You might say that “severe consequences” against Iran do not necessarily have to be violent. But considering the context of U.S. bombing. raids, in Syria, over the past three weeks, I think that Walz going in the suggested direction would legitimately open discussion of whether he is on the same team as Harris.
The question was:
That was a good, if hard, question.
The administration policy here is that it would not be a preemptive attack, and that it supports Israeli action if more or less proportionate. Looking at the transcript, Walz essentially said that:
I heard a more hypothetical future than what should happen now. Because indeed that question makes no sense as right now. There is nothing preemptive about a response to an attack. Preemptive is in advance of a known or highly suspected major attack to occur in the near future. Perhaps I misunderstood the intent of the question.
I believe that was also Walz’s best and hardest hitting response all night.
Agreed. I thought it was a bullshit way to start the debate. I also thought the out of nowhere question about Tiananmen Square to Walz was 100% bullshit. Where the fuck did that come from?
Its like those competition debates where the topic is something like “Resolved: Fascism is the best form of government” and then the two teams draw straws to determine whether they are pro or anti. Vance was the better debater but was handicapped by drawing the short straw and having the more difficult task of defending the indefensible.
My answer to this, is that it’s not necessarily measuring Walz against his past performances or other general expectations. The point is more that I think a lot of posters here are measuring his performance against what we read here every single day. That creates an unrealistic expectation.
Walz had 2 minutes to answer each question generally speaking. I would ask any poster here curious to consider how long it takes them to compose an intelligent post on a complex subject. And keep in mind you would be posting after having read recent posts and have already been thinking on the subject. Walz had an idea of general topics to be discussed, but no idea of what question would be coming next. Jumping mental train tracks isn’t always easy.
My point was that the questions they asked gave no way to say that. Maybe the voters were making superficial judgements; maybe they weren’t; but the question allowed no way to distinguish between sounding reasonable superficially (which he did) and saying entirely unreasonable things (which he also did.)
Agree. When my gf saw the ad she was impressed (she’s in advertising). She described to me what the people involved in production went through and how they worked feverishly through the night to come up with it. And yet it is polished and perfect.
The point, of course, is not that Vance sounded reasonable and measured. Words mean things. The words Vance used were at odds with his own stated positions. How do you give women options by restricting them? How do you earn their trust by repealing their protections? Even when Vance was not being misleading or intellectually dishonest, his statements lacked coherence with moderate examination.
You can apply revisionist history to modify Trump’s record on Obamacare, women’s rights and foreign policy. But it doesn’t change what happened. Trump would focus a second term on personal slights and Project 2025 goals (agenda 47). He would solve fewer problems then the first time round.
Well, of course that’s typical Fox: lie to the viewers!
But Vance DID win by gaining so many ‘favorability’ points. Walz won some, too. But he failed to make the case that Vance is weird and extremist.
The debate left too many ‘undecided’ voters with the impression that the USA will be fine if Trump and Vance get in. That’s a problem.
I’m not blaming Walz. It’s his nature to try to make the person he’s with comfortable, and to try to find consensus. In most aspects of life that’s an unqualified positive. In the case of the debate and its possible effect on the election: not so much.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”
The bold part is where Walz won the debate, and frankly where Biden won his debate. MAGA may understand “freedom” as the ability to make a comfortable living without government interference (such as the regulations against predatory lending that dunned Ashli Babbit’s pool supply company for 169%). An avatar of personal success may be found in Donald Trump, since he’s no worse than many of the rest of his class.
It’s a debate that’s been ongoing, at least since Jefferson envisioned a nation of yeoman smallholders, and the Jackson evicted the Indians out of all the good bottom land for the slaveholders while the rest of the whites could scratch at the hills. And Jackson’s portrait hung in Trump’s Oval Office.
I agree that this China thing has nothing to do with anything. But The Atlantic felt it was important enough to devote an article to it. Where’s the article highlighting all of Vance’s lies, hmmm?
They went for the low hanging fruit. A democrat misspeaking is news. A republican lying to the nation for 2 hours straight is normal now. The only thing newsworthy about Vance is that he did so eloquently.
I can almost take some solace in that fact. Instead I think I’ll just…
And gave me a followup of Tim Minchin doing Play It Safe, for a nice bonus. (Admittedly, that may be because I’d watched that recently.)
ETA: local paper (mostly local news) ran a short article about the debate. Said, more or less, that they actually debated each other, and that it was a nice change. Listed some of the things they disagreed on.
It wasn’t out of nowhere. It was the headline on multiple sites the day of the debate. It wasn’t too hard to figure out it might come up as a character issue. It’s not like it was a secret the moderator uncovered and had in their back pocket. They just had to look at the internet. It might not matter to you but it wasn’t out of left field. I got alerts on my phone about the story hours before the debate. It should have been an answer that was prepped since it was a fresh story.
I totally missed them. There are now a gazillion articles, post debate, but it wasn’t something I saw that day. Of course, I don’t do a lot of news browsing during the day. It was nothing I had heard of so it was out of nowhere for me.
With that said, if they wanted to talk about character, why didn’t they ask Vance about his people eating dogs and cats story? A story he has admitted making up.
Where’s the article highlighting all of Vance’s lies, hmmm?