11 Comments
тна Return to thread

You have a tell and a style JVL and it biases toward what is politically sound as opposed to what is morally sound. Vance lied, and lied, and lied again. If that makes for a strong debate performance , we are all well and truly fucked

Expand full comment

Unfair, Richard. On both substance and style, JVL's work combines what is politically sound AND what is morally sound. It also rejects reductive binary thinking.

Expand full comment

Politically sound is what wins elections. I'm not endorsing lies, they must be called out (Walz's job - did he do it enough?). But 50% of the voters are too dumb to notice the lies. They vote based on performance and the best performance wins.

Expand full comment

Well if your conclusion is accurate, then we have President Harris and VP Vance to expect.

Expand full comment

You know thatтАЩs impossible, so stop being silly. Harris performed better than Trump, mostly because Trump was so awful. The importance of VanceтАЩs performance is that it may just give an undecided voter permission to vote for Trump, seeing Vance as a calm, moderate influence (based solely on the debate and assuming said undecided voter doesnтАЩt frequent the likes of the Steve Bannon podcast).

Expand full comment

Lighten up, Ann, sometimes silly is called for. But, of course it is, thank heaven. My point is that I do not believe people decide which ticket to vote for based upon the VP pick. Although, I do recall a horrible phrase running around liberal campuses in 1968 that suggested voting for Humphrey/Muskie and buying a gun. And that was in spite of the fact, or perhaps because of it, that RFK had been shot in June of that year. But, somehow I do not see any MAGA types doing that this time around, thank heaven.

Expand full comment

WellтАж.Sarah Palin probably tanked John McCain all by herself. That was a disastrous VP pick. Trump is sui generis. What happens with him doesnтАЩt follow тАЬthe rulesтАЭ. One would have expected Vance as VP to have damaged the Trump campaign already, and it hasnтАЩt. Anyway, the whole тАЬthe VP doesnтАЩt matterтАЭ is no solace for me. IтАЩm literally terrified of a Trump victory and the polls are way too close for comfort.

You can be silly whenever you want. YouтАЩre a nice person.

Expand full comment

Ann, thanks for the compliment. BTW, I am a poll denier, unless I know how they are conducted, how they know that the responder is who s/he says s/he is and how much fact checking of the background, if any, that goes into selecting a pollee, not to mention how the questions are formulated, etc. I have always said that the only poll that counts is the one on 5 November. Many of the polls I feel are tea leaf reading with old coffee grounds.

Expand full comment

The claim that Trump saved the Affordable Care Act was rich.

Expand full comment

I thought Walz deftly rebutted this claim and gave the credit to John McCain.

Expand full comment

He did

Expand full comment