A heated debate to boost the motivation of American voters

Photo: Mario Tama Getty Images via Agence France-Presse People watch the first televised debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris.

Fabien Deglise

Published at 3:29 p.m. Analysis

• United States

Sent to thousands of American homes as the first televised debate between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris was just wrapping up Tuesday night, the email from the vice president’s campaign was straightforward: “Are you motivated to do everything you can to win in the next 56 days?” it read after a brief introduction reiterating the importance of the presidential debate and the pride in seeing Ms. Harris perform there.

The message also included a link to become a “volunteer” to participate in “outreach campaigns,” hold “hotlines,” and ultimately help elect the Democrat. “Our movement for freedom and democracy needs your support at this pivotal moment. We truly cannot do this without you,” the email continued.

In the wake of a muscular face-off from which Vice President Harris seems to have emerged emboldened, her entourage is now seeking to strike while the iron is hot to stoke the motivation and mobilization of troops that her entrance on the scene in July, following Joe Biden's withdrawal, had already greatly put on the boil.

“This is my fifth election campaign, and it is probably the most terrifying because of the fact that in the event of a defeat, it is not just the victory of the other party that we will have to assume, but also the jeopardy of our democracy,” summarized in an interview a few days ago Kelly Gallaher, chair of the Democratic Party of Racine County, Wisconsin. “This puts us in a state of emergency that motivates more and more people to get involved in the campaign — young people, a lot of them. I have never seen anything like it before, and it is very exciting. »

In nearly 105 minutes on Tuesday evening, from the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Kamala Harris sought to distance herself from her opponent by insistently confronting him on his many inconsistencies, his anti-democratic feats of arms and by posing him as a figure of a past made of lies, resentment and frustrations to which the Democrat now opposes an optimistic vision of the future and the writing of a new chapter in American history.

“Without a shadow of a doubt, I am not Joe Biden and I am certainly not Donald Trump,” the Democratic candidate summarized in her final interventions of the debate. “What I propose to you for our country is renewed leadership by a new generation.”

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Expectations exceeded

For Brandon Lenoir, professor of strategic communication at High Point University in North Carolina, Kamala Harris' performance in this debate allowed her to “score points with undecided voters,” he commented the day after This long-awaited contest, placed at the heart of a race for the White House with multiple twists and turns where voting intentions remain very close between the two candidates.

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“Before the debate, Donald Trump made the mistake of accusing her of not being smart. She proved the opposite by showing strength on key issues and I think in the end, she exceeded expectations.”

It was “a masterclass” in the art of debate, California Governor Gavin Newsom summed up in the wake of the televised duel, referring to a candidate who spoke “about the issues that concern the American people” versus a candidate who talked about dogs supposedly eaten by immigrants, the size of the crowds attending his political rallies and aired his grievances and “victim mentality.” “It was a terrible night for him, but it was, more importantly, a great night for the American people,” he added.

An evening that ended on an unexpected note for the Democrat who, in the minutes following the extinction of the spotlight on her first meeting with Donald Trump, received the support of the popular singer Taylor Swift. The populist had been dreaming for months that the artist would turn to him, to the point of even inventing an imaginary support from the star last month through images created by artificial intelligence.

“Like many of you, I watched tonight's debate,” Ms. Swift wrote on Instagram to her 283 million followers. “I will be voting for Kamala Harris and Tim Walz in the 2024 presidential election.” According to her, Kamala Harris “fights for rights and causes that need to be defended by a warrior.”

During the debate, Kamala Harris was adamant about how, if she wins, she will seek to restore abortion rights across the country and ensure that politicians no longer have a say in the decisions women make about their own bodies. In contrast, Donald Trump has refused to veto a conservative policy that would propose a nationwide abortion ban. He has also refused to admit defeat in 2020 and say he regrets the actions he took on January 6, 2021, in the lead-up to the insurrection at the Capitol in Washington, preferring instead to blame Democrats for the attack.

“Celebrity endorsements for candidates don’t usually make a big difference,” Lenoir says. “Taylor Swift’s endorsement might, however, motivate some of her fans—and she has millions of them—to vote. If they’re people who don’t usually vote and decide to do so this year, it could have a small but positive impact on the share of the vote Harris is poised to garner in November.”

In the three hours after the first bar of the televised debate, Kamala Harris’s campaign’s fundraising platform, ActBlue, raised $24.2 million, the New York Times reported, at a rate of $133,000 per minute. Since the vice president entered the campaign, the organization has raised a billion dollars to support the candidacy of the first African-American and Asian-American woman to lead the country.

In a sign of the popular enthusiasm, the Democratic Party now has a campaign team of 350 people in Pennsylvania alone, a key state to enter the White House, while the Republicans are counting on a group of 90 people to bring this territory with a changeable mood to their camp in 2024, reported this week The Guardian. The daily newspaper quoted members of the Grand Old Party who were concerned about this disparity in resources.

Earlier this month, Donald Trump's vice-president of the campaign in Massachusetts, Tom Mountain, slammed the door on the party, barely two months before the election, denouncing the chaotic management of resources in his state by the Republican National Committee, which the billionaire's family took control of last March.

The arrival of Kamala Harris in the race therefore seems to have caused a wave of panic in several local Republican Party bodies, placing the political party on the defensive – like Donald Trump during large parts of the televised debate on Tuesday evening.