The Debate
In May 1916, the German High Seas Fleet sallied out of the Baltic Sea in an attempt to break the blockade imposed by Britain’s Royal Navy. This was the largest and only surface battle between the two warring nations during the Great War and finished in a kind of draw. Vice-Admiral Reinhard Scheer hoped for a quick kill, disposing of Britain’s smaller battlecruiser force before Admiral Sir John Jellicoe’s main force, the Grand Fleet, could arrive. However, superior British intelligence forewarned its commander, and the Grand Fleet arrived in time to engage the Germans. In what followed, the British lost twice as many ships and twice as many sailors. But this was enough to prevent a breakout and force Scheer to break off engagement and sail what was left of his fleet back to port where it hibernated for the remainder of the war.
Scheer won the battle but lost the war. All Jellicoe had to do was draw. Winning the battle was not necessary. Thereafter the High Seas Fleet never again tried to break out, leaving German naval warfare to rely on das boot, the U-boat fleet. Eventually, starvation, the influx of US troops to France and the strategic genius of the Canadian and Australian generals forced the German surrender in World War I.
I was reminded of this cautionary tale when approaching the recent presidential debate between Donald Trump and Kamela Harris. After the first debate when Joe Biden blew himself out of the water, the Democratic Party turned to sitting Vice-President Harris to right the ship. Many felt that she needed to win and win big in order to introduce herself to the American people, who knew Trump well but not the bi-racial woman who sallied forth. I, on the other hand, thought she only needed to draw – to not lose – in order to maintain the momentum garnered in the six weeks since her replacement of the sitting president as the Democrat Party’s candidate.
Trump treated her candidature with contempt, partly a familiar tactic of the front-runner, and partly an indication of the complacency of a natural born bully. As it turned out, Harris did win big. The general verdict across the media and pundit-land was clear and consistent. Quite simply, she got under Trump’s skin, colonised his mind, in a way that no other opponent had managed to do in the past. She threw him off his game. And he couldn’t fathom (naval pun, sorry) how to get back into the game.
Trump, as usual demanded and received more speaking time than Harris, which favoured her because his rage caused him to keep digging when he should have desisted. So rattled by Harris, Trump missed the few opportunities she handed him to pivot to the current state of the economy on which her policies are suspect, and potentially off-putting to wealthy donors. His insistence on repeating long-rehearsed lies about crime, immigrants, the size of his crowds and his glorious record in office exposed a defensive, slow-footed fool. Immediate polls and focus groups confirmed the impressions gained by live audiences that his freewheeling, unprepared rants fell on fallow ground. The avalanche of meme’s focused on his most outrageous lies. But the real message was that he had badly underestimated his opponent, ironically just as he was underestimated in 2016.
That he knew he was in trouble was clearly signalled by his immediate appearance post-debate in the ‘spin room’, where he could berate his tame journalists and donors with the counterfactual claim of another Trump triumph.
However, the celebrations in the Harris camp were muted as it became clear that the polls over the next days indicated the election was still essentially tied in the battleground states. Trump showed every indication of yet again doubling down, repeating his more ridiculous claims that had drawn wry smiles and studied derision by Harris during the debate. Trump and his assistant, the born again Trumpist, J.D. Vance, did what the playbook demanded – double down on doubling down. The Donald is now pinning his hopes of victory on solidifying his base and letting it loose over the next six weeks and beyond until January 6th.
In fact, it is his only hope. The debates and polls are largely beside the point. The outcome in November will depend, first on which party has the best ground game to get their vote out in the swing states and second, how effective the MAGists are in suppressing the vote in those states. Both candidates have a solid 47 per cent or so of declared voters. Both candidates are fighting over more than the remaining 5 or 6. Per cent. But there is a sizable minority of citizens beyond that group who don’t vote, either because voting has been made too difficult or dangerous or by deliberate choice. Whichever candidate can cut into that disparate pool will probably win on November 5th.
As I write, news of another assassination attempt on Trump has come through. Although the gun shots appear to have been fired by FBI agents at a fleeing suspect, Trump is hailing the incident as yet another demonstration of God’s vote and is using it as a marketing device to attract small donations. It is also an indication of the ratcheting up in violence beyond the incendiary rhetoric of the Republican candidate.
The Harris campaign is at a critical juncture. It’s clear that Trump won’t risk another debate, unless his overweening conceit and bruised ego rides roughshod over the advice of his more sensible and professional advisers – a real possibility given his recent choice of travelling companions. If that occurs, those more sober advisers may begin to quietly leave the ship.
Failing another kamikaze blitz by Trump, Harris will need to focus more on detailing her oft professed ‘plan’. At the moment her repeated claim, ‘I have a plan’, exists on the aspirational level of ‘I have a dream’. Martin Luther King, if you remember, went on to say what the key elements of his dream were. Harris needs to tell the majority of American households how she will stop their living standards and life expectancy from continuing to decline. Childcare, education and improved health insurance signal a great start. But she needs to convince uncommitted voters that the remorseless trend to rising economic inequality will be reversed under her administration, as progressive commentators like Joseph Stiglitz, Robert Reich and Bernie Sanders propound. Liberals continue to be cast as ‘elitists’ out of touch with real people – a believable jibe – leaving a billionaire as the champion of the dispossessed! America is not and has never been the meritocracy so lauded in folklore. Class inequality rules. Social mobility has stalled during the neoliberal order.
At the moment she is seeking to compare ‘visions’. She is all about the future, while he looks to the past – ‘and we are not going back’. In fact, she has to go back to point out the chaos and dysfunction of Trump’s last time in the White House, while knocking down Trump’s vague claims about a better future under him. And remember, the voters are firmly in the present, hurting like hell. Her best way forward is to win unconvinced young voters and middle class women. These groups seem to be in the vanguard of the recent swing towards her and there are more of them out there. The gender divide is pretty well baked in thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision to scrap Roe v. Wade. Rising employment and wages and falling inflation should be a good story to counter the wild lies of her opponent. But ‘should’ is not good enough. She needs to tackle the economic arguments front on.
Her other weak flank is, of course, immigration. Whenever Trump is under pressure, he pivots to this issue. It’s clear that the border is a major issue that is not going away. It is likely to be Trump’s version of Custer’s last stand. He will continue to double down here. Explaining and promoting Biden’s deal with moderate Republicans in Congress is her best way forward here. Beyond that her campaign will benefit from the continuing leakage of sensible Republicans coming out against Trump. The RINOs may help save America.
If not and Trump goes on to win, Biden’s epitaph may well be – après moi, l’deluge.