ABC Presidential Debate: Part II

Harris's concessions to the center betray her vulnerability. Insincere flip-flopping is an affront to voter intelligence.

Yesterday, I considered what Republicans watching the ABC Presidential Debate might have gleaned from Trump’s performance. Today, I examine the opposite side of the story: what might a Democrat, or even an undecided voter, find appealing in Vice-President Kamala Harris’s first major cross-examination since declaring her candidacy?

Harris performed better than expected, achieving a level of cogency that would have been the bare minimum for candidates of the past. There is no shortage of “Kamala-isms” online — videos of her rambling incoherently when probed for specific answers to policy questions. Democrats were concerned that she would bring the same confusion to this debate, risking a similar media meltdown to the one that followed Biden’s fatal debate with Trump. But Harris was articulate in speech and assured in presence; traits she has failed to demonstrate heretofore. Visuals matter. Biden’s physical frailty was his undoing, but Harris’s youthful vigor shifted attention from aesthetics to semantics.

Trump was goaded into gratuitous responses to petty digs on his “crowd sizes”. Such diversions cost the former President meaningful speaking time. Harris’s tactics gave Democratic voters the impression that, after a decade of trying and failing to out-maneuver Trump’s unique rhetorical style, her team might be making headway. Harris was able to rattle off a few of her ideas and was wonderfully vague.

Abortion

She touted her abortion policies and committed to codifying the protections of Roe v. Wade into federal law; standard fare for Democrats in 2024 — the days of “safe, legal, and rare” are long gone.

However, it should be noted that Roe v. Wade hasn’t been the law of the land since 1992. While its “essential holding” of a right to an abortion remained, large parts of the case were later overruled. When the Supreme Court issued its ruling in Planned Parenthood v. Casey, it invalidated Roe’s trimester framework in favor of a fetal viability test. Elective abortions would only be allowed in cases where the fetus was not yet viable outside of the mother’s womb. States could regulate post-viability fetuses, and the Supreme Court reduced the standard of scrutiny for statutes that sought to regulate abortion. This gave anti-abortion states considerable leeway to restrict abortion up to 12 weeks, something they could not have done before.

When Harris says she wants to codify the protections of Roe v. Wade into law, she should be specific. If she means Roe in its entirety, then she means to expand abortion access in scope nationally beyond anything seen in the last thirty years. It would upend regulatory power and subvert the democratic will of dozens of states. This may be popular to Progressive Democrats, but it would spell the end of the Pro-Life movement.

Harris weaseled out of answering why she’s flip-flopped on so many of her once staunch Progressive views. She was asked to explain why she reversed her positions on fracking, mandatory gun buyback programs, and decriminalizing border crossings. Instead, she riffed on American energy independence before segueing into a sap story about her upbringing. The moderators, of course, did not reiterate their question to Harris, though her spiel on energy independence might have just tipped the scales in her favor in Pennsylvania, a state rich with untapped fracking potential.

In their push to “decarbonize” America’s energy grid, Democrats are pursuing a dangerous energy transition plan, swapping reliable, baseload power plants like coal, gas, and nuclear with unreliable, intermittent power sources like wind and solar. The Inflation Reduction Act gives huge amounts of tax credits to wind and solar construction, meaning that those energy sources get to compete on an uneven playing field with more reliable sources. The problem with increasing the share of energy production controlled by intermittent sources is that when the sun isn’t shining and the wind isn’t blowing, it’s not so simple to rev up the tried and tested sources.

To be economically viable, reliable power sources like coal, gas, and nuclear need to be running round the clock. A nuclear power plant is not shut off and turned on again with the flick of a switch. If more intermittent sources pollute the grid and reduce the operating time of reliable energy sources, it makes each unit of power from those sources considerably more expensive. It further means that when demand for energy spikes, those reliable, baseload sources might not be ready to meet the moment in time. The consequence of these two factors in tandem is higher energy prices and more rolling blackouts for the American citizen. It means less grid reliability, and, in the 21^st century, grid reliability is a matter of life and death.

Economy

Harris put forward her plans to increase the child tax credit to $6,000 and offer tax deductions for small business startups. In the abstract, these are promising ideas to pressing policy challenges. It should be noted, however, that Harris only endorsed the $6,000 child tax credit after Trump’s running mate, J.D. Vance, proposed a $5,000 child tax credit. Harris is the school bully taking a sneaky peak at other students’ notes.

The small business tax deduction is a good idea, in the abstract, but the Biden-Harris administration has run the largest peacetime, non-emergency federal deficit in the history of the United States: the debt currently stands at an astonishing $35 trillion. Our interest payments on the debt now exceed the entire military budget. America does not have the money to offer tax relief on every pet policy project. Tax credits for families, in order to boost the disastrously low birth rate, would ameliorate a more existential problem than providing relief to small businesses.

Harris said that America needs to bolster its economic ties with allies, criticized Trump’s handling of the trade war with China, and stated that he left office with one of the largest trade deficits in American history. It should be noted, however, that the Biden-Harris administration left many of Trump’s tariffs against China in place, and even expanded a few. If Trump is guilty of starting a trade war, the Biden-Harris administration is guilty of prosecuting it.

Her economic agenda is an empty box but with a sparkling veneer.

Foreign Policy

Harris reiterated the Biden administration’s commitment to supporting Ukraine against Russia in a conflict approaching its third year. She refused to outline how she planned to end the conflict other than by throwing more American tax dollars at the problem. Nor did she explain how she would get allies to start footing their portion of the bill. The U.S. has been bankrolling the welfare states of Europe for decades by providing for their defense. Trump wants Europe to start defending itself.

Harris defended the Biden Administration’s withdrawal from Afghanistan, noting that American blood and treasure are no longer routinely wasted in that quagmire. We all saw the disastrous withdrawal for what it was. American allies were left to die. Bodies fell from departing planes. Millions of dollars in American military equipment were left behind and then taken by the Taliban. The Biden-Harris administration gave our enemies everything they wanted.

Most strikingly, Harris said that she supports Israel and its right to defend itself. This was a shocking statement given the anti-Israel civil war currently roiling the Democratic Party. It was just this year that student protests erupted across American universities in the aftermath of Hamas’s attack on October 7^th. Pro-Palestinian students cheered on the senseless deaths of over a thousand Israeli civilians. The Democratic Party has a sizeable antisemitic faction which its leaders refuse to thoroughly condemn. Whether Harris’s statement is enough to reassure Jewish Democrats remains to be seen. In this two-horse race, whether it weakens her standing with erstwhile Progressives is inconsequential.

Harris took surprising positions throughout the night. Alongside voicing notional support for Israel, she told Americans that the government is not coming for their guns. This volte-face was particularly surprising given that nearly every Democrat, from the far-center to the fringe, has called for a gun rights crackdown. This promise: an undeniable centrist play. Harris is almost certainly lying, but it might be enough to convince a few voters stranded in no-mans-land.

Harris also flattered high-profile Republicans of yesteryear, including former Vice-President Dick Cheney. Having spent the better part of two decades name-calling Bush-era Republicans, comparing them to Nazis, and blaming them for genocidal imperialism, she is now positively touting them. Harris is trying hard to sweep up the disaffected Republican vote. We’ll see how many Democrats are lost in the process.

Concessions to the center betray her vulnerability, and insincere flip-flopping is an affront to voter intelligence. Harris has a plan: Distance herself from the Biden administration; keep her real beliefs quiet as she courts the middle ground; and make Trump look like the radical. Every single one of these flip flops is almost certainly a lie. There is no possible way that Harris, by some metrics the most Progressive Senator in Congress, would suddenly have so profound a change of heart.