WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2024
One candidate still isn't sure: Who won the 2020 election? Based on statements made last night, one candidate still isn't sure:
CANDIDATE WALZ (10/1/24): I just think for everyone tonight, and I'm going to thank Senator Vance. I think this is the conversation they want to hear, and I think there's a lot of agreement. But this is one that we are miles apart on.
It [January 6] was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen. And it manifested itself because of Donald Trump's inability to say—he's still saying he didn't lose the election.
I would just ask that. Did he lose the 2020 election?
CANDIDATE VANCE: Tim, I'm focused on the future. Did Kamala Harris censor Americans from speaking their mind in the wake of the 2020 Covid situation?
TW: That is a damning— That is a damning non-answer.
Candidate Vance still doesn't seem to be sure who won the last election! Last night, he was given several chances to say who won.
"I'm focused on the future?" That's what he said each time!
We thought we might establish the record about that election, at least as it's said to exist. For the record, the leading authority on the last election says it turned out like this:
Popular vote, 2020 presidential election:
Joseph R. Biden (D): 81,283,501 (51.3%)
Donald J. Trump (R): 74,223,975 (46.8%)
That's how it went in the popular vote. Here's the electoral college:
Electoral college vote:
Joseph R. Biden (D): 306 votes
Donald J. Trump (R): 232 votes
Nationwide, President Trump got over 74 million votes as he sought re-election. But he lost by 7.1 million votes—or so the record says.
That said, Candidate Vance still doesn't seem sure about who won that election! We'd say his pair of responses last night were part of the "After" in a classic "Before / After" picture—a classic picture which dates all the way back to the 1960 presidential campaign.
In recent weeks, we've been quoting from Theodore White's iconic book, The Making of The President 1960. It's a very famous book. It was written by a highly placed observer.
On January 6, 2021, a mob of people attacked the Capitol in the wake of the 2020 election. As Candidate Vance said last night, "It was a threat to our democracy in a way that we had not seen."
Aas of today, millions of American citizens remain unconvinced about who won the last election. Just to establish a record, White offered this on the very first page of his famous book:
WHITE (page 3): On election day America is Republican until five or six in the evening. It is in the last few hours of the day that working people and their families vote, on their way home from work or after supper; it is then, at evening, that America goes Democratic if it goes Democratic at all. All of this is invisible, for it is the essence of the act that as it happens it is a mystery in which millions of people each fit one fragment of a total secret together, none of them knowing the shape of the whole.
What results from the fitting together of these secrets is, of course, the most awesome transfer of power in the world...Heroes and philosophers, brave men and vile, have since Rome and Athens tried to make this particular manner of transfer of power work effectively; no people has succeeded at it better, or over a longer period of time, than the Americans...
In 2017, in his inaugural speech. President Trump spoke about a mystery meat he described as "American carnage." Back at the dawn of the modern era, White was speaking from an attitude we might call American confidence, even American exceptionalism.
No one else had ever done it so well! A bit later in his opening chapter, White fleshed out his point of view as he described election night:
WHITE (page 10): ...As every citizen sits in his home watching his TV set or listening to his radio, he is the equal of any other in knowledge. There is nothing that can be done in these hours, for no one can any longer direct the great strike for America’s power; the polls have closed. Good or bad, whatever the decision, America will accept the decision—and cut down any man who goes against it, even though for millions the decision runs contrary to their own votes. The general vote is an expression of national will, the only substitute for violence and blood. Its verdict is to be defended as one defends civilization itself.
"America will accept the decision," however it may go.
At the dawn of the modern era, White seemed quite sure of that fact. By tradition, that expression of national will would be defended, in this nation, "as one defends civilization itself."
That's what one observer thought at the dawn of the modern era. Those passages might be seen as the "Before" in a classic "Before and After" picture which was still under construction last night.
Before the modern era unspooled, bringing us to this precarious place, we the people were prepared to defend the electorate's decision "as one defends civilization itself." Just for the record, here's the way the decision turned out in that 1960 election:
Popular vote, 1960 presidential election:
Candidate Kennedy (D): 34,220,984 (49.7%)
Candidate Nixon (R): 34,108,157 (49.6%)
With respect to the electoral college, Kennedy won that vote, 303-219. Neither of the major party candidates won Mississippi or Alabama that year.
In terms of the nationwide popular vote, that election was very close. For better or worse, our last election wasn't.
