DEBATE: Is warming "a hoax," the way Trump says?

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2024

Candidate Vance takes a pass: Did Candidate Vance ever back a national abortion ban?

Yesterday afternoon, we asked that question. This morning, we still aren't sure. 

That said:

In this morning's New York Times, Lisa Lerer discusses that very point in a News Analysis piece. We'll delay our comments on President Lincoln to show you part of what she says:

NEWS ANALYSIS
Vance Smooths Edges to Remake Trump’s Record

[...]

Mr. Vance benefited from moderators who agreed at the start to not spend time correcting false claims uttered on the stage, which allowed him to continue largely unfettered by facts or past positions.

At one point, Mr. Vance falsely claimed he never backed a national abortion restriction, saying he supported “a minimum national standard”—a phrase used by anti-abortion proponents to describe a 15-week federal ban. His comment went unchecked.

Sad! In the statement in question, Vance didn't say that he "never backed a national abortion restriction." He said that he "never supported a national ban"—and no, that's not the same thing.

Lerer is an experienced journalist, but that isn't what Vance really said. For the record, it isn't hard to report what he actually said. CBS News provided this largely accurate transcript, and videotape exists.

Something apparently seized Lerer—or then again, who knows? Maybe her editor adjusted the copy she had composed. Somehow, though, the actual statement got misparaphrased, in a way which reinforced the larger storyline of her piece.

For the record, we agree with Lerer's larger claim about Candidate Vance. We think he did proceed, all through the debate, "largely unfettered by facts."

In our view, it's even worse than that. In our view, Candidate Vance seems to be "an unusually good [misstater]," to borrow from a stronger statement by Senator Bob Kerrey in 1993. 

In yesterday morning's report, we showed you the way Candidate Vance responded when he was asked a direct question by Candidate Walz. Vance offered "a damning non-answer," Walz said. 

We agree with that claim—every word.

We agree with that claim about Vance's refusal to answer. Then too, consider what the gentleman said when he was asked about a famous alleged hoax:

O'DONNELL (10/1/24): Senator [Vance]. I want to give you an opportunity to respond there. The governor mentioned that President Trump has called climate change a hoax. Do you agree? 

VANCE: Well, look, what the President has said is that if the Democrats, in particular, Kamala Harris and her leadership, if they really believe that climate change is serious, what they would be doing is more manufacturing and more energy production in the United States of America, and that's not what they're doing. So clearly, Kamala Harris herself doesn't believe her own rhetoric on this. If she did, she would actually agree with Donald Trump's energy policies...

O'Donnell asked a simple question. Candidate Vance took a pass.

He mentioned a different thing "the president has said," but he failed to respond to the important question he'd actually been asked. The candidate continued along from there, having chosen to avoid answering a clearcut question.

At that point, sad! As you can see by reviewing the transcript, O'Donnell didn't pursue the point. Having asked a basic question, she didn't seem to care when her question went unanswered.

Near the end of the session, that candidate's unfettered behavior was even worse. In this case, we're looking at a statement by Vance which we'd score as flatly false:

O'DONNELL: Let's talk about the state of democracy, the top issue for Americans after the economy and inflation...The governors of every state in the nation, Republicans and Democrats, certified the 2020 election results and sent a legal slate of electors to Congress for January 6th. 

Senator Vance, you have said you would not have certified the last presidential election and would have asked the states to submit alternative electors. That has been called unconstitutional and illegal. 

Would you again seek to challenge this year's election results, even if every governor certifies the results? I'll give you two minutes.

VANCE: Well, Norah, first of all, I think that we're focused on the future. We need to figure out how to solve the inflation crisis caused by Kamala Harris's policies. Make housing affordable, make groceries affordable, and that's what we're focused on. But I want to answer your question because you did ask it. 

Look, what President Trump has said is that there were problems in 2020. And my own belief is that we should fight about those issues, debate those issues peacefully in the public square. And that's all I've said. And that's all that Donald Trump has said.

That's all that Candidate Trump has said? In fact, Candidate Trump has angrily said, again and again, that the last election was rigged, was stolen, was fixed. 

It's a profoundly inflammatory claim. Just for the record, Candidate Trump made the inflammatory statement again last night!

"There were problems in 2020...That's all that Donald Trump has said?" We'd be inclined to score that statement as flatly false—but once again, the statement went unchallenged. At the start of the debate, Margaret Brennan had stated the rules of the road:

The primary role of the moderators is to facilitate the debate between the candidates, enforce the rules, and provide the candidates with the opportunity to fact check claims made by each other. 

For whatever reason, the moderators weren't going to fact-check the candidates! That said, and just for the record, on two occasions, O'Donnell and Brennan pretty much did. 

They did so very clumsily, attempting to work under cover of darkness. In doing so, they provoked fury on the Fox News Channel, "bringing the eternal note of [limited competence] in."

