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What in the fresh hell, Pennsylvania?
Has the Motte discussed John Fetterman? If so, I missed it... I admit there are enough races I'm watching across the country that it is hard to keep track of them all. But in case you, too, have missed it, John Fetterman is the Democratic candidate for the seat of outgoing Senator Pat Toomey, one of 7 Republican senators who voted to convict Donald Trump in his second impeachment circus. Seven days before winning the Primary, John Fetterman had a stroke.
I am not a medical doctor. For all I know, Fetterman will make a full recovery, eventually. But as of right now, the guy is one step above monosyllabic. Which made tonight's debate absolutely excruciating to watch. Over the course of the night, PredictIt shifted ten cents in favor of Fetterman's opponent,
the Wizard ofMehmet Oz. And yet most media accounts of the debate are steadfastly reporting only the substance, such as it was. No surprise--the media has been carrying water for Fetterman for weeks. But like... really? You can't report a single sentence saying, "Fetterman was clearly not up to the task." Watching people hit Twitter to unironically praise him for "doing really well, for a stroke victim!" is shocking. The level of partisanship required to vote for Fetterman at this point simply boggles the mind. On the flip side, #Festerman was briefly trending on Twitter before (I presume) someone elbowed their censors.Of course, we can trust our outspoken President to just tell it like it is. Perhaps President Biden understands better than anyone, given the possibility that he, too, might simply be functioning as a sock puppet for the Democratic establishment. The counterargument that criticizing Fetterman's cognition is some kind of "ableism" is just hollow. This is not a man who can do the job of Senator, at least not right now, and to pretend otherwise just seems exploitative to me. (And calling that a "bad faith" argument seems willfully ignorant. The man can barely speak, that's much more than an "auditory processing" problem.)
Of course, voting has been open for a month in Pennsylvania, and the state has already declared its intention to turn a blind eye to a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling as it counts undated ballots. So in addition to potentially electing someone with the mental faculties of a young child to high federal office, Pennsylvania is also setting up a judicial crisis for its election process.
And all because Oz is, well, a Trumpist. If this is what midterms look like, 2024 is going to be... just something else. I can't even imagine. It's simply too much.
This implies either: 1) a stroke that results in inability to speak necessarily also affects the ability to think analytically; or 2) the ability to speak is critical to the job of Senator. Neither of those things is true.
Re: #1, it would certainly be news to Steven Hawking that speech problems = inability to think, and it is pretty common knowledge that different areas of the brain control different processes. Moreover, suppose Fetterman's stroke had left him completely mute. Would that prove that he would be cognitively unable to perform the duties of Senator? I don't see how, and in fact I rather doubt that anyone would make that claim. Thus, the mere fact that Fetterman has language problems is hardly the ironclad proof that he is unqualified that you think it is.
Re: #2, Senators spend most of their time doing everything other than speaking. And, perhaps more important is that the number one job of a Senator is to represent his constituents. Hence, if Candidate X supports policies that I disagree with, and Candidate Y supports policies that I agree with but has suffered a stroke, it is nonsensical to argue that Candidate X will do a better job as Senator than Candidate Y - from my perspective, he will do a worse job.
I think a correlation suffices to carry the argument. And I think it should be pretty uncontroversial that brain damage of the type caused by a stroke often has a negative effect on one's ability to think analytically.
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yours and SSCReader comment above reminds me of the article in the Atlantic arguing that Democrats only need Biden Corporeal presence. I wonder how many election cycles before the inevitable Horse in the Senate.
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Yes, for example in public committee hearings, floor debates, campaign speeches, town halls, and interacting with agencies to perform constituent services. All of which require the ability to intake speech and respond.
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I think Mitch McConnell in 2016 made it very clear that the Republican position is that someone capable of doing nothing is capable of performing the duties of a senator.
This is a direct partisan claim, and so should be accompanied by proportionally direct evidence. (For example, you could provide a link to a video where Mitch McConnell says, "the Republican position is that someone capable of doing nothing is capable of performing the duties of a senator.")
I assumed everyone here would be familiar with the eventsof the garland nomination. My bad.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merrick_Garland_Supreme_Court_nomination
Good to know that this place expects high quality evidence like... checks notes statements that the media isn't reporting an event accurately based on observation immediately following the event.
