THE FIRST PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE: JOE BIDEN AND DONALD TRUMP – A TRAIN WRECK IN CLEVELAND

Farce. Debacle. Disgrace. And those were the kinder terms applied to the first presidential debate held September 29 in Cleveland. Commentators expressed shock and dismay

at how the proceedings disintegrated into a shouting match involving President Donald Trump, Democratic challenger former Vice President Joe Biden, and moderator Chris Wallace of Fox News. MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow declared, “This sort of debate shouldn’t happen in a democracy.”

                 

It unfolded as it did because Trump wouldn’t comply with the rules. He constantly interrupted Biden and engaged in verbal battles with Wallace. Trump behaved that way

so consistently, he must have gone in with a strategy of provoking Biden into a temper tantrum or making him appear mentally unstable. For the most part, Biden kept his cool and, under trying circumstances, demonstrated command of his faculties.

The rules had been worked out between the parties, with each candidate given two minutes of uninterrupted time for responses to

questions from Wallace on six broad topics, followed by a discussion period. Instead of adhering to that, from the beginning Trump talked over Biden’s answers and sparred with Wallace about the nature of questions and his efforts to enforce the rules. At the end, many who watched found themselves exhausted and embarrassed. One of our daughters sent a text saying that after 45 minutes she’d broken into the wine and “tapped out.”  Veteran Democratic strategist James Carville said, “I was being paid to watch and I had a hard time getting through this.”

 

A Few Memorable Moments

Presidential debates often become known for a memorable line or a gaffe by one candidate. Who can forget Gerald Ford in 1976 claiming

the old Soviet Union didn’t dominate Poland? Or Ronald Reagan in 1980, telling Jimmy

                                                   

Carter, “There you go again?” Then there was George H.W. Bush looking at his watch in

1992, suggesting his impatience with being on stage with Bill Clinton and H. Ross Perot.  No such moment occurred in this debate. The closest anyone came was when Biden said about Trump’s handling of the pandemic, “It is what it is because you are who you are.” But there were things people will remember.

First, Trump wouldn’t, when given a direct opportunity, condemn white supremacy. Instead, he urged that a right-wing group known as the Proud Boys, “stand back and

stand by,” an ominous warning seemingly inviting preparations for future mayhem. Trump’s pass on condemning white supremacy earned him widespread condemnation in the media and from anti-hate groups.

Second, Trump wouldn’t recognize the military service of Biden’s late son, Beau.  When Biden told Trump his son wasn’t a “loser” or a “sucker” as Trump reportedly  described fallen

American soldiers, Trump attacked Biden’s other son, Hunter, for alleged improprieties in connection with business activities in Ukraine, allegations that have proved unfounded despite several investigations.

Finally, Trump demonstrated an astounding lack of respect for American traditions and empathy for people lost in the pandemic. Biden showed the opposite on both counts.   

Impact on the Race?

Beforehand, we laid out objectives each candidate might have, with the idea we’d look for how each did or didn’t achieve them. We quickly realized we couldn’t do that kind of analysis. Trump’s behavior defied a rational

accounting of objectives set versus objectives achieved. Trump took the role of Disrupter-in-Chief and the debate resembled a wrestling match with a pig in a mud puddle.

Dramatist George Bernard Shaw once warned about the danger of getting into such a contest. “You get dirty,” he said. “Besides the

pig likes it.” Biden did his best, succumbing only a few times to the  frustration. He had good moments when he faced the camera and spoke directly to the American people about race, the pandemic, their economic concerns, and climate change.

The entire ugly affair was so far off the norm of presidential debates there’s no framework – historical or otherwise – for  evaluating it. Biden

won a CNN “instant poll” of debate watchers, 60-28, but that wasn’t a sample of the electorate in general. Few pundits believed Trump’s bullying won him support anywhere except with members of his hard-core base. It will take several days before new polling tells us what the country as a whole thought.

Biden reportedly raised a record amount of money from on-line donations the night of the

debate, meaning his spending advantage should continue as the campaign moves into its final days. That fact made it more likely Biden can keep the advantage he began the debate with, a seven-to-eight-point edge in the polling averages published by websites like FiveThirtyEight.com and Real Clear Politics. That doesn’t address the damage the spectacle did to American democracy and our image in the world.   

Any More?

Currently, the schedule calls for two more

presidential debates – a town hall October 15 in Miami and another six topics-with-a-moderator encounter October 22 in Nashville. On October 7, vice presidential candidates Mike Pence and Kamala Harris square off in Salt Lake City. How much of that will actually occur?

After the Cleveland fiasco, cries rang out for calling off the remaining debates. That

probably won’t happen, but the possibility of a repeat of the first debate left a bad taste in many mouths.

Killing microphones when it’s not a candidate’s

turn to speak was suggested for the remaining debates. Everyone knew Trump wouldn’t agree to that, since disrupting things is his objective. But that suggestion made contemplating more debates palatable.

