More Than One Way to Win

More than one way to lose

Yes. Yes it is.

If any of you who watched our livestream of the vice-presidential debate at Mary Trump Media last night, you probably know I was pretty unhappy with the way things unfolded.

Maybe it’s because we’re so used to the IV Drip of poison that Donald has injected into the body politic—just think about the massive amounts of stress that often warp our expectations—but it’s almost as if we've lost touch with what's normal.

One could argue that, from a certain perspective, this was a normal debate. There were no fireworks, nobody ranted and raved, the participants were generally civil. So, yes, if we look at the debate through the lens of what a debate should be in normal times, nothing unexpected happened.

If, however, you look at the debate through the lens of what’s at stake in this election, and what it meant that JD Vance was even on that stage, the evening did not actually go as I thought it would. Right before the debate started, the last thing I said was that, although I was worried Vance was going to be normalized in some way, I was much more concerned that he was going to be seen as viable.

The thing is, even though this might sound paranoid and hyperbolic, that everything is stacked against the Democrats. Corporate media, for example, have spent the last nine years normalizing a business failure, racist, traitor, criminal, and sexual assaulter of women. It is in large part because of that normalization that Donald Trump is able to run for the presidency again.

Then, of course, there’s the electoral college. Democrats have to run 3 to 5 points ahead nationally in order to win. And because of the Supreme Court’s corrupt illegitimate super-majority, we can’t even be certain that winning will be enough.

With the deck so stacked against us, when we are presented with opportunities to gain advantage over our opponents, we need to seize them with both hands. Tim Walz didn’t do that last night.

In the hours since the debate, I’ve come to feel differently than I did while watching it. In many ways, Walz did what he needed to do in appealing to swing voters. I think, on balance, he won—not on style, perhaps, but on substance. If only that were enough.

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Because JD Vance is a notorious misogynist who hates women in a way that is deep and multi-faceted, the discussion on abortion rights gave Walz an opportunity to do what he does best—make the conversation personal and heart-felt. He had one of his best moments when he talked about Amber Thurman, a 28-year-old woman who died from complications after taking abortion medication. She sought help in an Atlanta-area hospital but was forced to wait 20 hours before doctors were willing to treat her.

“She happened to be in Georgia, a restrictive state,” Walz said. “Because of that, she had to travel a long distance to North Carolina to try and get her care. Amber Thurman died in that journey back and forth. The [fact of the] matter is, how can we as a nation say that your life and your rights, as basic as the right to control your own body, is determined on geography? There’s a very real chance, had Amber Thurman lived in Minnesota, she would be alive today.”

I think we can say almost unequivocally that Amber would absolutely be alive today if she had lived in a state that believed that women were first-class citizens who had an unfettered right to health care.

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It took over an hour and a half, but the moderators finally got around to asking about January 6^th. This is when Walz showed up in the way I’d hoped he would have from the beginning. Not only was his answer pitch perfect, but his exchange with Vance revealed that Donald’s running is an anti-American, election-denying traitor.

“[Donald] is still saying he didn’t lose the [2020] election,” Walz said. And then he turned to Vance and asked, “Did he lose the 2020 election?”

“Tim,” Vance said, “I’m focused on the future.” 

And that’s when Gov. Walz gave his best response of the night:

“That is a damning non-answer.”

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Having had time to reflect, I do think Walz accomplished much of what he set out to accomplish. But he did something else that will reverberate outside of the confines of the debate and this election.

JD Vance’s running mate is an almost 80-year-old fascist and authoritarian who also happens to be deeply unwell, both physically and psychologically. Forty-year-old Vance is also a fascist and, if Donald gets back into the White House, he will almost certainly become president at some point during the next term.

Last night Vance did one of the things he needed to do, considering most Americans don’t know what a vile, creepy, cruel and violent man he is—he seemed reasonably measured and, at times, even thoughtful and almost sincere. Of course, he had to lie almost 100 times in order to create that impression, but since the moderators didn’t bother to fact check him, he got away with it.

Walz knew that this debate was not going to be fact checked; he knew JD Vance is an inveterate liar, a despicable racist, and a misogynist, so I found the concessions he made to his opponent shocking; I could not believe how much ground he ceded. When you have a really decent guy like Walz say to a really bad guy like Vance things like: “I agree with you;” “I can meet you halfway;” “You have a point,” Vance, one of the most abnormal and dangerous politicians in America, not only gets normalizesd Vance, he actually comes to seem viable.

Polls before the debate showed that Vance was the most unpopular vice-presidential candidate in American history, with only 30% of Americans viewing him favorably. After the debate, that number jumped 11% to 41%. That’s a problem.

Democrats need to understand that you don’t make common cause with fascists. You just don’t.