Candidate Biden won the 2020 election by 7.1 million votes. But Candidate Trump is still insisting that he won—sometimes he says he won by a landslide—and Candidate Vance still doesn't seem to be sure, or doesn't seem to be willing to say.
For today, we offer this as a "Before and After" picture of the current state of "our democracy," but also of the current state of our "public discourse." As far as that goes, do we actually have a public discourse at this juncture at all?
With regard to that second question, we could teach it flat or round.
At the dawn of the modern political era, Theodore White was completely sure that we the people would be (fiercely) willing to accept the outcome of a presidential election. In the weeks which followed the 2020 election, it began to seem that we were exiting that political era, bound for who knows where.
Candidate Trump may win again this year. No one knows where that outcome would take us, though the same is true if he loses.
That said, one of last night's candidates didn't even seem to know who won the last election! On the journalistic side, the moderators behaved like a pair of potted plants at various times as the evening proceeded.
This is the shape of the national discourse we've somehow managed to create over the past sixty years. Through the interactions of a wide array of behaviors, this is the disordered business we almost seem to have chosen.
Tomorrow: What passes for a public discourse at the end of that era
Vance won the debate but the Harris campaign isn't worried since the Middle East is breaking out into a major war and those countries enjoy diplomatic discussions with women who are afraid to give interviews.
ReplyDeleteTrump is afraid to appear on 60 Minutes because they would fact check him. Somerby complains that the public is no longer accepting election results and then you come here and illustrate his complaint.
DeleteYou cannot win a debate while telling easily falsifiable lies, no matter how self-possessed your demeanor and politely civil your responses. Vance is as much of a liar as Trump and that is why he has no chance their ticket will win.
Better to vote for the guy who is so certain he's innocent of his crimes, he's afraid to take the witness stand to proclaim his innocence.
Delete9:30,
DeleteAre you looking for brave folks, who aren't afraid of their own shadows, to lead this nation?
If so, you should steer clear of people who are scared of drag queens and women who make their own reproductive choices.
Deciding who won the election depends on counting the votes, not acceptance of the outcome by either side. This isn't a matter of opinion, but of science.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why Somerby has decided to replace boring old Homer with boring old White, but White's opinion about the 1960 election has nothing whatsoever to do with our current predicament, in which Trump is so out of touch with reality that he cannot keep his own lies straight. This election is testing whether a politician can lie constantly to his supporters and still come close to winning. The outcome in 2020 suggests he cannot, even with the help of his white supremacist miltia members and a bunch of deluded paramilitary cosplayers trying to overthrow the election in Trump's favor.
The most important outcome of this election may be the weakening of the male backlash against women's rights. Harris will be an excellent president and she may succeed in codifying women as equal citizens, completing the feminist revolution by giving women full civil rights. I believe Trump will be viewed as a backlash to women's ascendancy, his supporters viewed as angry Kens resorting to violence because they don't know their purpose if women can do everything they can do. And if men find themselves competing politically with women who tell the truth, their lies will make them too easy to mock and they will lose. So perhaps politics will clean up its act finally and Somerby can talk about something besides White's throwback to times when women were secretaries and wives and had nothing to do with winning elections. Those were the days, right Somerby? How on earth can political analysis that entirely omits women have anything to say about today's elections?
The most obscene moment of the debate was when Vance pretended he cared how many women die as the result of oppressive abortion laws.
DeleteThere was a funny part when Vance wanted to say that women should take care of their own kids and not work, but couldn't make himself say it when his own wife depends on child care workers to take care of their three kids. She is a Yale Law graduate and trial lawyer, not a stay-at-home mom and homemaker. There is apparently a limit to his hypocrisy.
From Simon Rosenberg (Hopium Chronicles):
ReplyDelete"This morning I remain just bowled over by the lies, inventions and contempt the modern right has for all of us. We know Trump spends more of his time in a world of untruth and invention rather than the world we all live in - eating cats and dogs, sharks and batteries, the economy was better under him, he isn’t a rapist, fraudster, traitor, felon etc. Last night we heard Vance also spending most of the debate there with Trump in this bat shit crazy MAGA world - climate change isn’t real, stripping away the rights and freedoms of women is a good thing, denying their clear assault on American’s access to affordable and quality care, continuing to lie about the 2020 election and their attempt to over turn American democracy. It was as if Vance’s central goal last night was to lie, paper over and deflect from their extremism; to use clearly practiced and often ridiculous diversions in a silly setting to limit the political damage their beliefs would actually cause if he fully articulated them in public. It was a defensive performance by a losing campaign that knows how far away they are from the majority of Americans. To limit the damage Vance repeatedly trod out comically absurd lines and narratives that wouldn’t withstand the simplest fact check, taking advantage of CBS’s cowardly decision to yield to the Trump campaign’s illiberal demands to allow lying and invention to happen unchallenged."
