Sep.29

electoral-vote.com

Dem 51

   

GOP 49

The Day After the Debate: A Little Less Conversation

There has been time for the post-debate dust to settle. So, we thought we'd pass along a few ideas and other tidbits before we put the second Republican candidates' debate to bed, and start looking ahead to (well, dreading) the third one:

• A Little Less Conversation: Actually, more like a little less debating. Because these vapid events are producing nothing of value, they are not moving the needle at all. Quite a few organizations (like, for example, Politico) ran focus groups of GOP voters. The story is the same, over and over: The debate isn't going to help them decide how to vote.
  
  
• Perino Agrees: Fox's Dana Perino, who was one of the three moderators of the debate, also opined that nothing useful was said during the debate. Hmmm, wonder if Perino knows who might be partially to blame for that, and who might have had the power to insist that the candidates say something beyond their canned talking points?
  
  
• The Ratings Also Agree: The ratings for the first candidates' debate weren't great. The ratings for the second one were worse; 3.5 million fewer people tuned in, leaving Fox with a viewing audience of less than 10 million people. Unless Donald Trump shows up for the next one, that trend is only going to continue. And the smaller the fraction of the voting public you're reaching, the less chance you have to break through as a candidate.
  
  
• Trump Agrees, Too: Trump is not too likely to show up for debate #3. He's not exactly a neutral party here, but he declared yesterday that all future debates should be canceled, so the Republicans can unite and focus their fire on Joe Biden. Put another way: The primaries are over, I'm the candidate, deal with it.
  
  
• General Pivot: We wrote yesterday that the general election has clearly already begun, primaries be damned, as Joe Biden is now targeting Trump directly. We should have also pointed out a bit more explicitly that Trump's speech to the auto workers was much more about the evils Joe Biden than it was about the concerns of the working class. In other words, Trump has moved on to the general, and the RNC can either join him or be left behind.
  
  
• Fake News: As we noted yesterday, the Trump campaign clearly tried to massage things so that it appeared that his speech was before a pro-union crowd. In truth, it was at a non-union shop, and only a few UAW members were in attendance. And actually, it appears that most or all of those "UAW members" were phonies, holding counterfeit signs. Can't this guy do anything honestly? Is it that hard to find a few actual pro-Trump union members in Michigan, of all places?
  
  
• Not Fake News: It turns out, as several readers wrote in to advise us, Gov. Ron DeSantis' (R-FL) story about the infant who died from fentanyl poisoning is at least partly true. There was an infant who died that way, and the family had recently stayed at an AirBnB. DeSantis presented it as a matter of fact that the drugs came from the AirBnB; in truth that is merely the claim being made in a lawsuit that has yet to be adjudicated. Nonetheless, DeSantis' imprecision does not materially change the point that there is a serious fentanyl problem in the U.S.
  
  
• Fake News, Part II: We also had several readers write in to tell us that Vivek Ramaswamy's border tunnels are a real thing. Yes, they are. The part we looked askance at is his claim that they are being used for semi trucks full of fentanyl. Most or all of the tunnels are not that large, and semi trucks are not how most fentanyl ends up in the U.S.
  
  
• Institutionalized: David Faris, writing for Slate, makes an interesting argument that Republican primary candidates are leaning into extreme, unpopular positions because they really don't care about pivoting to the center if they get the nomination. Their thinking, in his view, is that winning the Republican nomination is really what matters, and institutional advantages (e.g., the Electoral College) will take care of the rest.
  
  
• Irreligious: Molly Olmstead, also writing for Slate, points out that Republican presidential candidates are barely bothering to pay lip service to evangelicals anymore. The clear lesson of the Trump years is that culture wars stuff is more than enough to keep them loyal. If Olmstead is right, and we think the evidence is pretty strong, then the evangelicals' power over the Republican political program is going to get weaker and weaker over time.

As we did last time, for a more black and white breakdown of the debate, here's a chart of the various winners/losers pieces we could find. Left-leaning outlets are in blue, right-leaning in red, and international in beige. And we're only including "wins" and "losses" for the seven people who were actually on stage, though note that half of them had Donald Trump as a winner (and Vox and The Guardian had him as the ONLY winner):

The messages here are pretty clear. Nobody is buying what Vivek Ramaswamy, Mike Pence, Chris Christie or Gov. Doug Burgum (R-ND) is selling. Ron DeSantis is treading water, and Tim Scott is barely making an impression. Meanwhile, Haley is lapping the field (she also crushed everyone in wins and losses last time). Not that winning the debates is helping her polling numbers, mind you. (Z)