"Specifically refuse to take up this issue" is not the same as "doing nothing".
Difference without distinction.
Do you think Fetterman could not "Specifically refuse to take up [a] issue"?
What are you getting at here? Yes, it's not hard to argue that Garland was probably just a case of pure partisan stonewalling, with McConnell very tactically punting him so that Trump would get to make the pick instead. If anything, this isn't an example of incompetence on McConnell's part, which your first post implied--many people would agree that he is a slickly-tactical politcal operative, and few would agree that he's some sort of buffoon that holds up everything in Congress.
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Well put. The people downvoting you are poor sports, and probably cheat at cards.
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No, I didn't put those two sentences together, and neither should you.
Yes, speaking is an important part of a Senator's job; I additionally regard comprehension as an important part of a Senator's job, and the debate shows Fetterman sorely lacking in that department even with transcripting aids. But I would more vehemently disagree with this:
I regard political leadership as subtantially more important than political representation. The Framers of the Constitution clearly agreed with me, at least in connection with the Senate; the House is where "representation" was supposed to take place (hence, "House of Representatives") while the Senate was supposed to be a more aristocratic institution. Essentially, I regard the 17th Amendment as a horrible mistake.
It strikes me as odd to suggest that stroke addled Fetterman is insufficiently able to provide political leadership when the alternative is... Dr. Oz.
Can we do without the dog and pony show? Oz votes the way you like. Fetterman votes the way I like. The stroke is irrelevant to both of us.
I'm sorry you feel this way--indeed, I think it is corrosive to society that you feel this way--but I certainly do not feel this way. I'm also the kind of person who tends to vote for third party candidates, so you've furthermore misread me even to that extent (and I don't think there is anything in my post to suggest that I endorse Oz!). If you're going to insist that others are dealing in bad faith simply because you yourself are an unprincipled partisan, that's a you problem.
I don't think viewing senators as no more than button pushers makes someone unprincipled. It just means that "my senator should be a leader" isn't one of my principles.
I don't think most people think senators need to be leaders, and would cite the nomination of a weight loss snake oil salesman as evidence.
If you truly expect more from US senators, I apologise for my suggestion otherwise, and you have my sympathies for what must be a life of constant disappointment.
I appreciate that. Because yes--my disappointment is immeasurable.
Look on the bright side. At some point we'll be dead.
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Can you point to a Red Tribe leader that became incapable on the job, where you supported their removal? Ideally one where the removal actually occurred? Should Reagan have gotten the 25th amendment? Trump?
In an ideal world, I would agree with you, and I think most everyone here would as well. This is very explicitly not an ideal world. I think this is one of those situations where the proper response is to mourn the tragedy without attempting to assign blame or score points. I do not think it can be argued that this is a problem Blues caused. This is a problem we all caused together, and your disapproval is not going to help fix it.
William Rehnquist. As I recall, he was in very poor health late in life, but died in office rather than resigning. I thought at the time that this added to a poor precedent, and to no purpose.
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At the time, I was skeptical that Reagan should be removed, but some of the stories I have heard since his death suggest to me that the people closest to him did know that he was incapable of functioning as POTUS. Had those stories been publicly available (pre-Internet was a very different time!) I would likely have favored his resignation. Certainly I am fascinated by the legacy of Edith Bolling Galt Wilson, whose husband should probably have just resigned. We don't elect couples to serve as POTUS (maybe we should!). But somehow we now celebrate a woman who essentially held herself a bloodless little coup.
One of the reasons I left law practice behind is that I am simply not moved by this kind of reasoning. I don't see any reason to compromise on my ideals, or to make allowances for the difficulty others have living up to theirs. My voting record is a shambles of support for non-viable candidates. My personal wealth is a fraction of what it could be if I refused to bear the costs of unilateral defections from undesirable status quos. But I don't know any other way to make the world a better place, than to refuse to choose evil simply because it is the lesser of available evils. I consider myself well-versed in the many arguments for not allowing the perfect to be the enemy of the good, but it's not perfection I'm after. I just refuse to concede ground to idiots, and if they burn me at the stake for it, then I'm well rid of them.
