Coop Scoop: An Acrobatic Vance Ends Up An Insurrectionist Anyway
Nice try JD. Sorry, Ain't Gonna Work.
October 2, 2024
By Marc Cooper
I write about the VP debate under duress and obligation as I think some readers still want to chew over it. Personally, I firmly believe that VP debatea in general mean absolutely nothing and never have any real effect on the Presidential race. (I will have more to say in a minute or two about more important matters).
Just to get it out of the way, the snap CNN poll showed a tie. Vance 42%. Walz 41%. I don’t know shit 17%.
I remind you how Dan Quayle was blown to smithereens by Lloyd Bentsen, Dukakis was ahead by double digits, and Bush-Qualye won the election. Quayle also went into the debate with a deep dislike quotient. So do not take these cynically network organized debates as anything but one more ephemeral TV show that will be forgotten by the weekend.
I suppose I must mention the insulting idiot-level organization of the debate itself. What bills itself as the Tiffany Network would not allow its overpaid anchors to “correct” any blatant lies, because since when are journalists supposed to be any check on unbridled power? Aren’t they supposed to look really good on the tube and not say much that makes you change the channel?
CBS is merely hedging its bet that Trump might win and they don’t want to piss him off too much as they want to be coddled by him, not persecuted.
“Their responsibility is to call out lies. If they don’t do that on live television, during the most consequential election in modern history, they are the lesser for it,” former CBS icon Dan Rather said. He said there bass-ackward approach encourages lying. “It invites the participants to bend the truth, since their opponent then has to spend his rebuttal time calling out the lie, rather than giving an opposing view,” he added. “And the calling out of a lie by an opponent rather than an impartial moderator is less credible.”
“If there’s one thing Vance has learned from Trump, it’s that lying to get ahead is OK. If you get caught, just double down and lie some more,” he wrote in a Substack article. “Who’s going to fact check you? Well, apparently not CBS News.”
Indeed, when the one time anchor Brennan politely corrected something Vance said last week about cat eating Haitians, he indignantly snapped back saying. hey, you guys said you weren’t gonna fact check! That’s sort of surreal, no?
A couple more thoughts about the debate. Vance was clearly taking distance from Trump: with his higher IQ he could see Trump was dangerously running off the rails and it might be a good idea to present a more human face to MAGA Fascism to reduce the fright factor.
He did a pretty good job, evading almost every direct question and instead bathing the audience in what I would call a “word smoothie” more than a word salad. JVL of The Bulwark quotes former Quayle mentor-turned Democrat Bill Kristol as follows:
“Bill Kristol says that Vance was road testing “a kinder, gentler MAGA” and I think that’s right. Vance’s plan for the debate was clearly to create distance between himself and Trump and establish him (Vance) as the brand leader who will eventually inherit—or take—Trump’s coalition from him.”
“…I want to stipulate that no one will care about Vance’s shapeshifting and he will pay no price for his serial evolutions. He’s Rollo Tomasi. He’s the guy who gets away with it.
But at the same time, I think Vance has made a category 5-level mistake and that this error suggests that Vance doesn’t actually understand MAGA politics.
Because here’s the key question: Do Trump voters want a kinder, gentler version of MAGA?
…But Trump’s secret sauce is his ability to turn out low-propensity voters who were never closely affiliated with the old Republican party. And those voters show no sign of being interested in either kinder or gentler. They want the chaos. The transgression. The violence.
We know this because during the Republican presidential primary, we tested demand in this market…
“A supermajority of Republican voters went for the guy who attempted a coup, who jokes about shooting immigrants, who said he wants to be a dictator, who talks about terminating parts of the Constitution and eliminating the “vermin” and “filth” in America, possibly during “one really violent day” in which law enforcement officers are free to get rough with . . . whoever has it coming.”
It’s a fascinating point that Kristol raises but I don’t think Vance lost any MAGA votes but he might just have raised some suspicions that will linger especially with Trump.
All of which brings me to Walz. He set expectations low. He did overperform that expectation but not optimally, not by a long shot. He was kind, sincere, humane, very real and very much not a knife wielding pol out for blood as most of his supporters understandably were.
I understand that his advisors probably told him to keep very cool and let Vance be the Madman but Vance pre-empted that for the most part. Walz made no serious errors. What he did was make several key serious omissions.
