Who Won the Debate? Or, Nine Principles for Understanding People, Collapse, Progress, and Power

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What did you think of the debate between Kamala Harris and Donald Trump? I howled, laughed, scowled, and howled again. Trump claimed that immigrants were “eating our pets.” His red-faced bellowing. Kamala’s Cheshire Cat grin.

How should we think about this debate? Who “won”?

I’m torn when it comes to writing about this. I know what people want to hear. And still I wonder how honest I should be. For now, let me try to be brave and tell you what I really think, though I fear that many of you will be quite cross with me for it.

Kamala’s very, very good at electrifying liberals. And the truth is that’s a necessary thing, at this stage. Not just for this election, but in broader terms. It’s been quite some time since democracy had a charismatic figure on its side.

And so a rush of the kind of euphoria which spread after her nomination is being felt at this moment. Wow! She nailed Trump! Pundits will say that she prosecuted her case.

This electricity is a vital current of democracy. Like it or not, democracies aren’t rational creatures. They operate as much on sentiment—more in fact—than any of us do. As a collective endeavor, democracy is the sum of our sentiments, which move more unpredictably, fickly, jaggedly, than in any individual human heart. Democracy’s an ocean with hidden, strange tides. And so to see those tides move, for once, in the direction of progress—it’s a heartening thing.

Who Won The Debate?

I say that because you’ll want to hear, I imagine, who I think won the debate. 

And to answer that question, let’s think about in a subtle way, not a simplistic one.

To “win” a debate like this—what’s it about? 

Winning in the eyes of pundits and columnists is one kind of victory. And the truth is that’s easily enough done. Pundits and columnists hew to neoliberalism’s dogma, and pleasing them is simple: recite some policy details, gift-wrap it with a buzzword, and as long as it’s liberalish, they’ll tend to cheer with delight, because…

You’re telling them what they want to hear. 

So in their eyes, true, Kamala won the debate handily. 

But is that the question here? Is “winning” about this sort of sainted Ivy League ritual, of reciting the sacraments of liberalism, to the choir, who then sings them back?

I think that a better answer is: a debate like this is “won” by which people it moves, and for how long. Does it “move the needle,” so to speak? Does one figure sway over the uncommitted and undecided, especially, given America’s system, in those all crucial swing states?

There, the question becomes far trickier.

Who…Won The Debate?

There’s no question that if our criteria is pleasing pundits and columnists, Kamala didn’t just win the debate—she crushed it.

There’s no question that if the criterion is a lightning bolt of euphoria flowing through the base, Kamala didn’t just win, she crushed.

But the harder truth is this. Those probably aren’t the criteria to be met here at all. They’re good, don’t get me wrong, and the second’s more crucial than the first. 

Yet this election isn’t going to be decided by pundits and columnists. The truth is that nobody much listens to them anymore. And certainly not the uncommitted and undecided. Their organizations lack credibility as institutions, and people don’t trust them very much. They get their news from TikTok or Twitter and their opinions are shaped on YouTube and so forth. Media has exploded like a supernova.

Those who are going to decide the election haven’t really judged who won the debate yet. And so if you ask me, saying anyone is premature right now. 

We might know in a few days, or a week. Perhaps the needle will show marked movement, then. Maybe that surge of euphoria for Kamala will be felt by the undecided, at the margins, and they’ll join her movement.

Maybe (…) Won the Debate

But there’s another possibility. I didn’t put it in the title there because writing this kind of stuff makes people angry at me, and I get tired of that kind of thing. But I said I’d be brave, so.

The other possibility is that nobody won the debate. That none of this really moves the needle much, especially amongst the undecided and uncommitted.

Let me put that another way, to be kinder. Kamala won the debate, to pundits, columnists, and the base. That’s a good thing. Yet on another level, the more causal one, it’s possible that the undecided and uncommitted remain where they are, and that’s not quite winning, if we’re thinking about all this clearly.

We don’t know. Not yet. So to say that anyone won is, in my eyes, premature. And the truth is that we might never really know, as in, perhaps we’re just not ready to accept truths of this kind. Everything in American life is so viciously politicized that it seems you have to be a perpetual cheerleader of your team, and so to say this—people will interpret to mean that I must be “against” Kamala, when no such thing is the case.

So why do I say all that?

In the last few posts, we’ve been discussing how America’s up against the tides of history.

It’s certainly true that Kamala’s grins and smirks and lacerating one-liners will register with the choir—we know that they have, producing this euphoric electricity. But the question is deeper. It’s about history, and not repeating its mistakes—and to do that involves much more than the true believers, as we’ve been discussing.

What are the most urgent concerns to people? The economy and immigration, speaking at a social scale. And those are the same thing, to many people, who’ve come to believe that immigration is linked to economic stagnation.

The economy is in brutal shape. Incomes rose last month for the first time since 2019. That’s five years. And it’s not as if they exploded. So people are feeling terrible out there, and it shows up in the litany of statistics we usually discuss, from half of parents feeling overwhelmed, to half of young people saying they “can’t function anymore,” to 70% of people feeling financially traumatized, to a similar number living right at the edge.

I don’t want to keep reiterating that, but I do want you to think about it.

What Winning Means (When Societies are Collapsing)

You see, politics at this level is about connection. It’s not about rationality, facts, policies—any of that.

