MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Harris shows Trump she is not Joseph Biden

Harris was said to have won the debate, albeit with some help from ABC's moderators

The Democratic Party dusted off all fears Tuesday at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania after Vice President Kamala Harris' performance in the TV debate against former President Donald Trump.

 Joe Biden's rants in June resulting in him being kindly advised to drop his reelection bid became a bad memory while supporters of an angered Republican contender highlighted that the the ABC News moderators David Muir and Linsey Davis had been anything but neutral. According to a CNN poll, Harris won the debate by a 63-37% margin. There are no concrete plans yet for a rematch.

Harris, 59, who picked up the baton when stepped down, struck the 78-year-old Trump. “Wait a minute! I'm talking now. You don't mind?” a visibly upset Trump said, due to which Harris was deemed to have wisely hit a nerve as issues such as the economy, abortion, and immigration were reviewed.

An overconfident Trump after June's round spoke about Biden as often as he could in a bid to keep Harris from disentangling herself from the outgoing administration. But the strategy was said not to have worked. “We're playing with World War III and we have a president that we don't even know if he is — where is our president? We don't even know if he's a president. They threw him out of a campaign like a dog,” Trump said. “We have a president who doesn't even know he's alive,” he insisted.

“You’re not running against Joe Biden. You’re running against me,“ Harris replied. ”Clearly I am not Joe Biden, and I am certainly not Donald Trump,“ she went on. ”What I do offer is a new generation of leadership for our country.“

Trump then underlined his achievements in the economic field before the Covid-19 crisis. ”The stock market was higher than it was before the pandemic came in,“ he argued while claiming that everything Harris believed in ”three years ago and four years ago is out the window.“

Regarding abortion, Harris recalled that Trump's Supreme Court appointees had reversed Roe v. Wade and a possible presidential veto was discussed in case Congress passed new legislation on the matter. Harris argued that a conservative approach at the question would end up in ”pregnant women who want to carry a pregnancy to term suffering from a miscarriage, being denied care in an emergency room because the health care providers are afraid they might go to jail.“

Both contenders reviewed Trump's claims that he had won the 2020 elections. Harris insisted that the Republican candidate had been ”fired by 81 million people,“ and ”clearly he is having a very difficult time processing that.“

Harris also underlined Trump's bad image among world leaders. ”I have traveled the world as vice president of the United States and world leaders are laughing at Donald Trump,“ Harris said. ”I have talked with military leaders, some of whom worked with you, and they say you are a disgrace. And when you then talk in this way in a presidential debate and deny over and over again court cases you have lost, because you did in fact lose that election, it leads one to believe perhaps we do not have in the candidate to my right the temperament or the ability to not be confused about fact. That's deeply troubling and the American people deserve better.“ The Republican former head of state replied by mentioning Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán supported him.

”We're a failing nation. We're a nation that's in serious decline,“ Trump said. ”We're being laughed at all over the world. All over the world, they laugh, I know the leaders very well. They're coming to see me. They call me. We're laughed at all over the world. They don't understand what happened to us as a nation. We're not a leader. We don't have any idea what's going on,“ Trump also stressed while insisting that Harris had had almost four years as vice president to enact her plans and failed. He also described her as ”a radical left liberal” who had been taught well by her leftwing economist father.