I am certainly not arguing that "this is a problem Blues caused." But I do think it's exploitative and wrong to use mentally handicapped people as partisan props. Calling that a "dog and pony show" or accusing me of bad faith or saying these kinds of arguments "go nowhere" is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's wrong to treat people this way. Once you acknowledge that this is not the way things ought to be done, then you should say and do what you can to stop it happening. Often, you will not be able to say or do anything to stop it happening! But here I am, doing my small part by raising the argument. If others have made similar arguments in bad faith, and you pattern match them to me, and thereby dismiss me as just another partisan hack, well--what can I say? I tried, and will continue to try.
well spoken, though I find myself more depressed than ever. Did you ever read "sort by controversial"?
Do you think Fetterman is functionally unaware of his surroundings, of what's going on with his campaign? Is your argument that he shouldn't be allowed to do what he wants to do because it's bad for him, or that he's not the one doing it?
Yep. The phenomenon of scissor statements remains, I think, poorly understood, but I think it's a very real phenomenon.
Have you ever had a very close friend or loved one experience a serious stroke, or head injury, or similar? The recovery arc is similar (six months, perhaps one year of improvement, followed by a pretty hard plateau) but the specific symptoms are wildly unpredictable. Sometimes it seems to map to known brain region issues, so like, damage to the frontal lobes turns sweet people surly, as in the classic case of Phineas Gage. Bilinguial have been known to lose the language of their childhood, or the language of their adulthood, but not the other one. Sometimes brain functions seem to fade in and out, particularly if the recovered patient doesn't get plenty of sleep--hypersomnia is a common long term effect of brain problems.
Depending on the severity of injury, it's common for those with brain injuries to need a guardian, conservator, or similar legal arrangement to protect their interests. This might be because spotty executive function makes splurge spending a problem. It might be because the recovered patient is easily suggestible, or incapable of grasping the full consequences of their actions. And sometimes it will seem like they are actually fine, for a moment or a day or a week, and people will wonder whether it's really necessary to treat them paternalistically. In the ideal world, they have a close loved one who can navigate these problems for them in a way that is a dynamic blend of cooperation, leadership, and care. But there's no question that brain injuries often end marriages, when the healthy spouse can't or won't commit to bearing that burden for the rest of their life.
I can't know for sure whether Fetterman is functionally unaware of his surroundings, since he has ("inexplicably?") refused to release his medical records. But he doesn't seem coherent to me. Having a Senator who may have spotty executive function, or be easily suggestible, or have a limited grasp of the consequences of his actions, seems like a recipe for disaster. The possibilities for espionage alone are enough to be worrisome. Watching his wife function as his handler--and having President Biden say Gisele is "gonna be a great, great lady in the Senate"--suggests very strongly to me that Fetterman is going where he's told to go and saying what he's told to say. Whatever personal autonomy he's managed to keep grasp of, I'm very skeptical that he is functioning at baseline human autonomy levels, and certainly not at a level we should want for people who get national security briefings, vote on major legislation, etc.
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All this means is that the Senators represented a different set of constituents. If you think that the primary job of a Senator back then was not to represent the interests of those constituents, you are mistaken; I guarantee you that a Senator who did not adequately represent the interests of state legislatures who appointed him (or, perhaps more accurately, the interests of those with influence over those legislators) would not be reappointed
I'm not, though. If you think the primary job of a Senator was supposed to be representing the interests of their "constituents," you are cynical and reductionist. The primary job of a Senator was, and is, to lead. I appreciate a good realpolitik as much as the next Mottizen, but venal oligarch-wrangling (or similar) is not the job of Senators, even if it is too often how they get the job. Physicians must somehow collect payment from their patients, but it would be totally mistaken to say that it is the primary job of a physician to collect payment from their patients.
I was responding specifically to your attempt to contrast the job of Representatives versus Senators pre-17th Amendment, specifically your claim that is was only the former were meant to represent their constituents. That is obviously not correct.
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Have we been given any other data other than seeing him speak that would reassure us as to his analytic and, shall we say 'comprehension' abilities?
If not, then why should we prevent people from 'reasoning under uncertainty' using the only reliable information they have?
I would broadly agree that sending a mentally disabled candidate to congress won't actually harm the overall function of that institution, mind you.
My dude, how do you expect a Senator to do things like direct staff, discuss possible legislation with colleagues... ANSWER E-MAILS if he is unable to effectively form sentences? You are eliding the difference between PUBLIC speaking in the actual Senate forum and all the other communication that the guy would have to do as part of his day-to-day operations. If he is to be making decisions, he has to be able to make said decisions clear to others, and that's the part he's actually struggling with.