"On the journalistic side, the moderators behaved like a pair of potted plants at various times as the evening proceeded. "
ReplyDeleteThe rules agreed to by both campaigns stipulated that the moderators would behave like potted plants. Trump has refused to participate in a traditional 60 Minutes interview of both candidates because he is avoiding fact-checking. Vance felt comfortable telling lie after lie because the debate did not feature fact-checking by moderators. That meant that Walz would have to give up his own statements in order to refute Vance's repeated falsehoods, placing him at a disadvantage time-wise.
We can all see that Vance lied repeatedly. He is perhaps counting on other viewers to be ignorant and not recognize his lies. There is that traditional Republican disdain for their own followers. It remains for the press to report on his lies and not reduce them to simple differences of opinion, as Somerby seems to be doing with entire election outcomes today. But election results are matters of fact, just as they were in 2020 when Trump decided to ignore the results of the election and pretend to be the winner.
Trump similarly tried to pretend that covid would disappear if ignored long enough. People died because of that tactic. Trump pretends that Putin and Kim Jong Un are good guys. He pretends Melania is still his wife when she has obviously left him. He pretends he is wealthy when he is in hock up to his neck, has more bankruptcies than successes and had to let Russian Oligarchs and the Saudis bail him out financially (and now they own him AND his kids). Trump's biggest pretense these days is that he is not failing cognitively when everyone can see he isn't all there.
Vance is pretending along with Trump in order to benefit politically and financially, pleasing his own billionaire owners (Thiel and others). Vance does not have dementia but he also lacks morals and that makes him far more dangerous than Trump. Vance came across as very vice-presidential, as long as you don't care whether he told the truth. We'll see today how many Republicans don't care. Does it matter how well-spoken Vance was, if he cannot stand up for truth and is willing to sell his soul to the devil by propping up Trump? I think that makes him dangerous, not presidential. We've seen guys like him before. But not in White's book, or any of Somerby's quotes from it.
The question of who won the 2000 election is a trick, because it can have two meanings. Bob writes as if Vance were answering #1, but Bob is really asking meaning #2.
ReplyDelete1. Do you accept the results of the election?
2. Would the loser have won absent fraud?
In 2016, many Democrats did not accept the results. There was widespread belief and actions based on the idea that Trump was illegitimate. I recall cousins of mine chanting, "Not my President!" Powerful Democrats threw roadblocks in Trump's effort to get a new government in place.
Asking Vance about fraud in 2016 is a way to embarrass him. Vance's opinion on meaning #2 doesn't matter at this point. Bob cannot point to a single way in which Vance would act differently as VP based on his opinion or guess of fraud 8 years ago. But, Vance doesn't want to contradict Trump, so the question puts him in a bind, even though his opinion doesn't matter.
I will go farther. IMO election security is not as good as it might be. If doubts about past elections encourage more secure future elections, then these doubts are beneficial.
You mean who won in 2020, not 2000, right? All 2016 Democrats accepted the results, but that doesn't mean we didn't see how Trump stole the election. No one stormed the capitol, there was no violence, there were only statements about Trump's cheating, which caught up with him in the hush money case. Hillary Clinton clearly won the popular vote (which Trump denies) and would have won the electoral vote had Trump not cheated.
DeleteVance was unwilling to state that he would have behaved as Pence did. The question put him in a bind because Vance knows that Trump's actions were illegal but he also doesn't want to contradict Trump.
Your opinion that election security is "not as good as it might be" shows that you have swallowed the right wing propaganda. Security was examined repeatedly and found not to have compromised the election. "Doubts" about past elections are fraud and lies, not "beneficial" because they were used to engage in an unlawful attempt to overturn a valid election. That is at the heart of the pending lawsuit being pursued by Jack Smith, in which Trump attempted to deny the election results and stay in office using illegal means. Vance's unwillingness to be truthful about 2020 results suggests he would not be honest should Trump attempt another coup. That should be very troubling to you and any other prospective voters.
This sophistry is both transparent and tiring. There was no fraud. It's not true that in 2016 'many Democrats' did not accept the result. Clinton conceded and that was that.