Advice anyone?         

KAMALA HARRIS AND HISTORY PART II: SHE WHO WOULD BE VICE PRESIDENT

 

Two women have tried doing what Kamala Harris now seeks to do as part of the 2020 Democratic ticket with Joe Biden – win the vice presidency. Their stories deserve review in our consideration of the historical significance of the Harris candidacy. Having examined her selection in the context of the fight for women’s suffrage and early women office holders, we turn now to her predecessors in the quest and the chance she has of becoming MVP -- Madam Vice President.

 

Geraldine Ferraro

Walter Mondale selected New York Congresswoman Geraldine Ferraro as his run-

ning mate in 1984, making her the first woman on a major party ticket. Some Mondale supporters thought choosing a woman would galvanize the female vote for Democrats. It didn’t, though Ferraro’s selection provided Mondale an initial polling jolt. He moved to within striking distance of incumbent President Ronald Reagan after being down 16 points. Ultimately, most polls showed a small net gain for the Democratic ticket among women, but Mondale and Ferraro lost, 59-41, and carried only Washington, D.C. and Mondale’s native Minnesota.

Ferraro’s candidacy revealed significant sexism in American politics. First, allegations of financial improprieties in her husband’s real estate business, which she had little involvement with, blunted the initial momentum her selection generated. When reporters first questioned Ferraro about the business, she demonstrated only a modest understanding of the details of a family owned company in which she technically had one-half interest. Though she later handled every question at a late August news conference, the damage had been done.

Vice President George H.W. Bush appeared to patronize Ferraro in their debate, suggesting he could give her some “help” on foreign policy issues. She fought back, saying she didn’t appreciate such insults. Most observers at the time saw the debate as a draw.

Finally, Mondale and Ferraro rarely touched in joint campaign appearances. She said she feared somebody would say, “Oh my, they’re dating.” Presumably the country now has a more mature attitude about women in politics. In 2016, Hillary Clinton won almost three million more popular votes than Donald Trump, the U.S. Senate now includes 26 women, and 101 females hold House seats, including Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Nine women serve as governors. So far, Biden and Harris haven’t been bashful about clasping raised hands in the traditional show of running mate solidarity.

Sarah Palin

Chroniclers of the 2008 presidential election almost uniformly regard Republican John McCain’s selection of Alaska Governor Sarah Palin as his biggest mistake in that campaign.

While Ferraro faced skepticism about her foreign policy experience, she never demonstrated anything suggesting she wasn’t fit for the office. Palin showed herself totally unprepared. She mumbled about seeing Russia from her front porch and couldn’t name any news publications she regularly read.

Palin’s selection represented a sort of Hail Mary pass. McCain trailed Barack Obama badly in the polls and needed something that would jump start his campaign. Picking Palin initially gave the ticket a boost, even a brief lead in a few polls. It didn’t last in light of Palin’s obvious shortcomings. She garnered a cult-like following on the right, but Obama-Biden won the election by nearly ten million votes and took the Electoral College, 375-163.

 

Kamala Harris: Trailblazer

Even before Biden picked Harris, she’d made her mark on American politics. As we noted in our history of office holding by women, Harris is only the second black woman elected United States Senator, following Carol Mosley Braun, who represented Illinois 1993-99.  Harris twice won races for California Attorney General after serving as San Francisco’s district attorney.

In the Senate, Harris established a reputation as a tough, well-prepared interrogator in hearings. Those skills could serve her well in

the vice presidential debate against Mike Pence, an experienced politician who eagerly defends President Trump’s most outrageous behavior and false statements. She ran for president, though she dropped out before the 2020 primaries began.

Republicans have struggled in finding a consistent line of attack against Harris, perhaps demonstrating that they fear her. When Biden announced her selection, Trump latched on to her grilling of Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh as “nasty” and “mean.” Trump later said electing her would “disgrace” the country, a not-very-thinly-veiled racial slur. Others tried decrying her immigrant heritage, suggesting she isn’t eligible for the vice-presidency. Her father came to the United States from Jamaica and her mother from India, but she was born in Oakland, California, making her as eligible as any other native born U.S. citizen.

History Unfolding

Harris acknowledges she stands on many shoulders, like those of Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, and the founders of the

National Women’s Political Caucus. The women who fought for suffrage, the black women who worked for that right against the double whammy of sexism and racism, and the first women office holders played a part in making the Harris candidacy possible.

For the moment at least, Harris stands apart from Ferraro and Palin. The polls say she and Biden have a much better chance of winning than either of her predecessors.

While we assume she understands the history and appreciates the opportunity now before her, we also assume she understands the work ahead. She must stay on message. She must perform well in the vice presidential debate. She and Biden are, in football terms, in four down territory and can’t make mistakes.

