‘What people wanted’
Often these spectacles of American politics come down to some memorable moment – a rhetorical jab that bloodies an opponent, an unforced error that dogs a campaign for weeks. The first 30 minutes of Biden’s performance in his June debate with Trump is just the latest in a long line of pivotal moments that can throw a campaign off.
But when does a fumbled phrase elevate into a political crisis or a factual slip turn into lost votes? And what from tonight’s historic encounter will merit more than a couple of TikToks making fun of politicians?
We should know in the next day or so, but one may be when Trump claimed that ending the constitutional protection for abortion in Roe v. Wade had returned the issue to the states – a move, he said, “Every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative, they all wanted this issue to be brought back to the states where the people could vote. And that’s what happened.”
Harris then turned that phrase “what people wanted” back on the former president.
“You want to talk about this is what people wanted? Pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail and she’s bleeding out in a car in the parking lot? She didn’t want that. Her husband didn’t want that. A 12- or 13-year-old survivor of incest being forced to carry a pregnancy to term? They don’t want that,” Harris said.
It was a moment of policy, but also a personal moment, and hit on a major theme of the race. That is the kind of moment we have seen stand out in the past: President Gerald Ford wrongly declaring Eastern Europe free of Soviet domination; President Ronald Reagan deftly dispatching concerns about his age with a well-placed quip about the youth and inexperience of his 56-year-old rival; President George H.W. Bush looking at his watch repeatedly during a 1992 town hall debate.
Now, Bush might have been the funny one, but it was former President Bill Clinton who, after mulling it over, offered some good insight into why some debate moments stick: “The reason the watch thing hurt so badly was it tended to reinforce the problem he had in the election.”
Put another way, stories and moments that reaffirm a theme in the campaign that already is present in the minds of voters often resonate long after the lights dim.
So, now Americans will sit back and see what the echo chambers and cable outlets make of an exchange like the one on abortion. Will it fire up more women voters to back the Harris ticket or will it be lost in a sea of economic issues and immigration policy?
If Bill Clinton is right, the abortion back-and-forth will probably resonate if it connects to what voters already think about these candidates and what are the primary issues of this campaign.
[Abridged]
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