If it was, Democrats would have won every election since JFK, and the GOP wouldn’t exist anymore.

Politics in this age is about making people feel seen, heard, understood, and it’s been about that, but now, in this implosive era, about it in a certain way: acknowledging the sheer difficulty and struggle people face just living everyday life. How many have written off ever having a comfortable middle class life, and just try to aspire to what they can now? How widely felt is the Death of the Dream, and the reluctant, bitter acceptance of instability and hardship?

Politics is about connecting with people at this primal level. Now we enter the realm of the soul, and that can be a dark place. Primal fears are triggered in this age of collapse—fears of abandonment, betrayal, engulfment. One can feel, every day, as if one is a powerless swimmer, drowning in the roaring ocean: this is what people mean when they say they feel overwhelmed, numb, can’t function. 

So who connects with people’s primal fears? I’m not just saying: triggers them. That one’s easy to answer: Trump. But just…connects with them.

The thing about Trump is that it’s true he triggers these primal fears. But he also soothes them. And those fears are never far away from us in times like these—Trump can trigger them so effectively because they’re a millimeter away from our psychosocial surfaces, the happy or stolid faces we pretend to wear, our masks.

And the problem that Democrats face, time and again, not just in this election, but The Problem, the historic one, going on for half a century at this point, is that they’re not very good at understanding any of that.

Much less making people feel heard, seen, cared about. An interesting example is the fall of Roe—now, Democrats are finally standing up for it, but where were they when they should have been defending it, many women still ask? 

America’s grown more unstable for decades. The Dream has died a slow, aching, twisting death. And all that time, the Democrats have been pretty poor at making people feel heard, seen, understood. Their struggles, their hardship, their aspirations, their dreams. That is why the Democrats have mostly lost, when they should have won, like I said, won every election for the last fifty years…

…Because of course if we ask people rationally, that’s what they say they want. What the Democrats offer, whether it’s healthcare or safety nets or education, etcetera. If rationality were a thing that prevailed, the Democrats should have annihilated the GOP a half century ago, to the point it didn’t exist today.

But societies aren’t rational. And in that way, winning, not just debate, but elections, isn’t about pleasing the hyper-rational groups in society. Pundits. Columnists. People like you and me, who’ve usually been educated to the teeth, and spend our days in work that consists of complex chains of abstract thought, teasing apart causality, whether that’s medicine, law, engineering, finance, doesn’t matter. 

The point is that since societies aren’t rational, just pleasing the most rational groups isn’t a sure-fire recipe for much but disaster, if it does that at the expense of connecting with people in a more primal way. And in times like these, as we’ve discussed, that primal connection is what matters intensely, crucially, because we’re all sort of on a hair trigger.

(Why We Need) Primal Connection

So who did that best?

Who connected with people on the issues that matter most to them, not in an intellectual way, but in a primal one?

I think the answer to that question’s more difficult than just proclaiming that Kamala won. And sure, if you want me to say it again, so you don’t get scared, yes, she won, to people like us. But we are small, however you define us, the rational, the empathic, the future-facing, the wise, those who still read Real Books, etcetera.

I think there’s a pretty good chance that Trump connected at a primal level with people. On these issues. Of course, he doesn’t have a hope on things like abortion. But on the economy? On immigration? On the sense of gloom and despair, that things are a mess? That America does, in many ways, feel a little like it’s “dying,” whether that’s the Dream, mobility, or just widespread pessimism?

Let me back that up with an observation or two. Kamala’s “opportunity economy” is a catchy buzzword. And it’s a good set of ideas, too. But people aren’t using it. Even pundits barely discuss it. That tells us that all this comes a distant second—policies, etc—to primal connection. And it also tells us that a primal connection isn’t quite being made here. People aren’t exactly gushing about it euphorically, are they? They’re gushing, when they do, over her smirk, cackle, laugh, joy, and so on. Perhaps you see my point.

The Democrats do not do well when it comes to connecting with people primally, on these long-standing issues that trouble Americans so deeply. The economy. Money. Having a stable middle class life again. A sense of mobility. It’s true that for many of us, equality and basic rights come first, in an enlightened trade-off—but that’s not the case, often, for societies as a whole, especially at moments like these.

Nine Principles for Understanding People, Collapse, Progress, and Power

And so my answer, which is sure to disappoint you, and I apologize for that, goes like this. 

It consists of nine difficult points that are going to be too uncomfortable for many people to stomach, I suspect. They go like this.

I’d bet that nobody won the debate.

I’d say that we need to understand what winning really means.

Euphoria’s a good thing. It’s a form of primal connection. But if it isn’t felt across a society, if it’s hills are also valleys, it’s not a key to victory all by itself.

The more unstable societies grow, the more that people seek primal connection with leaders, to guide, orient, nurture, and protect them, in difficult, dangerous, troubled times.

Leaders who can provide that connection tend to win. Even if they abuse that very connection.

We call those figures demagogues. 

History teaches us that demagogues rise in times like these precisely because establishments don’t prioritize primal connections.

Attacking demagogues for being demagogues does little to sever the primal connection, even if it pleases one’s own side. Primal connection can only be fought with primal connection.

That is what winning is in times like these.

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