Trump would support Ukraine, as Australia does, there is plenty of reason to believe Trump is correct to suggest that Putin would not have invaded in 2022 had Trump been president. Chinese President Xi Jinping would not have acquiesced when told by Putin of his plan at the February 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics had Biden not been president.
Similarly, Trump’s tough stands on sanctions against Iran and support for Israel probably would have prevented an attack like Hamas’s in Israel on October 7.
Polling by The New York Times at the start of last week had Trump ahead of Harris by a point. This suggests that despite the Democrats’ focus on Trump’s various prosecutions and the January 6, 2020, Capitol riots, many voters accept his claim that he has been the victim of “weaponised lawfare” from state and local Democrat administrations.
It’s an issue Harris, as a former professional prosecutor, used deftly in the debate to establish herself as a strong leader able to take on Trump face-to-face.
Harris is on much more dangerous ground on border control and her covering up, with Democrat-aligned media, of Biden’s mental decline, which became impossible to hide during the debate between Biden and Trump eight weeks ago.
While Trump returned to the border issue several times during the Harris debate, he let the Vice-President off the hook for hiding Biden’s mental state.
This column on July 7 quoted Pulitzer Prize-winner Glenn Greenwald on the number of people who had belled the cat about Biden’s mental decline in the 18 months before the 2020 election. Covid allowed Biden to escape scrutiny then, and the press, Harris and Biden’s Cabinet shielded him right up until June 28 when the Trump-Biden debate exposed the President’s decline.
Yet Trump’s decision to accept that debate was probably his biggest mistake, as election statistician Nate Silver pointed out on X shortly after the Harris debate. It was Biden’s failure then that gave the Democrats time to move Harris into the presidential nomination.
Silver rated Trump’s other big mistakes as the appointment of JD Vance as his vice-presidential pick; his meandering speech at the Republican Convention on July 19 after the assassination attempt; his failure to anticipate Harris would receive the Democrat nomination; and his failure to prepare for the Harris debate.
Perhaps the harshest assessment of Trump’s performance last week came from former Republican strategist Karl Rove in The Wall Street Journal.
Rove wrote: “There’s no putting lipstick on this pig. Mr Trump was crushed by a woman he previously dismissed as ‘dumb as a rock’. Which raises the question: what does that make him?”
Democrats commentators argue that the public’s disillusionment with the political process took Trump to the presidency in 2016, but has dissipated today. That is wishful thinking. Americans this year have seen a political and media conspiracy to hide the mental state of their president.
David Brooks in The New York Times last week reported Gallup polling showing Americans remain disenchanted with politics: only 25 per cent are satisfied with the way the country is going. Ipsos polling shows 60 per cent of Americans believe the country is in decline – Trump’s core message.
Harris, mocked by conservative media for her giggling and “word salads”, has shown she will be no pushover. Her messages of hope for the voters sound better than Trump’s focus on himself.
Harris has been treated like a rock star by much of the media since she received the nomination. That intensified in major-city media after the debate.
Yet presidential elections are not won inside the largely Democrat bubbles of big-city America.
More Coverage
Can Aussie brands leverage the Super Bowl hype?
At $US8m for a 30-second advertising slot, the Super Bowl has become a major event for fans and brands. With the celebrity-studded ads regularly attracting global headlines, why don’t more local brands leverage the moment?
Adore Beauty expands retail media network to in-store experience
Adore Beauty will focus on an omnichannel retail strategy as it rolls out its network of physical stores nationally.