If they succeed, Harris will honor women like Harriet Tubman, Chisholm, Susan B. Anthony, and Fannie Lou Hamer who blazed trails before her. She will also, for the young women and girls who follow her, shatter another glass ceiling. 

    

KAMALA HARRIS AND HISTORY PART I: SHE WHO WOULD BE VICE PRESIDENT

Former Vice President Joe Biden’s selection of

California Senator Kamala Harris as his running mate prompts a serious review of the historical dimensions of his choice. Her selection during the 100-year anniversary of the constitutional amendment

giving women the right to vote made even more significant the possibility Harris could very well stand on the U.S. capitol steps on January 20, 2021, raise her right hand, and take the oath as the nation’s first female vice president.

                  

Harris wouldn’t reach that place alone. She’d

    

follow in the footsteps of Susan B. Anthony, Harriet Tubman, Fannie Lou Hamer, Barbara Jordan, Shirley Chisholm, Bella Abzug, Gloria Steinem, Carol Mosley Braun, and many

others who led the way in getting women, including women of color, voting rights and meaningful participation in American political life. The long road to potentially having a woman one heartbeat from the presidency deserves an examination we’ll present in this post and our next one.

 

Women and Voting

Political movements aimed at gaining women the right to vote sprang up in the first half of the  nineteenth century, culminating in an 1848 convention at Seneca Falls, New York that called for full political equality for women. Congress took up a women’s suffrage constitutional amendment in 1878, but defeated it nine years later. The all-male U.S. Supreme Court rejected theories that the equal protection and anti-slavery amendments guaranteed women the vote.

America’s entry into World War I opened a new argument for suffragists. With women joining the labor force and serving in the military, the idea women should have a greater say in the nation’s political life gained traction. President Woodrow Wilson, facing protests that included women going on hunger strikes after  being arrested for demon-

strating in favor of suffrage, supported a constitutional amend- ment. The measure passed the House on May 21, 1919, the Senate on June 4, 1919, and went to the states for ratification. On August 18, 1920, Tennessee became the necessary 36^th state to ratify the 19^th amendment.

 

The Racial Divide

Middle class white women ran the women’s suffrage movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The 19^th amendment didn’t mention race. It prohibited denying the vote on the basis of sex, but it didn’t uniformly benefit black women. African American women in northern and border states could and did register to vote after the amendment passed. Indeed, when it was challenged as violating Maryland’s state constitution which limited voting to men, one of the women involved was Mary D. Randolph, “a colored female citizen” of Baltimore who had registered along with a white woman, Cecilia Waters. The U.S. Supreme Court upheld their registration.

Things were different in the South, where local officials resisted voting by African Americans of either sex. Literacy tests, poll taxes (outlawed in the 1960s by the twenty-fourth amendment), and other barriers kept many black women from voting. Even before passage of the 19^th amendment, black women

banded together in  suffrage organizations. Ida B. Wells, for example, helped found the Alpha Suffrage Club in 1913, likely the first African American women’s suffrage organization in the United States.

Only the 1965 Voting Rights Act finally addressed the problem by eliminating the barriers southern states used in keeping all blacks from voting. Though the statute didn’t mention sex, within a year of passage, it allowed registration of half a million African American voters in the South and ten million by 1980, many of them women.

 

Office Holding

The first woman elected to Congress reached

that body before enactment of the 19^th amendment. Montana gave women the vote in 1914, six years before ratification of the federal suffrage amendment. Jeanette Rankin won a House of Representatives seat from Montana in 1916.  

Harris would go to the vice presidency from the U.S. Senate, where no woman sat until November 21, 1922, when 87-year old Rebecca Felton of Georgia was sworn in to serve one day in filling a vacancy. The first woman elected to the Senate was Hattie Caraway Arkansas’s in 1932. In 1978, Nancy Kassebaum of Kansas became the first woman elected to a full senate term whose husband hadn’t been in Congress before her.

Carol Mosley Braun won a U.S. Senate seat

from  Illinois in 1992, ousting Alan Dixon largely over his vote in favor of confirming Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court. In doing so, she became the first black woman in the senate.  Kamala Harris became the second with her 2016 election from California. Before that, she’d won two statewide races for California Attorney General, and served as San Francisco’s district attorney.     

Harris has often acknowledged how the career of Chisholm, a New York Democrat, influenced her. Chisholm became the first black woman elected to the House when she won her seat in 1968 and in 1972 became the first woman and the first black person to seek the presidential nomination of a major party.

Chisholm, in advocating the importance of women in public office, once famously said, “Our representative democracy is not working because the Congress that is supposed to represent the voters does not respond to their needs. I believe the chief reason for this is that it is ruled by a small group of old men.”  In line with Chisholm’s view, we see the change the Harris candidacy represents as long overdue. What do you think?

In Part II we’ll look at the nation’s response to female vice presidential candidates and more deeply at Harris herself.