The New Neo

(1) For voters who voted early – and there are plenty of them – the debate will have no effect. That’s one of the reasons I detest widespread early voting; things come out or get clearer as time goes on, and Election Day should be the same for everyone except a few who need to cast absentee ballots.

(2) I have little doubt that many many Democrats literally do not care whether Fetterman is competent or not. The only thing that matters is whether he’s able to say “yeah” or “nay” as the party dictates. He also can be replaced, and the gubernatorial Democratic candidate Shapiro is significantly ahead in the polls, and therefore probably would get to name Fetterman’s replacement, who would therefore be a Democrat. So voting for Fetterman makes perfect sense if a person’s goal is to try to preserve the Democrat majority in the Senate.

(3) Is Fetterman being exploited, and if so by whom? Despite Fetterman’s obvious cognitive difficulties, I believe he is fully capable of making a decision about running or not running. Therefore I believe it is his decision, and no one is exploiting him in that sense. The people who are helping him prepare for a debate, and promoting him in other ways, are operating under either the hopeful idea that he’ll recover physically and mentally (I think that’s a minority view) or under the more cynical but practical point of view outlined in #2.

(4) Note this exchange:

When asked about his prior opposition to fracking and outright calls to ban it, Fetterman became a deer in the headlights.

“I do want to clarify something,” said the debate moderator directing her question at Fetterman. “You’re saying tonight that you support fracking, that you’ve always supported fracking, but there is that 2018 interview that you said, ‘I don’t support fracking at all,’ so how do you square the two?”

Silence took over the studio as Fetterman froze.

“I do support fracking,” Fetterman said. “I don’t, I don’t, I support fracking and I stand and I do support fracking.”

But if not for the moderator’s question, I submit that this moment would not have occurred. In most debates I’ve seen, the Democratic candidates aren’t called on their lies or errors by the moderators. As an example of what I’m talking about, I bring you none other than Joe Biden, circa 2008, in his debate with Sarah Palin:

Then there was what might have been the biggest head-scratcher of the night. Said Biden of the Bush administration’s supposed Middle East follies:

“When . . . along with France, we kicked Hezbollah out of Lebanon, I said and Barack said, ‘Move NATO forces in there. Fill the vacuum, because if you don’t, Hezbollah will control it.”

Huh?

Assuming that Biden was referring to when, in 2005, American and French pressure helped the Lebanese people kick Syrian troops out of Lebanon, who ever thought NATO occupation of that deeply divided country was a good idea?

That linked NY Post editorial lists many other such moments in that debate, an encounter that occurred 15 years ago, before Biden had entered his present decline. Except for a brief detour as a result of his 1987 plagiarism, he’s gotten away with that sort of thing his whole life – as I noted yesterday.

(5) And speaking of Biden, his cognitive disabilities – and the excuses and coverup attempts for it – paved the way for something similar with Fetterman.

(6) In last night’s debate thread, there was a discussion about voting third party. I’m going to repeat the gist of one of my several comments there, which is this: a voter has a right to vote third-party or any other way that voter chooses to vote. But don’t confuse having a right to do something with whether that “something ” is a good idea or a terrible terrible one. Voting third party this year – especially in any close contest – is a terrible terrible one. For people who call themselves “conservative” or “Republican,” it is in my opinion an act of dangerous self-indulgent virtue-signaling that helps the Democrats win. It doesn’t “send a message” to anyone; all it does is act as a spoiler. Those who think otherwise live in a dreamworld. But elections and their consequences occur in the real world.

There were three big debates tonight: Oz versus Fetterman (Pennsylvania), Zeldin versus Hochul (New York), and Dixon versus Whitmer (Michigan).

That’s three too many debates for me. Regular readers may recall that I hate debates. The reasons? The moderators, the gotcha questions, and the tension – that is, they make me tense when I watch. So I didn’t watch any of these. In addition, with the Oz/Fetterman debate, I think it had the potential to be tantamount to abuse, because Fetterman is obviously still having major health problems. Then again, if he’s being abused, it’s with his own willing cooperation.

So no, I didn’t watch. But I do read, and the consensus on the right is that Fetterman did even worse than expected (see this as well as this). Even CNN can’t really sugarcoat it much, although they give it a weak try.

As far as the New York debate went, I haven’t read that much that indicates anything other than a predictable “he said, she said.” Zeldin played his strong suit, the anti-crime card (see this). I think in New York it will really come down to how many residents are fed up enough to vote Republican for once.

In Michigan, here’s a description. Whitmer has been leading Dixon in the polls all the way, but the gap has been closing steadily, although Whitmer is still ahead. One strange thing about this duo is that Whitmer looks like Dixon’s less attractive older sister. Same hairdo too, more or less.

If some of you watched any or all of the three, let us know what you think.

I believe the censure is deserved – not that McConnell cares:

On Monday, the [Alaska] state Republican central committee announced the results of an overwhelming vote to admonish the national party leader over attack ads against Kelly Tshibaka, the candidate endorsed by the Alaska GOP who is challenging incumbent Sen. Lisa Murkowski. The final vote came to 49-8 in favor of a resolution censuring McConnell and the minority leader’s Senate Leadership Fund (SLF) which has pumped more than $5 million into the race to defend a key McConnell ally in the upper chamber.

Murkowski is probably the biggest RINO in the Senate, except perhaps for Mitt Romney.

“No one from Alaska wants big shots from the Lower 48 meddling in our elections, and they certainly don’t want D.C. Republicans lying about the candidate who’s been endorsed by the Alaska GOP,” Mary Ann Pruitt, an advisor to Tshibaka, told The Federalist. “Alaska Republicans are telling Mitch McConnell to stay out of it. But this goes to show you who Lisa Murkowski is aligned with.

Anyone who’s been paying attention for the past six years or more knows who Murkowski is aligned with. If not, this recent development should inform them:

On Friday, Murkowski endorsed the state’s Democrat Congresswoman Mary Peltola in the state’s House race over former Republican governor and 2008 vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin and Nick Begich, the other Republican in the contest…

Alaska’s new ranked-choice voting system, put in place by Murkowski operatives to avoid a competitive primary, opened the door for a Democrat to win the at-large House race.

McConnell has also pulled Senate Leadership Fund money from Masters in Arizona and Bolduc in New Hampshire, who are both behind in polls but very close to their opponents.

In Alaska, I would assume that McConnell’s excuse would be that Murkowski is ahead of Tshibaka in the polls and therefore the better candidate. However, Murkowski is only slightly ahead in most polls, with a couple of outliers in which she’s very ahead. The Democrat is far behind both of them, so the race appears to be between the two of them, but ranked-choice voting complicates things somewhat and it’s likely neither will reach the 50% threshold in the first round of voting. Here’s an article from one month ago saying the two are basically tied:

This election cycle marks the first time that Alaska voters are using the ranked-choice system, in which voters rank candidates and more than 50 percent of the total vote is needed to win. If no one reaches a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their votes are redistributed to the voters’ next choice in subsequent rounds. The AARP poll, which imitated the voting system, asked likely voters to select their first-, second-, third- and fourth-choice candidates.

Respondents favored Tshibaka (43 percent) over Murkowski (35 percent) in the poll’s first round of voting, but both candidates polled at 50 percent by the final round.