Must See TV? Hardly.

 

(By American Zen's Mike Flannigan, on loan from Ari)

"He’s slick. Walz is folksy and relatable. In the final analysis, VP debates are interesting but irrelevant. I can’t think of one that moved the needle in a presidential race.” -Rep. Gerry Connolly (D-VA)

Last night's vice presidential debate could be used as an object lesson as to why VP debates ought to be eliminated and unceremoniously dumped on the ash heap of history. After all, most if not all political pundits would agree that presidential debates don't move needles or change hearts and minds. At this stage of the game, most voters have already made up their minds as to how they're going to vote. So, how efficacious can VP debates be? It's like hurling spitballs at a fast-moving train. It's the B side of a hit record that we listen to half-heartedly and out of perhaps mere misplaced loyalty to a brand.

     It's notable that the only people who think Vance won last night are right wing, hyper-partisan hacks. Trump and Vance basically told the same lies at their respective debates and the only difference was that Vance, firmly ensconced in his charming Mr. Goodbar persona, was slicker at it than Trump. And a liar cannot and should not be considered the winner of any debate.

     And that's what Vance is to those of us who can easily cut through that Yale-educated, preppy, oleaginous charm, that borderline creepy, smiling guy at the end of the bar, all too eager to exploit your lifetime of moral failings so he can indulge in his.

     The video above, to me, is the signature and singular moment of the night. Some will say, and have, that it was really when Gov. Walz put Vance's feet to the fire and asked him if he thought Trump lost the 2020 election. Vance pulled his feet back and said he wanted to focus on the future, conveniently forgetting that past is prologue and that Trump hasn't changed a bit since he was seven years-old much less in the last four years.

     But that clip above exposed Vance's peevishness and real attitude toward the two female moderators. Vance had advanced another lie, that Springfield's Haitian migrants were living there illegally. Margaret Brennan, one of the moderators, reminded Vance that the Haitians were living and working under a temporary protected status. Vance whined that the rules stipulated that CBS wasn't supposed to do any fact-checking.

     In other words, Vance counted on CBS' unofficial injunction not to fact check as part of his debate strategy. He thought CBS would let him lie unchallenged. In fact, Vance got so strident they had to cut off his microphone.

    

     This was the exact moment Vance tried to fact-check CBS' fact check. Like Mitt Romney in 2012, Vance isn't the type of alpha male who likes being interrupted by a woman. In fact, Vance looks like he's chewing his tongue off trying to resist the urge to ask Nora O'Donnell and Margaret Brennan if they have kids and own cats.

 

 So, WTF?

So, how can CBS justify taking away 88 minutes that their viewers can't get back? Not a whole helluva lot, apparently.

   This election cycle gave birth to a new word in the lexicon. It even has its own hashtag: #sanewashing. It's when the mainstream media bend over backwards trying to make a clearly insane presidential candidate sound normal by tailoring clips of a word salad so said candidate doesn't sound as if he was about to drop his drawers and pleasure himself in front of a crowd.

    What the American viewer is left with are sound bytes lasting for all of two seconds at a time and stitched together as the MSM tries mightily to extract some sense like an industrious cryptocurrency crook trying to mine bitcoins. And we know why they do this: To keep the ad buys coming in, which is good for the bottom line, which is good for the top executives, which is good for the shareholders.

     It's not, however, good for the news consumer that's falsely fed the perception that Donald Trump is a perfectly sane stable genius. The MSM want to keep the illusion of the horse race that's neck and neck. No one wants to watch much less bet on a horse race between a thoroughbred and a broken down, sway-backed nag that ought to be on its way to the glue factory.

     If you want to know how desperate Trump is for attention and was last night, take a gander of what he put out on Truth Social during last night's debate:

    

     Which shows not only a shocking lack of focus during a make-or-break presidential campaign but it also shows Trump once again advocating for a known crook who'd bet on games in which his teams were playing. But to get back to Vance...

    JD Vance is literally the first VP pick in history who called his own running mate "America's Hitler" and "cultural heroin". Therefore, his place on Trump's ticket makes him, I'd opine, the biggest, most opportunistic whore and all-around fucking scumbag in US political history, which is saying something. Early this morning on Twitter, Ana Navarro wrote,

   "JD Vance’s an able shape-shifter. He’s been a Hillbilly. A Hollywood elite. A Never-Trumper. A Trump psychophant. Demeaning of women. A bigoted liar. He’s been consistent at being slick. Yesterday, he took the shape of a cordial guy discussing policy.

     Believe him at your peril."

     Which is probably the most astute and spot-on assessment that anyone's ever ventured of Vance.

 

 So Who Won?

That's not my call but yours, assuming you watched the debate as I had. All I can do is give you my subjective opinion. As is often if not always the case, there were cringe-worthy moments and all that's left is to decide if they were forced or unforced errors.

     One of the most cringe-worthy moments of the night was when Walz tried to play up his 2nd amendment credentials and blurted out that he was friends with school shooters. Of course, that's not what Walz meant to say. He either meant that he was friends with school shooting victims or had been friends with other students who were also gun owners. Walz, admittedly, is not the most articulate guy. So chalk up that gaffe to an unforced error.

    Of course, the rabid right in its desperation immediately took to social media to lambaste him for saying he was friends with school shooters, exactly the kind of people the rabid right wing wants to do absolutely nothing about, including infringing the rights of 15 year-olds to bear arms. Another cringe-worthy unforced error was when Walz began reminiscing about his childhood in Nebraska. One almost dreaded an anecdote about him having to walk to school in blizzards, uphill, both ways.

    And then there were JD Vance's forced errors, such as refusing to admit that Trump lost in 2020, that Springfield's Haitian workers were living there legally. In fact, perhaps the biggest whopper of the night was when Vance insisted that Trump peacefully transferred power on January 20th. And, just like that, Vance blithely pretended to forget about what Trump had done two weeks earlier, which was to sic a violent mob on his own government and his last vice president. It was an insurrection that cost nine human beings their lives, four by suicide.

     Vance also forgot to mention that Trump's "peaceful transfer of power" involved childishly avoiding the inauguration ceremony, firing the White House's chief usher so there would be no one to open the doors for President Joe Biden and the First Lady. Oh, and using Air Force One one last time to ferry stolen top secret documents back to Mar a Lago.

     JD Vance gave us exactly what we expected, at least among those of us like Ana Navarro and I: Teflon-coated lies, lies that, naturally, escaped serious scrutiny. This was exemplified by the usually useless Jake Tapper of CNN, who actually said on live national television that Vance had a clear advantage over Walz in terms of public speaking experience. I don't know where Tapper got his information from but Tim Walz has been the governor of Minnesota for nearly seven years. And, for years before that, he was a congressman. Vance has been in the Senate for barely over a year and a half. So, where does Vance get this vaster debate experience? (Bonus fact: Walz is 20 years older than Vance.)

     What we didn't expect was a buttoned-down Tim Walz. For most of the night, Walz looked like a chin puppet who woke up to find himself suddenly transported to a bordello on two-for-one night. He was clearly out of his element, like a mackerel on the bottom of a fishing boat. Gone was the "folksy, relatable" Midwesterner that Gerry Connolly spoke of. This was what happened to Ned Lamont in 2006 when he beat Joe Lieberman in the Democratic primary and he started listening to his focus groups.

     Vance may have won the debate on style points but that's just because he's a slicker and more accomplished liar than Tim Walz. Walz had the facts on his side but facts, as with the truth, often play the handmaiden to lies and falsehoods during an election year.