Harrisied or Trumped Up?

       The day before the anniversary of 9/11 was the (only?) debate between former President Donald Trump and current Vice-President Kamala Harris prior to the presidential election on November 5th.

       Aside from starting more positively by taking the initiative to shake hands, 

did VP-Harris manage to otherwise prevail over ex-P Trump?

        Trumpster

      Notedly reluctant to shake hands, however when she approached him, his prior knowledge of business etiquette ensured that he didn't decline it. Having been a famous property magnate before his (single?) term in the White House, his behaviour thereafter gives credence to depictions of him as having more money than sense. 

        His claims to being unique among the 45 other presidents do not extend to him being the first to have been criminally convicted. Specifically, this was of having falsified business records. There are still 4 more either just heard, or still pending. 

        Most notoriously of all is the saga behind the 2020 election. Did he engage in illegal conspiracy to overturn his election defeat, including pressuring officials to reverse results, defrauding the US and spreading misinformation which inspired a mass riot which he attempted to exploit to delay the certification of Joe Biden as his successor?   

        Preceding this is the attempt to commit what he has ever since claimed was done to him. Having narrowly lost Georgia, the most damning evidence against him is a leaked phone call in which he pressured the state's top election official to "find 11,780 votes." This is the primary factor in being charged with violating Georgia's Racketeering Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act (also known as Rico). 

        Having left the White House (despite "winning"), he had boxes of classified documents carted away to his Mar-a-Lago mansion in Florida. Classified documents containing national defence information not staying where they should be violates the Espionage Act. Obstructing the FBI from retrieving them is reminiscent of him not wanting to replicate Nixon and the Watergate Tapes.   

        Another means in which Trump actually replicated Nixon is in hush money payment. Whereas Nixon's staff were trying to cover up the botched burglary at Watergate, this is to cover up Trump being a dirty old man with adult-film actress Stormy Daniels shortly before the 2016 election. It is mainly about recording the payment as legal fees, which is a form of fraud under campaign finance legislation. 

        In terms of the choice to be made on November 5th itself, Trump's status as a regular visitor to courtrooms is beside the point. 

      While Donald J Trump doesn't really have a combover, the crash-landed pigeon appearance

 is quite demonstrative of the actual politician/businessman.

          Televised verbal jousting

        Debates tend to be lively conversations, although when it comes to political opponents, it is frequently spoken warfare. Both made claims about the USA itself, and about each other. One of many outlandish claims by Trump was that crime is decreasing in Venezuela because their worst have emigrated to the US, even implying that they had been physically sent there - "given them to her to put into our country."  

          Besides Trump having a monopoly on ludicrous rantings about outsiders, VP-Harris has done very little to persuade the electorate that she is more than an amateur when it comes to economics. Claiming that a so-called "Trump Sales Tax" would cost the average middle class family $4,000 per year is based on Trump's pledge to increase import tariffs. Much of those import tariffs would be for goods manufactured in China. The means with which the PRC conducts international business flies in the face of free-market economics with state subsidies intended to enable their manufacturers to undercut producers beyond their shores which justifies Trump's previous as well as his proposed future economic policies. 

           Furthermore, Harris' attempts to portray Trump's previous presidency as an era of economic doom-and-gloom. The claim that unemployment under Trump was the worst "since the Great Depression" is false. At the end of his term in office, it was 6.4%, far lower than the most recent post-war peek of 10% in 2009. During the Great Depression, approximately one quarter of Americans were unemployed. 

          The fact that Trump's expertise in business and economics is superior to that of Harris didn't preclude him from blathering falsehoods such as "the worst inflation we've ever had" under the Biden-Harris administration. The 9.1% peak in June 2022 decreased to 2.9% in July 2024. It has previously been worse than that recent high. 

            Other areas of policy in which Trump is unknowingly far less of an expert also contained claims by Harris which are misleading, and amount to scare-mongering. "If Trump were to be re-elected, he will sign a national abortion ban." This is based on his term in office, and his corresponding proposal would be to leave abortion access to be decided by individual states. This would mean that there would be less federal overreach and more autonomy for each state regarding this in particular.

         Extending from this, Harris brought up Project 2025. This refers to a document published by the Heritage Foundation which outlines policy proposals that they believe a Trump presidency should implement. Essentially, Project 2025 is a set of ideas consisting of Christian nationalist right-wing mumbo-jumbo which would also aim to give the President what would amount to near absolute power to implement such policies. That is suspiciously close to the Enablement Act. Despite claiming to know nothing about it, and "I have no idea who is behind it," many former Trump administration officials are associated with Project 2025. Oh well, the power of denial...

