Washington Wednesday: Aiming for the middle

LINDSAY MAST, HOST: It’s Wednesday the 11th of September.

Glad to have you along for today’s edition of The World and Everything in It. Good morning, I’m Lindsay Mast.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

First up on The World and Everything in It, last night’s Presidential debate.

The two candidates squared off for the first and what may be the last time. Former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris currently have no other debates scheduled.

With two months to go till the election and more than one poll this week showing them in a dead heat, both candidates had a lot riding on the faceoff.

MAST: So could the debate change voters’ minds about the candidates…or does it simply reinforce their perspectives?

WORLD reporter Leo Briceno has the story.

LEO BRICENO: The country got its first real good look at the updated presidential tickets as Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Donald Trump went toe to toe on Tuesday evening.

Trump spent the bulk of his time attacking the Biden-Harris administration on the border, on domestic policy, and international strength while also defending his own record.

TRUMP: Our country is being lost. We're a failing nation, and it happened three and a half years ago.

In response, Harris tried to pitch a new path forward for the country.

HARRIS: As a prosecutor, I never asked a victim or a witness, are you a Republican or a Democrat? The only thing I ever asked them, are you okay? And that's the kind of President we need right now, someone who cares about you and is not putting themselves first.

Heading into the debate, voters had questions about how the candidates would handle issues like abortion, border security, and the economy. I asked pro-life voter Liliana Zylstra what she hoped to hear from Trump on abortion.

ZYLSTRA: I guess my hope would be that Trump will, you know, retract and correct his previous statements that he’s made, you know, supporting legal abortion on some level or even condemning pro-life laws. If he can’t do that then I think at the very least he should challenge Kamala Harris on her record of permitting unlimited abortions and bullying those who stand in her way.

Trump reaffirmed his stance that states should decide abortion laws now that Roe v. Wade has been overturned. He declined to answer whether he would veto a pro-abortion bill if it reached his desk.

TRUMP: But what I did is something, for 52 years, they've been trying to get Roe v. Wade into the states. And through the genius and heart and strength of six Supreme Court justices, we were able to do that. Now, I believe in the exceptions for rape, incest and life of the mother. I believe strongly in it. Ronald Reagan did also. 85% of Republicans do—exceptions, very important, but we were able to get it, and now states are voting on it.

Democratic voters I spoke with wanted to see if Harris would be able to appeal to the political center and win over Republicans who have qualms about voting for Trump. Craig Ellis, a longtime supporter of Joe Biden and a Democratic voter from California, told me he wanted to see how Harris would address issues like the economy and the border.

ELLIS: She'll have to bring up the fact that they were ready to pass the most conservative border bill in decades. And Trump shot it down because he wanted to, and I think people understand that.

Ellis thought Harris did a good job of that. He said she came across exactly as he would have hoped— as more of a former Attorney General and less of a verbal bruiser. Harris also made direct appeals to disaffected Republicans and touted endorsements from Republicans like former vice president Dick Cheney.

BAKER: Whether you think the establishment is good or not, I think that this shows that Kamala Harris is the establishment candidate.

Hunter Baker is provost of North Greenville University and a contributor to WORLD Opinions. He says while Harris called for unity and establishment values and policies, Trump offered the alternative to that.

BAKER: Whereas Trump is a challenge to the establishment. Now, is he the right challenge to the establishment? Good question. Not so sure about that, but He is the anti-establishment candidate.

Baker said both candidates made appeals to the center…with Trump moderating his position on abortion, and Harris moving away from her prior leftist positions.

BAKER: This may be more than a “get out the base” election. This may be the election where you've got to find that sliver of voters in the middle and to convince them to come over to your side.

Trump has been a defining character in politics for almost 10 years now. The same can’t really be said of Harris who, to the general public, is a much newer figure.

HENNIGAN: …she is the first person in a long time that is in this spot without having a primary election for her to get voted in.

Craig Hennigan teaches debate and communication at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. He says Harris went into the debate with a lot to prove, even with her party’s enthusiastic backing.

HENNIGAN: And like some voters are probably going to be taking a look at that too and be like, did the DNC make the right choice? Because I wasn’t really involved in this one.

Although Harris might be a relatively new face for voters, she’s got a track record with the current administration. Harris didn’t try to run from that record, but also didn’t embrace it as her own.

HARRIS: It's important to remind the former president, you're not running against Joe Biden, you're running against me.

Baker thought that was a key moment for the Vice President.

BAKER: She has to somehow convince voters that when she is forward looking, that is the true Kamala Harris, whereas the record of the administration is not necessarily who she is. So she is, she is kind of saying, look forward. I am both going to be more moderate than I appear to have been in the past, and I am going to be a uniter of people.

In his closing remarks, President Trump challenged that vision.

TRUMP: Why hasn't she done it? She's been there for three and a half years. They've had three and a half years to fix the border. They've had three and a half years to create jobs and all the things we talked about. Why hasn't she done it?

With the debate now over, it’s time for American voters to decide who won. Some will decide based on policy positions the candidates took. Others will focus on how the candidates performed on stage.

STEWARD: So it’s the first impressions matter…

Patrick A. Stewart teaches political science at the University of Arkansas. He’s written about how debate audiences pick winners and losers, and says four characteristics are at play.

STEWART: …And one of them is dominance, and certainly, that’s Donald Trump’s strength. Then there’s competence. With Harris, that has been her strength. Then we look at them in terms of trustworthiness. And dominance and trustworthiness are correlated to a certain extent in that we trust people who are more dominant less—so it’s a negative correlation. And then finally there’s attractiveness.

But even as voters evaluate how the candidates performed, Hennigan says the debate isn’t likely to change people’s minds.

HENNIGAN: Presidential debates don’t often move the needle at all. Only about 10 percent of the people who are watching it are undecided and 10 percent of those actually come to a decision as a result of those debates so you’re talking about a subset of a subset of people who are actually influenced by the debate.

Voters still have ample time to come to a decision about the candidates. Despite the last-minute switch in the Democratic ticket, this was still the earliest-ever televised debate between presidential candidates from opposing parties … no debate had ever been held before September 21—with the exception of this year’s matchup between Biden and Trump in June.

In that debate, President Biden dramatically underperformed expectations… leaving Trump the victor. Baker says this debate was different.

BAKER: If I was forced to declare a winner, I would say that Kamala Harris won because she radically outperformed very low expectations. Donald Trump did not lose but she can make a case for victory.

This might be the one and only time Trump and Harris take the debate stage together. The two campaigns are discussing the possibility of a second debate, but no details have been confirmed.

That’s it for Washington Wednesday. Reporting for WORLD, I’m Leo Briceno.

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