I missed most of the debate, and only tuned in towards the end. One thing that struck me was when Vance was speaking, and breaking down his thoughts on an issue, Walz was nodding his head in agreement with a lot of what Vance was saying. I haven’t seen that in any type of debate, from either side, in a long time. Vance’s words about having discussions and debates, instead of just trying to shut down the other side, were spot on.
I was happy to see that both Vance and Walz seem to respect each other. That’s the biggest issue we face these days - almost nobody is actually interested in engaging with the opposite side and working towards building bridges. Seeing that gives me hope.
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NPR’s fact check. Not exactly favorable for Vance.
I only tuned in for about 10 minutes and caught Vance claiming that Trump saved Obamacare, basically pissing on the grave of McCain who stood up to Trump’s barely-prevented attempt to repeal it.
The wiki on “Efforts to Repeal the Affordable Care Act” stops tabulating the attempts after 2014 and simply links to new articles detailing the efforts year-by-year. After 54 attempts from 2011-2014.
It looks like in 2017 under Trump there were 9 proposals to repeal the ACA brought to a vote, and who knows how many not brought to a vote. Obviously those weren’t brought to a vote by Trump, he just campaigned on destroying the ACA and attempted to do it multiple times.
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Sounds like an LDS drinking game.
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Yeah it’s easy to appear strong and calm in a debate when all you do is spout talking points and lie all the time. Walz was actually trying to answer questions in an intelligent way, much harder to do live on television. But the standards are simply much higher for democrats because Trump has lowered expectations so much for republicans.
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I left the debate at half-time to watch the latest John Oliver show. THAT was pretty depressing as he was talking about the shift to the right of federal courts.
Fox News is over the top with its praise of Vance’s performance: a relief for them after Trump’s dismal debate performance against Harris.
This afternoon, top debate related stories on Drudge report…
Debate overshadowed by war and disaster
JD eyeliner steals spotlight
I’d like to think that when Trump finally kicks the bucket, the US will slide back into sanity and polite disagreement, but it’s a dim hope. The mutual hate has been growing for 50 years, and Trump is more of a symptom than a cause.
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It wouldn’t really take much.
- A few bold Republican leaders to stand up and clean up the trash
- Term limits
However, all kinds of media will still be sitting there vying for clicks with misleading headlines and biased + irresponsible reporting to foster polarization. Solve that one.
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Only if Fox News and its children all kick the bucket with him…
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Imo, both media and leaders are mostly doing their job of giving people what they want. And what people want is to disagree, vehemently, about all matters-- even matters that are seemingly unrelated to each other.
Trump and Fox love lying to people, but also people love being lied to, as long as those lies are about liberals. People would rather have the poisonous gossip, and grievances, and false accusations, and maybe another insurrection.
And it’s not a recent thing. We’re just seeing what the (current) peak looks like. The trend is at least 40 yeard old. Probably more like 80 years.
No idea of any fix really. Maybe term limits would help.
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The question is why do people want this? I never wanted this, and I still do not ascribe to this mentality. People are not born this way, they are educated/formed this way.
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I go back & forth on whether they would help or make it worse.
Without term limits we have the assumption that the politician will need to be working with people on the other side of the aisle for some time. With term limits they might feel even more inclined towards scorched earth policies.
On the other hand possibly more sane candidates would slip through periodically… dunno.
I dislike the idea of term limits. It takes awhile for someone to become competent at their job and if they’re skilled at it, I’d like to keep them around for awhile. If we don’t fire heart surgeons, actuaries or mechanics simply for the sake of getting someone new on the job after 4-12 years, I’m not sure why we should do it for politicians in a particular position. It should be for the voters to decide if a politician is no longer the right person for a particular position rather than an arbitrary rule.
I’m more supportive of the idea of maximum ages for politicians where there’s a biological argument for it e.g. dementia and various degenerative issues start coming into play, difficulty learning new things, etc. I can also see a justification for minimum ages, e.g. needing to have a certain amount of life/professional experience before taking on a particular role, have enough experience as an independent individual that voters are able to get an idea of your personal character.
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Politics is not a career nor a trade. People should vote for people who can do the job without having to be in the job for 10 years.
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I disagree. There are plenty of career politicians. In the states, many of the people who get term limited out of a position, just shift positions e.g. state rep to Congress to the Senate and then to Governor or President.
I don’t think that’s the same thing as a career politican. Most politicians had a career prior to entering politics - lawyer, doctor, teacher, male cheerleader etc.
Amended
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One can have more than one career in their life. I know of a few people who worked for years to decades in another field before becoming a professional photographer. Many pro/top athletes switch careers upon retiring.
Yeah, but you’re not describing a career politician. By your definition, every politician is a career politician.
In my understanding, a career politician is one who has no significant professional experience outside of politics. It’s often a term of derision, as they have little personal experience to draw upon to relate to their constituents and will do anything (including throwing their constituents under the bus) to hang onto their political career.
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