Twenty-four hours after the only presidential debate of this US campaign between the Democratic candidate, current Vice President Kamala Harris, and the Republican candidate, former President Donald Trump, it is perhaps time, if not to draw conclusions, to think with a cooler head about what happened during the night between Tuesday and Wednesday, even leaving aside certain triumphalistic headlines that appeared in some Italian newspapers and probably prepared the previous day.
It seems like an era has passed since the debate less than two months ago between the tycoon and the incumbent president Biden. A setback that led to the withdrawal of the old Joe’s candidacy. Today it seems that in some respects the roles have been reversed: Trump’s 78 years undoubtedly weigh compared to Harris’s 59. The tycoon appeared stiff and in some parts nervous, rather repetitive on some concepts and less at ease than other times on stage; he avoided gaffes and vulgarity, but, perhaps precisely out of caution, some of his attacks seemed predictable. Harris undoubtedly passed the most important test for her, appearing serious and presidential, toned in the attacks on her opponent and smiling towards the audience; she managed to reject many of the former president’s attacks and appear reassuring for the audience.
However, analyzing the content of the debate, it does not seem that Harris has won a landslide victory. Undoubtedly, she played her cards well on some issues, bringing home some important points. The first is that of access to abortion, where she stressed that it is her intention to “restore full freedom of choice to American women” and that the “government, and certainly Donald Trump, should never tell a woman what to do”, accusing Trump and the Republicans of wanting to abolish access to abortion. The second successful attack is the one on the fact that Trump had not accepted defeat in the last elections and had supported and defended the violent attacks of some protesters; she managed to paint her opponent as an anti-democrat and an extremist, which has distanced many authoritative Republican exponents from the party. She then insisted on the fact that the former president has been indicted and convicted and that Americans are tired of his rhetoric and lies. In his final statement he defined his vision of America as open to the future, a vision that can inspire the American people, with a new “economy of opportunity”. (…)