Are we the humans up to the task of maintaining a modern democracy? More specifically, do we possess the types of skills and impulses which let us assemble a respectable national discourse?

Speaking in Gettysburg, President Lincoln wasn't entirely sure. How viable was the American experiment? Here's what the rail-splitter said:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers [sic] brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men [sic] roughj;ly 18.5 million souls. are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.

Can a nation like ours long endure? That isn't the exact question we're asking, but it's right there in the ballpark.

When Lincoln spoke, things were substantially different. At the time of the 1860 census, we were a nation of roughly 31 million souls. (Roughly four million of those people were enslaved.)

Today, our nation is massively larger. Technology is massively advanced. Today, when we hear America sing, misinformation is spilling out from almost every door.

In our view, Lerer (or her editor) misparaphrased something Vance said. With respect to a different topic, Vance himself flatly misstated what Donald J. Trump has said.

Also, Vance avoided responding to the question about climate change being a hoax. The moderators didn't try to make him answer the question he'd been asked.

Does Vance believe that climate change is a hoax? The candidate wasn't required to answer, and it gets worse than that.

Sad! Last night, viewers of the Fox News Channel were subjected to such prime time garbage as this:

GUTFELD (10/2/24): As usual with these debates, it was a clear three-on-one. Of course, an immediate theme was climate change, which according to all of the polling of U.S. voter concerns ranks somewhere below toenail fungus and right above the WNBA standings. 

But that didn't stop Norah from declaring a global warming consensus:

O'DONNELL (videotape): Governor [Walz], your time is up. The overwhelming consensus among scientists is that the earth's climate is warming at an unprecedented rate. 

GUTFELD: So I guess that decides it, right? Norah has spoken, but still, the implication is utter [BLEEP]. There is no correlation between man-made climate change and extreme weather. In fact, the incidents of hurricanes have gone down, not up, in the past century.

But who cares, right? To expect Norah to know the science is like expecting P. Diddy not to have baby oil.

AUDIENCE: [Laughter, applause]

There is no such correlation! So it went at 10:06 p.m. Eastern [7:06 p.m. Pacific] on this primetime "cable news" show. 

(As we've noted in the past, the furious host of this "cable news" program routinely describes climate change as "a hoax.")

On our scorecard, that statement by O'Donnell was one of the several times when the moderators clumsily tried to smuggle in a lightly disguised fact-check. Instead of asking Vance to speak to the issue, she offered that statement—a statement we regard as accurate—then moved to the next topic.

This gave people like Gutfeld a chance to say that the event was "as usual three-on-one." We return to our original question:

As a species, are we humans up to the task of conducting a respectable public discourse?  Are we humans up to the task of conducting a discourse in a giant continental nation with technologies which put people like Greg Gutfeld on the air before millions of regular people?

Such as it ever was, can the American project long endure? President Lincoln posed that question two years before his death. For today, we'll leave our own question right there. 

In our view, Lerer has misparaphrased Vance. For his part, Vance refused to answer an important question. When he refused to answer, O'Donnell and Brennan took a pre-ordained dive.

The following evening, the Fox News Channel sent in the clown! Is there any reason to believe that we humans, under current arrangements, are actually up to this task?

Tomorrow: A very strange time at the Times

When is a national ban not a national ban?

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2024

Perhaps with a ban such as this: As we noted this morning, Candidate Vance still doesn't seem to know who won the last election.

This puzzling fact came to light during last evening's debate. Also, the candidate has been widely criticized for having made the highlighted statement in response to a question by Norah O'Donnell:

O'DONNELL (10/1/24): In the past, you have supported a federal ban on abortion after 15 weeks. In fact, you said if someone can't support legislation like that, quote, "You are making the United States the most barbaric pro-abortion regime anywhere in the entire world." 

My question is, why have you changed your position?

VANCE: Well, Norah, first of all, I never supported a national ban. ...

The candidate continued at length from there. Especially within Blue America, he has been savaged for saying that he never supported a federal / national ban.

Why did Vance issue such a denial? O'Donnell didn't challenge his denial—but if she had, what would Vance have said?

We can't answer that question. Nor are we experts on the full roster of Vance's past statements on this topic. We can riddle you this:

When is a federal or national ban on abortion not a federal or national ban on abortion? Possibly, when it's a federal or national ban on abortion "after fifteen weeks."

As Blue pundits frequently note, the vast majority of abortions take place within the first fifteen weeks. Our question:

If someone proposes a ban on abortions after that, has that person actually proposed "a ban on abortions," full stop?

Has that person proposed "a ban on abortions?" We'd be inclined to say no, with clarifications to follow. 

Is that what Vance would have said if his denial had been challenged? We don't have the slightest idea!

In our view, the moderators behaved like potted plants during most of the evening, probably due to the agreement by CBS News that they wouldn't perform any fact-checking. Perhaps for that reason, O'Donnell never went back and questioned what Vance said.