Walz’s attack on Vance’s abortion position — which he lied like a rug about because he repeatedly supported a national ban— was weak and somewhat confusing and probably Walz’ biggest missed opportunity.You can be nice and a polite and still ask Vance why he was recorded recently on a neo-Nazi podcast agreeing with the host that we are in a “late Republican period” and that we must as a people jettison our “dictator phobia.” Republican not as in GOP but as in democratic republic. Or ask him why he named a well-known crackpot as one of his major influences. a crackpot who is another self identified neo-Nazi.
Then there was this quote from Vance from 2021 synthesizing his dictataorial vision:
“Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state. Replace them with our people. . . . And when the courts stop you, stand before the country like Andrew Jackson did, and say, “The chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”
In the same podcast, Vance, and I kid you not, mused about the benefit of shutting down “all big universities” and leaving only small, presumably private ones.
A few months later he doubled down on his extra constitutional proposal saying that any constrain on Presidential power by any court would “illegitimate”. Isn’t that the very definition of dictatorship?
Vance is an extremist of the most dangerous kind — Yale educated. He has slandered an entire Haitian community, He has spread unfounded panic and fer. He has boosted the Nazi replacement theory, including last nite when he falsely claimed that Harris bRought in 25 milllion “migrants" to compete with American citizens for rare affordable housing. He is a booster of 2025. And he was part of the gang who tried to block the peaceful transfer of power in 2021. He is a subversive. He is an insurrectionist. He’s anti democratic. JD Vance is a well-educate, eloquent American Fascist.
Fortunately, for all of us, Vance royally fucked up in the last few minutes of the debate. By then 90% of the audience had probably fallen asleep but too bad for Vance that his straight-up fascist remarks when asked about January 6 and the coming election results are the only sound bites going viral today.
When asked if Trump won or lost the 2020 election, Vance turned on his portable Word Vegematic again and after the whirring ended, he refused an answer saying he was—- —ready? —”only focused on the future.” Excuse me but that future is 32 days from now and it is not at all surprising that Vance is working with Trump to lay the ground work for one more round of election denialism when then these jerks lose by 5 million votes.
Talking Time Is Over
Last nite on Facebook I posted this video from Steve Schmidt who cranked it out immediately after the debate to make sure we keep ur eye on the ball. It’s not who won by a point or two in this forgettable debate. It’s about whether or not in the next month the American people are going to activate the massive anti-Trump coalition that dwarfs MAGA or are we going to let democracy be dismantled by a muddle headed, vengeful minority of morons, racists, bigots, xenophobes, women haters, religious nuts and illiterate mouth breathers led by az authortarian team intent on dismantling rule of law and rolling back our rights and freedoms while showering the 1 percent with endless gifts.
The Trump-Vance team is running on a program of fear, and hatred not of immigrants but of all foreigners —legal or otherwise— they are appealing to the lowest educational strata of the country and they are promising vengeance. They are deeply trolling among the 100 million American breathing zombies who can but do not vote because they are too busy watching Wheel of Fortune or day trading their kid’s college fund away,
I am getting tired of saying it but you better believe these extremists. Trump-Vance are American fascists. They are not like the Italians or the Germans. They don’t wear uniforms… yet. But you can bet if Trump wins we will ses Proud Boys in new military uniforms and possibly a Trump Youth movement of hooligans. Trump-Vance are un updated American model of the old fascists but they yearn for absolute power.
After 90 minutes of shuckin’ and jivin’ on stage, Vance ripped off his moderate mask in the last 5 minutes and made it clear he has no interest in truth, justice, humanity or anything else except total power. Trump should be careful because this guy also wants his job and we should be VERY concerned because I would argue Vance is more sinister than Trump.
Give urself permission to chatter about this pointless debate for rest of the day. But starting tomorrow, if you are not DOING something active to stop American Fascism, and that includes you in the blue states, then you become part of the problem, not the solution. That your blue vote doesn’t count for president is your self vitue right to exercise, totally pointlessly but ok. But if you not supporting the anti-fascists in the contested districts in NY, CA or MA you are collaborating with Trump. If you are not volunteering in state or out to work on a crucial campaign you will be remembered in a Trump-written history of this period that you were a “Good American” who just went along. It’s about that simple+++
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