Versione Italiana – Translation by Paul Rosenberg
Yes, she can! The nomination slogan launched by Barack Obama during his speech at the convention in Chicago is perfect three-word summary of the outcome of the televised duel in Philadelphia. Kamala Harris can. The Democratic candidate for the presidency of the United States can do it. It will be tough, but the final, decisive game for the presidency has begun, and can end with her victory on November 5.
The reserve player who took the field when the match seemed irremediably jeopardized for the Democrats has put the ball back in the center. Like the last-minute goals of the legendary Juventus player Renato Cesarini, her attacks in this final phase of the presidential race “hit the net” wrong-footing Donald Trump. They force him to counterattack and play defense, and he is terrible at defense, as we saw in the televised debate on Tuesday night, but also in the preceding long-distance dueling that began on July 21 after Joe Biden’s dramatic step back. With the vice president’s entry into the race, we have seen an increasingly nervous and inconsistent Trump – while polls have indicated a strong rise for his challenger – to the point that he was tempted to avoid the televised duel.
Televised debates are overrated for their ability to significantly influence a presidential race. They have only been truly decisive in a few cases. However, the debate on June 28 was a major turning point, to the point of forcing Joe Biden to leave the race. This is another reason that there were great expectations for the debate conducted by ABC, and why it was considered decisive. A failure or even a narrow draw would have been fatal for the Democratic candidate. The opposite happened. Arch-enemy Elon Musk recognizes that Kamala Harris “has gone beyond the expectations of many.” And, after the unfortunate televised challenge, Trump is being treated in his own camp with the same respect with which Biden was shown the door by his own: putting it kindly, Fox News political analyst Brit Hume said that Trump had “a bad night,” the exact words that cronies like Obama and Pelosi used with Biden after the catastrophic duel with the Republican challenger; conservative powerhouse Lindsey Graham was more brutal, calling his friend’s performance a “disaster.” “Harris is not just winning. Trump is losing,” Republican strategist Frank Luntz said during the debate, annoyed when the former president called his flatterer, Viktor Orbán, “one of the most respected men” in the world.
The flash polls confirm the knockout. A CNN survey gives 63 percent to Harris, 37 percent to Trump. But going beyond the horse race that so excites the media, more prosaically the tangible result for Kamala Harris is the haul of donations: in just three hours after the debate, the Democratic platform ActBlue raised over 23 million dollars, thus reaching over a billion dollars received from donors since July 21, the day Harris’s campaign began. The other great result was Taylor Swift’s endorsement. She is not simply just another addition to the list of the many celebrities who have given their support to Harris: Swift is much more than a star, she is the leader of a world of fans, the Swifties, 283 million kids and young people who are extremely devoted to her and ready to do anything to demonstrate their love and loyalty for her.
With the spotlight more on the two contenders’ body language than on the content, Harris’ political positioning has faded into the background, no longer as a vice president but as a candidate. Concerns about not being considered a copy of Biden, while at the same time being careful to distance herself from her still current “boss” in a way that does not sound critical, has certainly influenced her “line”. The result? A decidedly “centrist” speech, aimed at the moderate electorate in the balance, especially Republicans. Harris takes the support of other electoral segments who hate Trump for granted, even those on the left, who even are willing to swallow the endorsement of the diabolical Dick Cheney, but also her support of fracking – the emblem of the utmost contempt for the environment – with the added goodwill towards guns, which she herself boasted of owning. Harris’ international politics are in close continuity with Biden, with a modest distancing from the president on the Palestinian question, who has never reached the point of calling for the creation of a new state, but rather an indefinite self-determination. Since in politics the sums of votes are algebraic, it remains to be seen whether these maneuvers – only tactical? – lose more votes than they bring in.
Holding together the diverse electorate that should give her the majority on November 5 is the theme on which she insisted most and most effectively, in the initial part of the debate, which was the most viewed, and in front of the emblem of misogyny and extremist machismo: women’s reproductive rights and respect for women, themes that are obviously dear to the female electorate across the board, even on the right. Combined with the support of Taylor Swift – in the spirit of female solidarity – this seems to be the salient political fact that may be capable of producing significant shifts of important parts of the electorate towards Kamala.
Il Manifesto
[Addendum: The very strong female attendance at the Harris rally in Greensboro, NC on Sept. 12, and the wild enthusiasm with which Harris herself was met further reinforce this point. Here is video of the 2 minute plus ovation that greeted Kamala Harris that evening – video by Paul Rosenberg]
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