What did Candidate Vance mean by the denial in question? We don't have any way to know. If O'Donnell had followed up, we'd all be able to evaluate what the candidate said.

In his list of fact checks for the Washington Post, Glenn Kessler scores Vance "disingenuous" for this particular statement. In this instance, we think Kessler may have gotten a bit out over his skis.

For the record, Kessler lists many other plain misstatements by Vance. Also for the record, we humans don't reason with spectacular clarity, especially at highly polarized times such as these. 

At times like these, we humans tend to want what we want! As the great anthropologist Gene Brabender once observed:

Where I come from, we only talk so long. After that, we start to hit.

For extra credit only: We recommend Kessler's fact-check of Vance's statement about the 320,000 allegedly missing children.

That claim has been all over the Fox News Channel. Candidate Trump likes to make it.

Newspapers like the New York Times agree to avert their gaze. All too often, our rapidly failing "national discourse" no longer runs on facts.

DEBATE: Who won the 2020 election?

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

BREAKING: Incomparable services restored!

TUESDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2024

Provider rights the ship: People are suffering from the storm, but also around the world.

They're suffering; we were inconvenienced. We know there's a very large difference

With respect to the storm, it didn't seem that we actually had a storm around here. But our Internet and cable service disappeared (very) early on Sunday morning—and our (landline) phone went too!

Yes, it was an area outage, youthful agents of the (unnamed) Internet Service Provider assured us. But after visits to their facility Sunday at noon and Monday morning at 10, we were beginning to wonder if they were ever going to be able to right the ship.

At some time today, they did! We were elsewhere, helping medical practitioners advance the world's medical knowledge.

Before our services went away, we'd planned to spend the week examining some of the contents of a pair of silos. One is maintained by the Fox News Channel, one by the New York Times.

After recovering from our trauma, we'll start that work tomorrow. That said, the silence of the past several days led us to contemplate the future, in which we'll attempt to describe the state of play afflicting our nation in these latter days, deep inside the political era which started in 1960.

We don't know who the be president-elect will be by then. At present, we picture a new enterprise, at a different site, working under this title:

American Discourse, American Babel
Fox News Channel, New York Times

The Fox News Channel and the New York Times! They're a pair of very famous orgs, though they may not be well-known.

We're not saying that they're "the same;" we aren't saying they're "equivalent." We'd say they're each in control of a silo, and the wages of discourse by silo is the post-journalistic Babel which now belongs to us all.

Before the storm somehow washed us away, we'd reviewed some peculiar reporting at the New York Times. Tomorrow, we'll start this new block of work with a look at a Political Memo by Rebecca Davis O'Brien.

O'Brien's a good, decent person. On Saturday morning, her piece appeared on the front page of the New York Times' print editions.

We agree with many of her points—but on balance, the piece struck us as odd. Online, its dual headline says this:

POLITICAL MEMO
Harris Has a Lot of Strengths. Giving Interviews Isn’t One of Them.
Vice President Kamala Harris is a sharp debater and a tireless campaigner, but televised interviews are a weakness. Her professional experience may explain why.

We agree with some of O'Brien's basic points. On balance, though, her piece seemed puzzling, odd.

We'll start tomorrow with that Political Memo. We may cite the slightly peculiar remark Gail Collins recently made as she spoke with Bret Stephens:

Another Trump Acolyte Finds Himself in Big Trouble

[...]

Bret: I’m still where I was last week: waiting for Harris to persuade me to vote for her. What’s wrong with asking her to sit down for a one-on-one interview with a serious journalist who will ask some tough but reasonable questions about urgent public policy matters? The same, of course, should be done with Trump.

Gail: You know I’m not gonna tell you that Harris is doing enough serious interviews with national reporters. She’s not. Neither, obviously, is Trump, but we have a right to hold her to a higher standard.

Bret: I just want reassurance that she is up for the job.

Given the fuller way he's explained it, we aren't offended by Stephens' stance with respect to Harris. Quite a few people are. 

That said, did Collins mean what she seemed to say? Did she really mean that it's OK for a major newspaper to hold one presidential candidate "to a higher standard?"

Did she mean that the way its sounds? Probably not, but then again, there was that Political Memo just a few days later!

The so-called "democratization of media" has created a nation of silos. Do the mandated contents of one silo sometimes find their way into another?

We wondered when we read that Political Memo! Right there on the Times front page, very few nits were left unpicked, sometimes in ways which didn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. 

We were left with a curious question. Has the other candidate ever been nit-picked, on the front page of the New York Times, in a way which could be compared to that? Has the Times ever beat the bushes, in a comparable way, about his "interview style?"

Full disclosure! We're sick of what we've been trying to do at this incomparable site. It's time to start with our flailing nation's recent history, but for now, we'll still go with this.

We'll start with O'Brien's Political Memo. Or the debate may wash things away! How's a Babel dweller to know?