The most talked-about moment of Tuesday’s presidential debate between Vice President Kamala Harris and former President Trump was the exchange about Obamacare, specifically when moderator Lindsey Davis asked Trump, “So tonight, nine years after you first started campaigning, do you have a plan? Tell me what it looks like.”
Trump didn’t do that, so it couldn’t be done.
“Obamacare was a terrible health care system. It always was and it’s still not very good,” he began. “I said, if we come up with something and we’re working on it, we’re going to do it and replace Obamacare.”
Trump then began venting his frustrations about Democrats, even though Republicans controlled both houses of Congress when he was elected. He then made a mid-rant turnaround and said he had prevented Obamacare from rotting.
As the night wore on, some observers were hoping the focus would be on policies, not personalities.
In retrospect, that was stupid.
“We’re looking at different plans,” Trump continued, “and if there’s a plan that gives our people, our citizens, better health care than Obamacare, I would absolutely do it.”
Davis: So it’s just a yes or no, there’s no plan yet.
Trump: “I have a plan in mind.” That was all the 78-year-old Trump could muster. His performance in the June debate, while ignored because President Biden was a disappointment, was also not great. And on Tuesday, the carnival barker who once wrote that “true hyperbole” was “innocent hyperbole,” offered nothing of substance. He looked like cotton candy in the rain.
Under Trump, we saw the value of Obamacare. Remember, in the early days of COVID-19, nearly 80 million households lost someone in their job. Of those, about 48 million lost their insurance through their employer. Obamacare plans weren’t perfect, but they were an option that helped soften the blow. The law also allowed parents to keep their children insured until they turned 26, which was helpful when the world shut down. The same can be said about helping Americans with pre-existing conditions get insurance.
As president, Trump has repeatedly tried to repeal Obamacare, but we now know that he did so without coming close to a replacement.
Trump loves campaigning and being in front of crowds. Governing and managing a diverse nation is not his favorite… Harris spent most of the 90 minutes standing 6 feet away from Trump playing on his fragile ego. She provoked him with comments about the size of Trump’s rallies, and Trump baited her with more outlandish claims. She provoked him with Trump’s string of bankruptcies and the fortune he inherited from his father. Trump went along with it.
Harris sometimes scored points by doing very little, just standing by and letting Trump do the talking.
“They’re eating dogs, they’re eating people who come in, they’re eating cats,” Trump said, making an unsubstantiated claim about immigrants in Springfield, Ohio. After ABC News anchor and co-host David Muir told Trump that the mayor of Springfield said there was no evidence of this, Trump said he saw it on TV.
Before the debate, Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Arkansas) told me about the election, “It’s been over 100 years since we’ve had two men in the White House, so this isn’t about promises or pledges, it’s about clear differences in performance.”
In the opening discussion, a question about the economy underscored Cotton’s point.
The 2020 global pandemic has led to the highest inflation rate in the past 40 years, a record set by President Trump.
With the passage of the Biden-Harris Administration’s Inflation Control Act, inflation has fallen to below 3%.
And yet, despite historically low unemployment and tame inflation under Biden, many Americans are struggling with the cost of living, largely due to ever-rising prices for food, housing and health care. Many have the administration to blame.
So Harris and Trump had plenty of history to draw on each other, and the former president tried to exploit the policy contrast Cotton needed. Unfortunately for Republicans, their candidate isn’t disciplined enough to stay true to his message about his record, nor is he a model of consistency. California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, told reporters before the debate that the former president’s shaky record would work against him.
“You want to change your attitude? Let’s talk about abortion with Donald Trump,” the governor said. “You want to change your attitude? All of a sudden he’s for legalizing marijuana. You want to change your attitude? He said he was going to reduce the debt, but the debt went up by $8.4 trillion. I could go on and on.”
Of course, there was no need for that. We know what type of person Donald Trump is.
A secret plan to defeat ISIS? Mexico paying for the wall? Take your pick. In 2016, Trump the campaigner was constantly cutting checks that Trump the elected official couldn’t cash. This isn’t unusual in history. But the kind of unpreparedness and ill-health he displayed on Tuesday night was remarkable. He looked old and sounded reckless. When asked about health care, he couldn’t even offer voters empty promises and false hope. Just blank. (Maybe this is why Taylor Swift, the world’s most famous person, endorsed his opponent immediately after the broadcast.)
That’s the situation with the presidency in 2015: all frustration and no solutions. That’s the situation with the presidency today, and it’s likely to be the same in November.
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