Democracy and autocracy in the Harris-Trump debate

I don’t really have much to add to the theater criticism of the Harris-Trump debate. So I’ll quote this from John Ganz:

A boxing match is one of the most hackneyed clichés available to describe a political debate, but it fits last night’s pretty well. As the debate began last night, I thought I was going to have to write about how Trump demolished Harris and Democrats had to seriously face the possibility of a second Trump presidency. From the bell, Trump came out swinging, he rattled off jabs while Harris looked of herself, rehearsed, and stiff. She seemed a little stunned. Then Harris composed herself and started to land solid blows: she handled the abortion question masterfully; it’s a real weakness for him and she really let him have it. Trump’s face registered when the hits landed: he even seemed to wince sometimes. And Harris also did something that ought to be easy to do, but Trump’s opponents have struggled with managed: she baited him. The stuff about people leaving the rallies actually pissed him off and he started to rant and rave uncontrollably. He flipped out. After that, he never really looked good once, it was just him fulminating nonsense, including the stuff about people eatings and dogs in Springfield, Ohio.. It surprised me he brought that up even though it really shouldn’t have. Her prosecutor’s preparation, which seemed to fetter her at first, ultimately paid off. Trump is incapable of doing the same and tries to rely on sheer bluster.

Make no mistake: Trump still has considerable powers of self-expression, which are often underrated by liberals, but they should not be overrated either. He has a very limited vocabulary and it constrains the extent to which he can articulate responses on any issue. So, he falls back into hyperbole—everything is the worst, the best, the greatest. This can be effective, but often last night it sounded repetitive and, yes, kind of dull. If the American simply people tire of his antics, it will really be over for him. Harris’s message of “let’s turn the page” is a good one because it presents Trump as tiresome as much as fearsome. [my emphasis] (1)

He touches there on two important points for the framing the Harris-Walz campaign has been using.

I’ve been saying for months that I think the Biden framing of the campaign as Democracy vs. Autocracy was definitely necessary. But that it had to be communicated with specific issues, including abortion rights.

Harris did that very well on the abortion issue. Democracy and equal rights under the law is what the Democrats are defending, and here’s what Donald Trump has done: he’s put the health of women in real, immediate danger in very specific ways.

Tim Walz' popularizing the "weird" theme also paid off here. Because now listeners are alert to examples of this, and Trump's immigrants-eating-cats-and-dogs acid trip during the debate surely made lots of people think, oh, he really is pretty weird.

Some of the autocracy experts emphasize that part of the authoritarian pl0aybook is to put out stuff that's blatantly false and that almost nobody but total cultists actually believe, And then the test becomes for people to show they are willing to repeat stories and slogans they know are completely bogus. Putin's Ukraine-is-controlled-by-Nazis meme is one example cited, and that appears to be a good one. (2)

Liz Dye writes of the Trump-Vance campaign’s use of the xenophobic and false theme of immigrants eating pets:

After the Tree of Life synagogue shooting, and the Sutherland Springs church shooting, and the Emanuel AME church shooting, and the mass shooting at the Walmart in El Paso and hundreds of other attacks on minorities, Vance and Trump insist that it’s appropriate to amplify lies in pursuit of a greater “truth.”

“Don't let the crybabies in the media dissuade you, fellow patriots,” Vance tweeted Tuesday. “Keep the cat memes flowing.”

And if it makes them seem deranged and out of touch, or even gets some people killed, they do not care. All they care about is winning. But fortunately, America is not an incel chatroom, so these filthy lies are hurting Trump more than they’re helping. Normies are laughing at him, not with him. (3) [my emphasis]

Bob McElvaine observes of that moment in the debate:

It was a perfect demonstration in real time before tens of millions of American citizens of the way Trump and the people in his cult consume disinformation: “I've seen people on television” and I’m so gullible that I believe such stuff with no attempt to determine whether it’s true. (4)

Notes:

(1) Ganz, John (2024): Cats and Dogs. Unpopular Front 09/11/2024. <https://www.unpopularfront.news/p/cats-and-dogs> (Accessed: 2024-11-09).

(2) McGlynn, Jade (2023): Russia’s War. Cambridge UK & Hoboken USA: Polity Press.

(3) Dye, Liz (2024): Trump's racist pet hoax exposes weirdo meme culture to normies. Public Notice 09/12/2024. <https://www.publicnotice.co/p/trump-haitian-pet-hoax-meme-debate-ohio> (Accessed: 2024-12-09). In the case of contemporary Russia, she writes: “these everyday types of distortion set a scene where everything is a bit mad, so you stop noticing the general insanity all around you.” (p. 70) And the Trumpista Right’s information bubble really is ”a bit mad” on a regular basis. Often more than “a bit.”

(4) McElvaine, Robert (2024): A Star Is Born; A “Star” Fades Out. Musings & Amusings 09/11/2024. <https://robertsmcelvaine.substack.com/p/a-star-is-born-a-star-fades-out> (Accessed: 2024-11-09).