This isn't the case of having, say, a deaf legislator who needs to use sign language to communicate but otherwise can clearly express their opinions and insights, maybe through a translator.
This is a guy who is literally having difficulty expressing his accurate internal thoughts in a coherent fashion.
Like, would you be okay sending a Senator who has Locked-in Syndrome to Congress, who could only communicate through blinking, as long as he had a long prior history of supporting your favored policies?
Do you see how someone who is otherwise 'on the fence' between the candidates policy-wise might reject the candidate who can't fully perform the job?
Absolutely. Policies and voting records are king. If the alternative is a Senator who doesn't vote how I like, I'll take anyone.
Do you see how this might not satisfy a voter who is not 100% behind the policies supported by our paralyzed Senator?
i.e., an 'undecided' voter? And an undecided voter who has only moderate policy overlap with either candidate might really consider their other abilities as relevant?
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Sure. But that is not what OP said. OP said that his speaking ability is per se proof that he is incapable of performing his duties.
This simply begs the question. All we know is that he has difficulty expressing himself orally. We have no idea whether he can express himself in writing, nor in other ways (see eg., Steven Hawking)
No... but the failure to present other proof that he's suitable is concerning.
You can't update in favor of his ability to perform his duties when all you have is evidence that suggests he is less than capable.
These tend to be extremely correlated, though. Hawking's case was a bit different, he had ALS, which impairs all MOTOR function, but not cognition. If Fetterman has damage to the expressive speech processing part of his brain then his ability to express himself is impaired regardless of which medium is used. He can move his mouth, he can move his hands, but the information produced will not be accurate at reflecting his brain's intended message.
Quoth:
And again, why don't they just present an easy proof of his capabilities to allay concerns?
I'm sitting here wondering at the possible reasons they'd put this guy on the debate stage and yet wouldn't provide any other demonstrations of his capability that would make his debate performance excusable. Can't think of a single reason to grant benefit of the doubt now.
If you can give me an obvious reason for this other than the Occam's razor "he's not able to do that, either" I'd really like it!
And let me be clear, if he is suffering from expressive aphasia, I really and truly feel immense sympathy for the man, it'd be a nightmare scenario if it were me!
Yes, I already agreed that it is "concerning." But that was not the claim that OP was making.
Evidence?
I didn't say that the cases are the same, but rather I used Hawking's example as evidence that an inability to express oneself orally does not per se prove that a person has intellectual limitations.
I did not think otherwise.
That's the claim.
The inability to speak doesn't necessarily effect the ability to think analytically, but a stroke that causes enough brain damage to effect the ability to speak could absolutely impact analytical ability as well, which would be hard to observe from the outside.
So you'd REALLY want to rule that out, and they simply haven't done so.
And as I argue here, the ability to speak IS critical to the job of Senator, to the extent he will need to communicate with colleagues, staff, and other aspects of the congressional machine in order to actually keep his office functional and not just take up space in the building.
If we think that keeping a functional office and communicating with other senators isn't part of the job of a Senator then we're probably better off replacing them ALL with deaf-mutes.
Probably, yeah. We won't have to here quite so many moronic speeches and they won't take up space in presidential primaries. Sounds like a better world.
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*The inability to speak doesn't necessarily effect the ability to think analytically, *
So, you are agreeing with me, because that is the only claim I took issue with.
Deaf mutes are capable of communicating, and being deaf and mute is not per se a disqualification for the office of Senator.
Sure. But that's not how I'd bet if I had to put money on it. Especially given the information that he had a major stroke. I will bet $100 right now that he's got more extensive damage than merely the difficulty speaking.
Like, you want to use Stephen Hawking as a counterexample, fine. But then you have to admit that he is an outlier since in the vast, vast majority of cases where someone loses the ability to form coherent speech, they usually also have diminished cognitive capabilities.
All I'm saying is that many voters are going to use the information they can directly perceived (his difficulty forming coherent sentences) and use that as a basis to form conclusions about something they can't (his actual cognitive fitness) and may likewise have doubts about his abilities to carry out the requirements of the office.
And they're right to do so, if his campaign won't provide other proof of his current state of recovery.
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