DeleteAfter Trump victory, ‘not my president’ becomes liberal rallying cry
DeleteThe election of Donald Trump as president of the United States ignited angry protests from left-leaning Americans online and elsewhere — with the phrase “not my president” echoing throughout.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/after-trump-victory-not-my-president-becomes-liberal-rallying-cry-155948405.html
Clinton conceded (as Ilya notes) and there were no challenges to Trump's victory. Of course many voters were upset by his victory. But that is not refusing to transition. It is free speech. There were no Democratic politicians questioning the election result. There were efforts to cooperate with Trump's transition (he was unprepared and had no real transition team because he expected to lose). The results were certified by Congress without opposition of the type organized by Trump in 2020.
DeleteYes, many Democrats believed the claims that Russia interfered, especially after the Mueller Report found evidence. Many Democrats were outraged by Comey's last-minute statement based on no evidence of wrongdoing whatsoever by Clinton. Many of us were upset by Trump's failure to follow election rules, especially campaign finance violations. There was a lot wrong with the 2016 election, a lot to protest, but Clinton conceded and no one challenged the election results.
Trump was certainly not my president. He was a fraud and a liar and a cheat and he did damage to our country during his presidency. He was truly the worst president ever. The people are allowed to say so at protests without being accused of trying to overthrow the govt. In contrast, the 1/6 attempted coup broke laws and were not "protests" but a violent attempt to overturn the election. The many trials afterwards revealed that with the convictions of the most violent participants, except at the highest levels -- that trial is still pending. There is a difference between free speech and attempting to overthrow a valid election result using violence and fraud.
in understanding the difference between meanings #1 and #2, consider the 2000 election. Some Democrats today think Gore would have won the election with one more recount. Does that belief matter? No, that belief has no effect on President Biden or Harris's policies.
DeleteDavid,
DeleteYou come up with the policies/ programs you think are needed to secure our elections, and I'll call the folks who don't want to fund them through a return to the 90% top income tax rate "un-American traitors".
Deal?
Asking Vance about fraud in 2016 is a way to embarrass him.
DeleteBullshit, David. That man stated explicitly many times that he would have violated the law and our Constitution by accepting the fraudulent electors as legitimate and would have thrown our votes away by the charade of sending the election to the House. He was asked specifically if he still stood by that threat to our democracy and the fucking coward ran away from answering. fuck you, Dickhead.
David, the press in FL conducted that recount and it favored Gore. It wasn't speculation, it was a recount funded by the press that would have swung the election, but Gore had already conceded by then and Bush had taken office. The outrage was the Supreme Court's decision. Again, no Democrats engaged in a violent coup, no matter what our feelings about the election results.
DeleteSome Democrats today think Gore would have won the election with one more recount.
DeleteThat's the conclusion reached by a consortium of news organizations that did look at the results that different standards of counting ballots would've reached.
The lies about 2020 are not the most important lies told by Vance last night. He lied about Trump's plan to deport 20 million immigrants, pretending Trump only wants to deport the ones who are criminals (which already happens under Biden). He lied about Biden's accomplishments and he pretended that Harris is President and not a VP working to implement Biden's policies, repeatedly asking why Harris has not already fixed every problem raised by the moderators' questions, from immigration to inflation to child care to health care. Yes, that was a political tactic but it was also lying.
ReplyDeleteOne of his biggest lies was about his own intentions towards women and children. I agree with Amanda Marcotte of Salon, who said:
"Former President Donald Trump's running mate exposed Tuesday night a deep-rooted hatred of children, argued Salon columnist Amanda Marcotte.
"Vance sneered that climate change is 'weird science,'" Marcotte wrote. "With that simple answer, 'pro-baby' Vance showed he will wreak havoc on the futures of all children for his political ambitions."
Such lying is not "politics as usual" but reveals Vance to be entirely lacking in character, unfit to serve as anyone's VP. Lying is not a job qualification but a disqualification. Someone who lies on a job application in the corporate world is immediately fired upon discovery. Republicans seem to have rewarded Vance for his lies, but he may be driving away as many right wing voters as he attracted among extremists. Polled voters rightly dislike him and have given him a very low favorability rate. His attempts to conceal his views and sane-wash Trump should not have fooled anyone, right or left. He is fake and unworthy of holding office, even as a Senator, given the way he has treated the legal Haitian immigrants living in his own state, creating division and violence in peaceful communities.
I think Walz played into Vance's strategy of normalizing himself, when Walz treated Vance with civility and tried to find bipartisan agreement with someone who was lying through his teeth. It made Walz look naive, despite his decency. But Walz became clearly angry toward the end, so I hope viewers could tell that he knew he was being played by Vance. I found it hard to watch.
