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Notes -
I want a vice presidential debate top level post.
So JD Vance sounded pretty good here overall. If you ask me, both speakers were miles ahead of their presidential candidate counterparts, which is sad. There is probably a lot that can be read from the debate, but I did want to discuss a couple moments making waves on other social media. First I will mention I was surprised to hear JD Vance support nuclear energy, and I will also mention a lot of people were probably unhappy with how he handled the gun control/mass shooting question. But back to the two I wanted to mention
The first such moment originated from a fact check:
Tim Walz responds to his statement, and then a debate moderator comes in with this:
I will cut it off there to not balloon this post. You can read the transcript here.
It seems many blue tribers saw him complaining about a fact check and seeing a win. Why would you complain about fact checking other than if you were lying? This is another example going back to Scott's post about the media rarely lying. Hey, they're temporary asylum seekers, so since they were allowed in with little hindrances to speak of, they're legal. Fact checked. This is an example of why I tend to dislike fact checking in a debate. It introduces an opportunity to use unfavorable framing on an opponent with lawyerspeak on technically true things. Let the candidates do it themselves if they want.
Next up, the January 6th and failure to concede the election:
Once again, there is more to this exchange than that. I said earlier that they had good performances, and I'll go further here and say that JD Vance had a pretty great night. I'd never heard him speak before and he sounded very well spoken, very well informed, and brought up many issues that I so dearly wished that Donald Trump would have brought up, like specifically naming the asylum system and mentioning the partial birth abortions allowed in Minnesota (I noticed Tim Walz's denial was not fact checked). That is to say, JD Vance is competent and might have won against Kamala Harris, representing a return to civil debates and "normal" politicians, despite the "weird" allegations.
But he is really dragged down on this issue. It's lame he has to defend election denial claims in the first place, and leave room for challenging more later. I know many of you have strong feelings on the truthfulness of the claims. I will say this: if someone goes and makes those claims, they shouldn't run again. That is very powerful ammo for the other side. And it's far from the only ammo. I am very disappointed with the rhetoric Trump throws around. His lashing out against Taylor Swift reads as totally pathetic. And it is sad to see someone with as much talent as JD Vance have to try to slip around all this crap coming at him, from both Tim Walz, the debate moderator, and untold amounts of unhappy people on Twitter.
Can I go a layer of meta here?
How much attention to politics to you pay where you
Were surprised that Vance supports nuclear power
Haven’t heard Vance speak before
?
Are you an American voter, or overseas or something?
I'm not entirely sure why this matters, but I read The Motte pretty regularly, as well as /r/moderatepolitics. Occasionally I will check Tracing Woodgrains's twitter, otherwise, I pretty much let all my political information seep in through The Motte, reddit, or Discord. I don't click on articles often, and I very seldomly watch videos. I am pretty disappointed by the amount of left wing partisan links that get posted to /r/moderatepolitics. If you have any other forums where intelligent people talk about politics, I'm all ears.
Yes, I'm an American voter. I'm in the Midwest, Illinois-but-not-Chicago.
I was just curious to see a window into a bubble I’m not a part of is all.
I think it’s easy to assume that the rest of the world is similar to your own world and hearing from people having different types of experiences is really helpful.
For instance: in my social feeds, IRL circles etc. it is a given that Vance is pro nuclear, and while most people haven’t listened to every interview he has given, most everybody have listened to him speak a little, and mostly have seen stuff like his all in summit interview.
What are some general beliefs you have about what conservative voters care about?
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