A DISTANT LAND: At the Post, Bump gets it right!

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2024

Angelina's distant land: We were thrilled by the version of Candidate Harris which emerged yesterday as she spoke with Charlamagne tha God.

More on that this afternoon. For now, if we had a Pulitzer prize to bestow, we'd give it to Philip Bump.

Bump's report appeared yesterday in the Washington Post. (The Post calls his piece a "column.") In it, Bump transcribes one of the "answers" Donald Trump gave during his widely-discussed "town hall" event in Pennsylvania on Tuesday night.

Trump went on stage in Oaks, Pennsylvania at 6:56 p.m. Kristi Noem was serving as moderator of the event. 

(To view the entire C-Span videotape, you can click right here.)

At roughly 7:10 p.m., Noem introduced a conventionally attractive, youngish woman identified only as Angelina. This was the question she asked, the second of the night:

ANGELINA (10/14/24): My name's Angelina, and I was raised in a Philadelphia Democrat household—a union household. As a blended—as the mother of a blended family, my top issues are the same issues that face all Americans.

Illegal immigration hurts black Americans. Inflation hurts black Americans, and dangerous cities hurt black Americans. 

[APPLAUSE]

Like my fellow Americans, my grocery bill has not gone down. Everything is still so very expensive. What steps will your administration take to help American families suffering from this inflation?

To see Angelina ask that question, you can simply click this.

That was the question this young woman asked. For the record, she's asking about one result of recent inflation, not about current inflation itself.

That was this young woman's question. In his report in the Washington Post, Bump performs a heroic measure. He transcribes the entire five-minute monologue presented by Candidate Trump in lieu of a response.

We say in lieu of a response because nothing Trump said, in that entire five minutes, addressed this young mother's actual question. Instead, the candidate wandered the countryside, touching on every possible topic except the specific topic he'd been asked to address.

This particular Q-and-A[bsence of an answer] was the sole subject of Bump's report in the Post. Dual headline included, here's the way Bump began:

Here’s how Donald Trump would lower grocery prices
In his own words.

Donald Trump’s town-hall-style campaign event in Pennsylvania on Monday understandably attracted more attention for its conclusion than for its contents. But the actual question-and-answer period did provide useful insights that should not be overlooked.

One of the questions posed to Trump—apparently prescreened by the campaign—came from a Black woman standing behind him on the stage. Reading from a card, the woman said she had been raised in a Democratic, union household in Philadelphia before (as other question-askers said as well) seeing the light about America’s problems—and, in particular, how they affect the Black community.

“Like my fellow Americans,” the woman said, “my grocery bill has not gone down. Everything is still so very expensive. What steps will your administration take to help American families suffering from this inflation?”

So begins Bump's report. Heroically, he proceeds to present Trump's entire five-minute reaction, in which the candidate fails to provide anything resembling an answer to the question he'd been asked.

In all honesty, we can't recommend three cheers for Bump; we'll restrict ourselves to two-and-a-half. We do that because Bump never directly articulates the point his essay was plainly designed to display:

He never directly states the obvious. In his rambling and endless non-answer monologue, Candidate Trump never says a word that is directly relevant to the perfectly decent question he had been asked.

This sort of thing has been happening roughly forever with this particular candidate. (Full disclosure: In some of her recent interviews, it must be said that Candidate Harris has avoided answering direct questions too.)

That said, it seems to us that major orgs like the New York Times have largely avoided coming to terms with the strangeness of this particular candidate's statements and behaviors. In our view, that's especially true of the truly crazy things he frequently says—No one was present at Harris's rally!—but also with respect to the violent ideation and rhetoric to which he routinely turns.

Still, two-and-a-cheers for Philip Bump for performing the time-consuming process of transcribing Trump's non-response. We won't be posting that lengthy transcript here—we want to move on to a different point—but you can read the text of the full filibuster by clicking to Bump's report.

Angelina asked a question. The candidate offered an endless non-response. With that, we turn to Angelina herself—but mainly, to the "distant land" from which her question may seem to have emerged.

As noted, Angelina is a youngish woman who we'd describe as conventionally attractive. In our view, she displayed a strikingly pleasant demeanor at Tuesday evening's event. 

She seems like someone you'd want as your next-door neighbor. She said she's the mother of a blended family. Bump describes her as Black.

She grew up in a Democratic household, but she seems to be a Trump supporter.  She seems like a thoroughly pleasant person. The question we pose is this:

Within what distant land was Angelina's decision made? From what sort of distant land has her decision emerged?

We ask this question for an obvious reason. Here inside Blue America, those of us who will be voting for Candidate Harris often act as if the people who vote for Candidate Trump hail from some such unknown land.

We can't imagine why a decent person would make so unlikely a choice. Baffled in this particular way, we turn to our various demonologies to explain our nation's Angelinas.

We take out our bombs and begin calling names. But then, this real Angelina appears.

For ourselves, we can't imagine voting for Candidate Trump—but we also know that tens of millions of fellow citizens will be doing just that. In our view, we inhabitants of Blue America are engaging in mountains of denial when we refuse to acknowledge the fact that there could be reasons for such a vote which aren't based on racism or bigotry, or on some other deplorable quality.

Sadly, there are quite a few reasons why people like Angelina might have decided to turn their backs on the contemporary world of Blue America, or on the works of the Biden Administration itself. 

Sadly in our view, Candidate Harris is currently saddled with some of the downsides of President Biden's behaviors and decisions—but also with the downsides of some of the judgements she herself made in the past. 

When we within Blue America's silos refuse to acknowledge the existence of those downsides, we're engaged in the same act of denial and delusion we frequently attribute to Trump voters systemwide.

For ourselves, we don't agree with Angelina. We'll be voting for Candidate Harris. She'll be voting for Trump. 

That said, she seems to be a good, decent person. Why has she decided to vote for Trump? If you squint a bit, you can perhaps begin to see the across the border into a version of sacred Thoreau's "distant land:"

Walden; or, Life in the Woods

[...]

I should not talk so much about myself if there were anybody else whom I knew as well. Unfortunately, I am confined to this theme by the narrowness of my experience. Moreover, I, on my side, require of every writer, first or last, a simple and sincere account of his own life, and not merely what he has heard of other men’s lives; some such account as he would send to his kindred from a distant land; for if he has lived sincerely, it must have been in a distant land to me. 

On the one hand, Angelina almost seems to live in a distant land. Why in the world would someone who wasn't a snarling racist decide to vote for Candidate Trump? 

For those of us who are willing to be "confined by the narrowness of [our own] experience," there may be no possible answer to that question. On the other hand, Angelina seems to be completely sincere—and she's not only a fellow citizen, she's also somebody's neighbor and she's somebody's friend.

We Blues! Being human, we're often willing to be confined by the narrowness of our experience. This keeps us from knowing how to persuade people to cross the border into our own Blue America—to abandon that far distant land.

What explains Angelina's decision? We'd like to see somebody ask! 

That said, journalists at the New York Times often seem, at least to us, to be huddled in a second type of "distant land"—and the same is true of the endless array of spear-chuckers who work for the Fox News Channel. Tomorrow, we'll turn to those distant lands. 

Yesterday, speaking with God, Candidate Harris began to break loose. We acknowledge the decency of the world's Angelinas, but we're hoping it's not too late.

Tomorrow: "If a lion could talk, we could not understand him." (Other distant lands.)