Rawstory is quoting Sarah Longwell, a GOP strategist:
ReplyDelete""Last night’s debate had two features I like very much: substance and civility," wrote Longwell. "And yet, JD Vance told us he was totally cool with Trump’s refusal to abide by the 2020 election results."
"The more *normal* one sounds when saying insane things, the more alarmed we should be," warned Longwell.
Vance has continually refused to commit to accepting election results that go against Trump, and has made clear that if he were placed in former Vice President Mike Pence's shoes in 2020, he would have done as Trump demanded and illegally blocked the certification of the electoral count on January 6.
All of this comes at a time when the Trump campaign and the Republican National Committee have shifted much of their resources away from conventional voter outreach and into poll watcher training and legal buildup, with the intent to contest any election results that don't go their way in 2024."
There is serious concern that the Trump campaign is planning a repeat of 2020 by questioning the legitimacy of the upcoming election, as they did unsuccessfully in 2020.
The VP debate wasn't a whole lot different than the presidential one in terms of content. Vance lied his way through the debate. He is a younger, non-demented form of Trump in that regard. Pundits confusing style with substance scored him higher than Walz. Liberals wanted Walz to more aggressively counter the bullshit. That would have been nice, but Walz isn't that guy, being from Minnesota. There is this thing, which is real, called Minnesota nice (I've lived there). Harris will do some fact checking of this debate in her 60 minute interview, which Trump, the coward, will not participate in.
ReplyDeleteFrom Rawstory:
ReplyDelete"Sen. J.D. Vance scored style points at the vice presidential debate Tuesday evening, but he also had one line that stuck out in the minds of his critics.
Donald Trump's choice for V.P. was smooth in his delivery but appeared flustered at one point in the debate, during his discussion of the Haitian immigrants living in Springfield, Ohio.
The moment occurred when Margaret Brennan of CBS News pointed out to the audience that those immigrants in fact have legal status.
"The rules were that you guys weren’t going to fact check!” the Republican contender shouted.
The moment was highlighted by Vice President Kamala Harris' campaign, which posted, "Still thinking about this" along with a photo of the moderator's explanatory comment to the audience, and Vance's defensive remark.
Former Trump campaign aide A.J. Delgado responded to that, saying, "This was so so so bad."
"OMG, just let them do the fact-check. You look 10X's worse saying, 'Waaaa! You guys were going to let me lie! No fair!' Ooomph, terrible gaffe," she wrote. "BTW, CBS wasn't 'fact-checking' Vance. It was clarifying for viewers a question the moderators themselves asked. The moderator was not getting 'in between' the two and fact-checking one. He doesn't even know what a fact-check is or how it works."
Dana Milbank of the Washington Post also drew attention to that moment, saying, Vance "lodged a whiny protest."
"It was a lie on top of another lie, supplemented by a pair of other lies, in support of an even bigger lie," Milbank wrote. "There was no 'rule' against fact-checking. And Vance had just told a whopper. He had alleged that, in Springfield, Ohio, 'you’ve got schools that are overwhelmed, you’ve got hospitals that are overwhelmed, you have got housing that is totally unaffordable because we brought in millions of illegal immigrants.'"
Milbank continued:
"There is no 'open border,' Kamala Harris isn’t the president, and the thousands of Haitian migrants to which Vance was referring have legal status, which Brennan had accurately pointed out. But Vance claimed that 'what’s actually going on' was that the Haitian migrants are there as part of 'the facilitation of illegal immigration' — and he kept going until the moderators shut off the candidates’ microphones."
Vance is criticized for complaining when the moderators violated the rules in a way that helped Walz. Wasn't Vance right to complain?
DeleteBTW in the 20 minutes that I could stand to watch, the mods had another problem. They asked questions giving so much background that they effectively became part of the debate.
E.g., I recall lengthy question about climate change -- a question that included several statements of fact (or alleged fact.) They should have simply asked Vance for his position on climate and gotten out of the way. We wanted Vance's opinion, not the moderators' opinion.
The moderators may have seen their "fact check" as preventing the Haitians from being targeted as illegals by the people watching the debates, when they are actually legal immigrants. There has been enough violence in Springfield without Vance encouraging more people to target them in other parts of the country. I believe this was damage control over a statement by Vance that might have harmed innocent people. It was an egregiously irresponsible statement that the moderators tried to correct as damage control to innocent bystanders, in my opinion.
Delete