CANDIDATES: Candidates say the darnedest things!

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 23, 2024

The bottom of the barrel: Sometimes, presidential campaigns involve discussion of "the issues."

This may not be one of those years! Within the journalistic realm, we don't think we've seen a serious discussion break out about any of the basic issues which lie, at least in theory, at the heart of the current campaign.

(More on that to come.)

That said, our presidential campaigns always involve candidates. This year, we have the standard four, one of whom recently made this remarkable claim about life in Springfield, Ohio:

VANCE (9/15/24): I'm talking to my constituents and I'm hearing terrible things about what's going on in Springfield, and Kamala Harris' open border policies have caused these problems.

The hospitals are overwhelmed, Dana. The schools are overwhelmed. The local services are completely overwhelmed. You have people who can't afford housing. 

Homelessness has gone up. Murders are up by 81 percent because of what Kamala Harris has allowed to happen to this small community.

I'm going to keep on talking about that. 

It's (almost) hard to believe, but so said Candidate Vance, speaking to Dana Bash on CNN's State of the Union. 

Early in the interview, the candidate hotly defended his previous comments about the eating of cats and dogs by Springfield's Haitian residents. Then he made the highlighted claim:

There has been a large rise in murders in Springfield, Ohio "because of what Kamala Harris has allowed to happen."

Speaking to Bash on State of the Union, that's what the candidate said.

Full disclosure! We discern a lack of perfection in all four current candidates. Presumably, the same situation obtained at the dawn of the modern political era, when the four candidates were these:

The candidates in 1960:
John F. Kennedy: United States Senator from Massachusetts
Richard M. Nixon: Vice President of the United States 

Lyndon B. Johnson: Senate majority leader; "Master of the Senate"
Henry Cabot Lodge: Former United States Senator from Massachusetts; United States Ambassador to the United Nations, 1953-1960

They were the candidates at the dawn of the era. It was a highly accomplished group, except perhaps at the top of the tickets!

Back to Candidate Vance:

As he spoke with Bash, the candidate had hotly defended his claims about the eating of pets— about the alleged eating of pets by Springfield's Haitian residents. His campaign had already been told that these inflammatory claims were bogus, but he hotly defended what he'd said, and he said he planned to continue making such claims.

Also, there was this:

The candidate also stated a claim about a very large rise in murders—about a very large rise in murders in Springfield, all because of what Candidate Harris had done.

As the anthropologist Cummings once noted, we human beings can behave very poorly. To appearances, this candidate was now engaged in misbehavior which almost defies belief.

For starters, Candidate Harris had little or nothing to do with the presence of Haitians in Springfield, Ohio. In fairness, this elementary fact is too complex to play a role in our nation's extremely primitive political discourse.

For that reason, let's ignore that elementary fact! We're left with the claim about a very large rise in murders, allegedly caused by what Harris had supposedly done with respect to Springfield's Haitian residents.

To all appearances, Candidate Vance was deeply concerned about that rise in murders. But then, along came Daniel Dale, CNN's resident fact-checker.

Daniel Dale went ahead and fact-checked a set of facts. In all likelihood, the New York Times will never report what the gentleman found.

In our view, the headline on Dale's report completely buries the lede. It represents a type of distraction from the main thing Dale was reporting.

In our view, the headline was quite poorly conceived. Below, we present the key part of what Dale reported:

Fact check: Springfield had more murders under Trump than under Biden-Harris

[,,,]

Vance, the Republican vice presidential candidate, added a startling claim in a CNN television interview on Sunday: that Harris and the immigrant influx have caused a big spike in murder.

“I’m talking to my constituents and I’m hearing terrible things about what’s going on in Springfield, and Kamala Harris’ open-border policies have caused these problems,” Vance said. Moments later, he said, “Murders are up by 81% because of what Kamala Harris has allowed to happen to this small community.”

We looked into this claim and found it’s a good example of how statistics can be cherry-picked and misleadingly framed to serve unfounded narratives.

“During the time that I’ve been with the prosecutor’s office, which is 21 years now, we have not had any murders involving the Haitian community–as either the victims or as the perpetrators of those murders,” Daniel Driscoll, the Republican top prosecutor in Clark County, in which Springfield is the largest city, said in a Friday interview.

In 21 years, there has never been a murder involving the Haitian community! According to Dale, that's what Clark County, Ohio's top prosecutor said. 

In our view, Dale engaged in a large amount of over-explaining in his lengthy report. We've highlighted the only statement which actually matters with respect to the alleged rise in murders:

Dale's report focused on the candidate's claims with respect to murders in Springfield, Ohio. We've highlighted the place where the candidate's inflammatory claims seem to come to an end.

In the past 21 years, Haitian residents of Springfield, Ohio have never been involved in a murder! But then, along came one of the candidates in this year's presidential campaign.

In fairness, you can't blame Bash for being unable to challenge Vance during last Sunday's live interview. We do blame CNN for failing to call attention to what Dale later reported about this remarkably ugly pairs of claims by Vance. 

Quite plainly, he implied that there had been a large increase in murders because a bunch of Haitians were now living in Springfield. Also, he claimed that this large increase in murders had been caused by something Harris had done.

Those are the claims the candidate made. Assuming the accuracy of Dale's fact-check, those ugly claims are bunk.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep. Also this, as Cummings first reported:

We human beings are capable of extremely bad conduct.

We're going to spend the rest of the week looking at the candidates in this year's White House campaign. We're going to look at the way those hopefuls are being discussed by major parts of the press corps.

We'll even offer a brief overview of the way we view these candidates. We may compare this group with the group who appeared on the ballot at the dawn of the modern era.

This year, Candidate Vance is one of four. Assuming that Dale's report is accurate, he made an extremely ugly claim as he spoke to the nation last Sunday.

It isn't just that the Haitians have been eating Springfield's pets. Their presence in Springfield has also produced a very large increase in murders!

Almost surely, the New York Times won't report or discuss that second point. It seems to us that conduct like that should generate front-page reporting.

Assuming that Dale's reporting is accurate, it seems to us that one of the candidates has somehow managed to find his way to the bottom of the barrel. 

Given the way our discourse works, the New York Times—our greatest newspaper—is politely averting its gaze from that apparent fact. The spotless minds of us the people won't be asked to absorb it!

Tomorrow: Then and now