The King of Understanding is under great pressure
This morning's debate between Harris and Trump, like the market's previous bet on a 50bp rate hike, the higher the expectations, the greater the disappointment. Due to Trump's previous clear stance on cryptocurrencies, especially Bitcoin, many people expect this debate to boost the crypto market again. Precisely because of the high expectations for Trump, the more they can't bear to see the King of Understanding make any mistakes. Even though Trump's performance this time was quite satisfactory, and even improved compared to the debate with Biden a few months ago, the market still interpreted it as a defeat. During the debate, Nasdaq futures fell 0.45% and Bitcoin fell back to $56,000.
After watching the entire debate, this should be a victory for Harris. Before the Democratic Convention, the biggest challenge Harris faced was the lack of trust in her within the party, and her political positioning seemed to be limited to the vice president with a weak presence in the Biden administration. However, with the support of Obama, Clinton and others at the Democratic Convention, Harris has now gained the status of "faction leader" of the Democratic Party. In her speech, she successfully created an image that is younger, happier and friendlier than Trump.
Harris cheats
Harris' first absolutely correct strategy today is to avoid overemphasizing her identity as the "first female presidential candidate" or playing the race card and gender card through African Americans, Indian Americans, and women. Instead, she chose to play the "patriotic card" by defending the democracy and common values of the United States' allies. From our perspective, this may seem hypocritical and even similar to imperialism, but it is one of the roots of the Democratic Party's over-capitalization that has led to the distrust of neutral voters, that is, questioning whether the Democratic Party is still a patriotic party that does not forget its original intention.
Harris's two-hour performance today was far more than what was mentioned above. We have indeed not seen Harris give a very good speech before, but this crucial TV debate fully demonstrated her strong aura as a professional prosecutor when responding to questions. Harris seemed a little nervous at first, but quickly got into the state, especially on key issues such as immigration, abortion, and taxation. She firmly controlled the rhythm of the debate and even successfully avoided the host's questions, but instead turned the offensive to Trump.
Although Trump performed better than in the debate with Biden a few months ago, he did not create a classic moment of confrontation with Harris and lacked impressive rhetoric. Trump had the opportunity to attack Harris' many weaknesses. The most typical one is that as the actual power holder of the Biden administration, many of her policies could have been promoted through the operation of the current government and Congress, but she only shouted slogans in the debate and lacked substantive actions. This is also in line with the Republican Party's previous efforts to portray him as "an incompetent vice president behind an incompetent government", but Trump often stopped asking questions about these issues halfway. The reason is that Harris constantly interrupted his rhythm with strong rhetorical questions. For example, Trump's repeated questions on the issue of abortion, Harris used a very vivid tone to create the image of a down-and-out woman who had to go abroad after being banned from abortion (it is recommended to watch this original video, Harris depicted the scene with a sideways and cadenced posture facing Trump), while Trump could only respond emptyly that "he is friendly to women." For example, on the issue of race, Harris even brought up the wrongful conviction of the "Central Park Five" in the 1980s. Trump spent a huge amount of money to call for their conviction. Although the case was overturned many years later, Trump still insisted that they "might" be guilty. Faced with these accusations, Trump was obviously flustered, as if the old trick he used on Hillary Clinton's "email gate" in 2016 was repeated on him, and he was obviously unwilling to answer directly. Harris kept exposing Trump's shameful record, making him lose his rhythm, and in the end, nearly half of his response time was spent boringly repeating his arguments.
The most important point is that Harris did not use words to humiliate Trump directly throughout the whole day, which is in stark contrast to the Democrats' previous comments that the Republicans are "weird". Her mission is clear, which is to pull Trump down from the high-profile image of "shouting 'Fight' after the shooting", and in fact, she succeeded. She even encouraged her supporters to go to Trump's rallies to listen, pointing out that these rallies are often not centered around policies, but about jokes and pop culture, like rural gatherings rather than political speeches. She revealed that the connection between Trump's supporters and him personally is not as strong as imagined. Under the halo of American personal heroism, once Trump is in poor condition, supporters can easily leave. What she said is true. In the end, Trump was portrayed as an unstable, confusing, and everyday person. This is a high-level humiliation, and I think this is where Harris's most brilliant move today is.
After the debate, Trump made a big mistake: he immediately declared to the media that he had won the debate, and said that if Harris proposed another debate, he might not accept it. This kind of statement might be a sign of Trump's confidence under normal circumstances, but it seemed a little guilty after this unbearable debate. As Trump himself often ridiculed Harris-if you really won the debate, why do you need to deliberately emphasize it to the media? Why do you need to supplement those points that were not explained clearly on the field after the debate? This practice gives people a very bad impression. Many people will recall that after Trump lost the election in 20 years, he came out to define himself as "winning" and then acquiesced to the ugly appearance of the Capitol Hill rebellion. Not admitting failure has made Trump's image closer to a loser, which is not even as good as Biden. On the second day of the TV debate, Biden at least came out and admitted that his performance was not good enough, and Trump's avoidance only deepened this negative image.
The cryptocurrency industry is in a worse situation
After this debate, the Democratic Party has truly created a favorable situation. This is not the poll advantage hyped by the media, but a substantial strategic victory. Trump's "shooting highlight moment" appeared too early. Affected by the peak-end effect (people's overall memory of the experience often depends on the strongest emotion and the last feeling, rather than the average experience of the whole process), the Democratic Party will continue to use this advantage to attack Trump. It is unlikely that he will soon regain the advantage and boost the sentiment of the crypto market. Harris may not be very good at governing, but as long as she can continue to unite the Democratic Party and not distort her current personality for the sake of winning votes, this advantage can at least last throughout the voting period, and may even give birth to a wave of "Harris transactions" in the financial market. Bitcoin has just emerged from the shadow of recession expectations and the decline of US stocks. This debate is undoubtedly a double whammy for Bitcoin. Trump's coming to power = friendly to cryptocurrencies = faster recession and thunder = faster water release, Harris's coming to power = unfriendly to cryptocurrencies, but ETFs have passed the survival environment of BTC, and it is not much worse. Since Harris has no reference to the term of office, the market's attitude towards future fiscal and water release is quite different. All we can say is that the hype surrounding the presidential candidates has come to an end, and the market needs to regain strength and find a new direction for its potential.
Finally, let's take some time to talk about tonight's August CPI data. It should be said that no matter what the data is, it will not affect the fact that the Fed cut interest rates in September. The previous confrontation was more about the intensity of the interest rate cut and the probability of recession. The Fed's statement on these issues should be more reflected in last week's unemployment rate and non-agricultural data. The data is not data but an adjustment tool for expectations. The Fed now controls the 25bp expectation very well, and there is no need to make any more surprises. Recession, election, and US-Japan exchange rate are the important issues at this stage. Therefore, this CPI night is not that important just from the announcement of the results. Of course, if tonight's results are lower than the previous value or in line with expectations, it is actually conducive to a smooth interest rate cut and improved sentiment.#美国大选 #特朗普 #哈里斯支持