            When it came to scare-mongering, that is one facet of which Trump outdid Harris by far, especially when it comes to immigration. Despite the USA having developed and become a nation of immigrants, there are apparently too many of them, particularly of a certain type. Among a number of statements during the debate that had Kamala Harris openly laughing, albeit diplomatically quietly, was this claim: "We have millions of people pouring into our country from prisons and jails, from mental institutions and insane asylums." Of the 10 million encounters with migrants crossing the US border since January 2021, there are no figures about how many of them were in such a state. 

               There are some statistics for January until September of this year. 1.4 million have been apprehended for crossing the border. Of them, about 14,700 had previous criminal convictions. This 1% of them isn't even vaguely close to the "millions" that Trump is claiming. 

         The claimed statistics are less ludicrous than the blabbered claims of the behaviour of Haitian immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. "They're eating the dogs, the people that come in, they're eating the cats, they're eating the pets of people that live there." This completely baseless claim originated from his running mate, JD Vance. According to Springfield city officials, there have not been any credible reports of anything even a little close to this.

"Immigrant's lunch"?!

            War and Peace, not by Leo Tolstoy

           Generally rattled by Harris, Trump claimed he could solve the Ukraine war, even as President-elect. Without explaining how exactly, he insisted he knows how to negotiate with Vladimir Putin. The war wouldn't have even happened if he had been President, while he refused to say whether or not he would prefer Ukraine to win the conflict. Yet another part of the world involving "millions", even though the genuine number of verified civilian deaths is 11,700. 

            Whereas VP-Harris may have bungled a diplomatic mission, Trump would have prevented a lot of deaths and suffering by negotiating with Putin as Trump is more inclined to cut a deal. To achieve this, he would be less willing to challenge an expansionist Russia. 

This means that Trump would continue to be Putin's useful idiot, as he continually fails to recognize that Vladimir Putin is a compulsive liar and a global sociopath.

         "It's the economy, stupid"

        While economics and taxation are policy areas and subjects in which Trump is an expert and his greatest strength, concurrently they are Harris' most significant weakness. What has she done as VP, and what would she do as President? The electorate doesn't really know. "Bidenomics", major state investment in infrastructure and green energy, turned out to be a mild plagiarism of Roosevelt's New Deal, with this also having the additional side-effect of inflation and high interest rates detracting from any jobs and growth that may have been created.  

           Mortgage assistance for those buying a first home and tax credits for new parents enable many to get a good start, while bans on "price gouging" at grocery stores are improvised means for lessening something of a fantasy problem which is merely a symptom of pre-existing inflation which the Biden administration initiated. In an interview with CNN, she said that "one of my highest priorities is to do what we can to support and strengthen the middle class." This parallels the dog-tired slogans of the (hopefully soon to be former) Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau and his vacuous blather of a government that "is focused on the middle class and those working hard to join it." 

           The combination of benefits and social security programs she has previously supported are to be at least partially funded by increasing corporate taxes. Ideally, she could and should provide more detail so that throwing money and handouts is not funded by taxes that lead to the US having its economic joints dislocated. Objectively formulated economic policies would enable Harris to not fit the criteria of the expression 'all style and no substance.' 

            Wanted: Most of one with a little bit of the other...

         Lively former prosecutor or grumpy old bad loser? A third candidate would probably be the equivalent of the laughable Ross Perot. Ideally, the US should have a full spectrum of common sense policies delivered by an objective candidate. The angry mob could find some genuine justification for voting for Trump if he gave a suitable confession inspired by the final speech given towards the end of Schindler's List:

"I have changed party affiliation many times. I usurped the Republican Party.

I couldn't bring myself to accept not having won the previous election.

Such was my state of denial that I engaged in racketeering to overturn it.

When that was also unsuccessful, I incited riots in a last-ditch effort to overthrow the government.

I am...a criminal."

         Otherwise, Kamala Harris should become more than the 'Not Trump' candidate and enable herself to win by a clearer majority than most recent opinion polls indicate. 

A narrow lead - can it be converted into winning the key swing states?

     This narrow deficit has not stopped Trump from claiming to have won the televised debate according to some phantom polls he just made up.

      Ideally, Kamala Harris should adopt the commercial/business guru side of Trump and communicate it just as she did by speaking directly to the camera during the debate. Doing so would enable many or most Trumpian diehards to simply let go. 

      Otherwise, the mindset of the slightly deluded proportion of the American electorate could end up remaining stuck and somewhat lost as described in some lyrics of the band Wilco (from Chicago):

       I wonder why we listen to poets when nobody gives a f***.

        Speaking of tomorrow, how will it ever come?

        All my lies are only wishes. 

        I would like to salute the ashes of American flags, and all the fallen leaves filling up shopping bags.