Democratic presidential nominee and U.S. Vice-President Kamala Harris speaks during a presidential debate at The National Constitution Center, in Philadelphia, Pa., on Sept. 10.Win McNamee/Getty Images
Kamala Harris had one job.
On Tuesday night, she had to do one thing, though it wasn’t the job her supporters wanted doing.
They of course wanted the Vice-President to use her first and likely only meeting with former president Donald Trump to go into full prosecutorial mode. Spend 90 minutes going after him. Prove once and for all that he’s dangerous and unfit for high office. Charge and convict. Get the national jury to hand down a guilty verdict.
But the person on trial before the electorate is not Mr. Trump. It’s Ms. Harris. Her job in the debate was not to convict him. It was to acquit herself. That’s her path to the White House.
If a small number of swing voters, in a small number of swing states, cannot be persuaded that Ms. Harris is innocent of the charges Republicans have levelled at her – that she’s a Berkeley radical who wants open borders, defunded police, a shutdown of the oil and gas industry and on and on – then they’ll vote for Mr. Trump. If that happens, he’ll be president again.
Many swing voters have already heard chapter and verse of the Trump accusations against Ms. Harris, and far less of her defence. Tuesday night was a rare opportunity for Ms. Harris to reach those voters.
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That’s why she talked positively about fracking and how oil and gas production had increased sharply under the Biden administration. It’s why she praised the border security bill that Republicans and Democrats in Congress had agreed on earlier this year – and which Mr. Trump ordered killed because it would have deprived him of a crisis to weaponize. She talked about new benefits for parents and broadening health care. She talked at length about Republicans who are backing her. She invoked the name of a late, great Republican, Senator John McCain.
As for Mr. Trump, he spent long sections of the debate spewing nonsense, inventing facts and predicting the end of the world if Democrats remain in charge.
In an earlier era, Mr. Trump’s performance would have been enough to decide the election. But that’s not the era we’re living in.
The reason this debate was a trial of Ms. Harris more than of Mr. Trump is that voters already know who he is. We’ve had eight years of his wall-to-wall carpeting. People voting for the Orange Julep know what they’re getting, and most of them aren’t going to change their minds.
But there are also many reluctant Trump voters. He has their vote for now, but only because they’re more fearful of the other party. If presented with what they see as a moderate, reasonable Democratic alternative, they are persuadable.
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In 2020, President Joe Biden persuaded enough of them that he was a moderate, pre-woke, blue-collar alternative, and he won because of it. Four years earlier, Hillary Clinton called them a basket of deplorables. That worked out as expected.
Going on about how the Republican candidate is a menace to democracy and the rule of law makes Democrats feel great. It’s the vibe they’ve been vibing on all summer. It even has the virtue of being true. But Ms. Harris doesn’t have to win over voters who are already in love with her. She doesn’t have to persuade the persuaded.
Her job Tuesday night was to introduce herself – she’s still an unknown quantity for many Americans – and make herself as palatable as possible to swing voters in seven swing states. We’re talking about a relatively small number of somewhat conservative, mostly working-class people in Nevada, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Michigan, Wisconsin and, above all, Pennsylvania.
The United States is now a 50-50 nation. This election is a game of inches. Tiny shifts in voter intention and turnout in those seven states are going to decide who ends up in the White House and who gets to visit on the guided tour. In 2020, in a country of more than 300 million people, Mr. Biden’s margin of victory was just 44,000 votes in three states.
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Tuesday night was Ms. Harris’s best chance to speak to reluctant Trump voters in the Swing Seven. Persuading some of them to vote for her, or at the very least convincing them that a Democratic victory is no existential threat, such that they stay home and don’t vote at all, is her best path to victory.
If those reluctant Trumpists hold their noses and send Mr. Trump back to the White House, it will be because Ms. Harris failed to persuade them that she’s the less objectionable option.
In Tuesday’s debate, it was Ms. Harris in the electoral dock. But she was a strong witness in her own defence, which allowed her to go on offence. Her performance, in style and substance, was far better than Mr. Biden’s in his disastrous debate in June.
The Harris campaign should spend the next few weeks trying to goad Mr. Trump into accepting another debate. Ms. Harris needs it. Without more persuasion, the jury of swing-state voters may still be of a mind to reject the prosecutor and re-elect the crook.