The debate between former president Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris saw two distinct approaches toward political geography. (Illustration by Eric Thomas for Kansas Reflector)
The course’s name was “The Poetry of Modern Rock Music.” The teacher’s name was Lyon Trainor. And it was one of the best high school classes I took.
That class, with that improbably named teacher , taught me and dozens of other curious suburban teenagers some of the juicy stories of rock stars , while also dissecting the meaning of rock and roll lyrics.
I was thinking about one of Mr. Trainor’s lessons as I was watching the presidential debate Tuesday night between former president Donald Trump and vice president Kamala Harris. Why?
I remembered the day in class when Mr. Trainor asked us: Why did we think some musicians of the ’60s and ’70s dropped lists of cities into their songs about cars and dancing? Remember “Dancing in the Street” by Martha and the Vandellas (it’s OK to hum along): “They’re dancing in Chicago / Down in New Orleans / In New York City / All we need is music, sweet music.”
And the cover of Nat King Cole’s “Route 66” by Chuck Berry and the Rolling Stones: “ Now you go through Saint Looey / Joplin, Missouri / And Oklahoma City is mighty pretty ” and so on.
Mr. Trainor steered us to an answer that seemed logical enough. These artists, along with others, understood that mentioning a specific place in the country might increase album sales and radio plays in that area. If that’s the case, New York City was a better mention than Joplin. (Sorry, Joplinites.)
Tuesday’s debate , especially Trump’s answers, namechecked American cities and states in a different way.
Instead of creating a giddy radio shoutout, Trump’s mentions painted these American places as apocalyptic hellscapes demanding salvation: And he is the one to revive them. The more specific that Trump got — mentioning a city or town — the darker his vision of America became and the more likely he was to drift into misinformation pushed by right-wing media. When it came to mentioning places, Harris’s approach was restrained.
Yes, Trump mentioned Kansas . During the first third of the debate, Trump proudly described how the Supreme Court, with “genius and heart,” had overturned Roe v. Wade. In Trump’s words, by overturning precedent, the court gave “every legal scholar, every Democrat, every Republican, liberal, conservative” exactly what they wanted: a series of state-wide referendums on abortion. Of course, this is not what everyone wanted.
Nevertheless, Trump continued, describing the 2022 vote in Kansas and another in 2023 in Ohio . The Kansas and Ohio results preserved or codified constitutional protections for abortion in each state. Trump described the votes this way: “Now, Ohio, the vote was somewhat liberal. Kansas the vote was somewhat liberal. Much more liberal than people would have thought.”
By describing the Kansas vote, an 18-point win for abortion-rights advocates, as liberal, Trump hinted that he sees something unusual, something slanted about the results. Perhaps the former president should see an overwhelmingly conservative state emphatically rejecting abortion restrictions.
Trump’s other call-outs to states and cities revealed how often his performance was sputtering and defensive. Let’s bullet point a few other examples:
- Ohio and Colorado: Trump described migrant invasions of towns in these states, insisting without any evidence that migrants are eating domestic dogs: “You look at Springfield, Ohio. You look at Aurora in Colorado. They are taking over the towns. They’re taking over buildings. They’re going in violently.”
- Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Georgia: Even though he lost the 2020 election, Trump still grieves. If only Americans would pay attention to his conspiracy theories: “I’ll show you Georgia and I’ll show you Wisconsin and I’ll show you Pennsylvania and I’ll show you — we have so many facts and statistics.”
- Seattle and Minneapolis: sites of unrest, looting and arson — “When are the people that burned down Minneapolis going to be prosecuted, or in Seattle? They went into Seattle, they took over a big percentage of the city of Seattle. When are those people going to be prosecuted?”
- Detroit and South Carolina: places that Trump sees as devastated by the current administration’s policy on cars — “Because they will kill the United Auto Workers and any autoworker, whether it’s in Detroit or South Carolina or any other place. What they’ve done to business and manufacturing in this country is horrible.”
- Washington, D.C.: blaming others for the violence in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 — “It would have never happened if Nancy Pelosi and the mayor of Washington did their jobs. I wasn’t responsible for security. Nancy Pelosi was responsible. She didn’t do her job.”
It’s notable how often these call-outs by Trump to cities or states put him in weak, fringy or embarrassing political positions. If you want to find his weakest moments in the debate, search for the instances when he names a place specifically.
A consensus cringe moment of the debate for Trump was his false claim that Harris supported executing babies. His charge came out in a furious tangle while he tried to explain his abortion position. He pinned the false accusation on a West Virginia governor before circling back to it and switching the state to Virginia. The entire time he seemed wrongfooted, exposing his discomfort, naivete and incoherence on abortion.
This was the case for many of the instances above when Trump specified a place. When he was flailing most, he seemed to think that mentioning a location would help. Instead, it made it more likely that he would speak deceptively. Even worse for him, he became distracted and lingered on issues, even getting fact-checked by the moderator David Muir in two cases (his false claims about domestic dogs and election fraud).
Similarly, it was Trump, not Harris who brought up Alabama by name. Yes, Harris poked at the state’s legal and legislative zig-zags related to IVF treatments. Dwelling on that issue seemed politically costly for Trump, but that is what he did. While he attempted to correct Harris, he further reminded voters of the chaos caused by the overturning of Roe v. Wade. He also took the bait of talking further about IVF, a broadly popular treatment used by many families.
Perhaps it’s too obvious to say, but candidates didn’t used to namecheck places in this same way. Debates stretching back to the 1990s used mentions of states and cities differently. I remember groaning at my TV during those debates because of the craven mentions of swing states by every candidate. It was Florida-this and Ohio-that, followed by more pandering to the few states where electoral college votes were up for grabs.
In this way, Harris’s approach to mentioning Pennsylvania on Tuesday was quaint. She hoped to revise earlier positions on fracking, the oil extraction method common in the state.
To explain, she said: “Let’s talk about fracking because we’re here in Pennsylvania. I made that very clear in 2020. I will not ban fracking. I have not banned fracking as vice president of the United States. And, in fact, I was the tiebreaking vote on the Inflation Reduction Act, which opened new leases for fracking.”
She avoided discussing other issues where her position has changed, even though she promised, “I’m going to discuss every one.” Instead, she took on one state-based issue in fracking.
Many voters have noted the occasional haziness of Harris’s rhetoric. Polls suggest that her lack of specificity is restraining voters from embracing her. They complain that she claims to have a plan, but doesn’t precisely describe it.
Her reluctance to mention almost any American place in her remarks on Tuesday might be a symptom of that. The mention of Pennsylvania was a direct response to a moderator question. Other than that, Harris was more likely to conjure Ukraine (five mentions) and Israel (8 mentions) than California or Illinois. American freedoms, a broad, inspirational and gauzy ideal, were her focus, but America itself — its states, cities and particular issues — were absent.
This might be the only debate showdown between Harris and Trump. If so, it revealed what each candidate sees when they look at a map of America: an unclear if unified nation or a scorched map dotted with black pins, each marking a site of another imagined American catastrophe.
Eric Thomas teaches visual journalism and photojournalism at the William Allen White School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Kansas in Lawrence. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here .
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