CSotD: After Further Review

There isn’t much doubt as to how the debate went: See Ann Telnaes’ animated original here as Donald Trump self-destructed while Kamala Harris looked on.

The blame continues to be discussed, however, in a flood of cartoons and memes and wisecracks and serious commentary.

RJ Matson poses it as a disaster for the Republican Party, which may be overstating the down-ballot impact of the moment, though it’s funny that he tops the Hindenburg with the Baby Trump balloon, a suggestion that the party should have foreseen the result of pinning their hopes on an erratic, explosive leader.

As indeed they might have, but Republicans have spent the better part of the past decade justifying their reliance on Fearless Leader, and if they are truly aghast at his self-immolation the other night, it is largely their own fault for being so deeply invested in such a volatile character.

John Darkow was considerably less amazed at the outcome, noting Trump’s usual whining that the liberals were out to get him, but including his citing of JD Vance’s asinine racist lies about dark-skinned subhuman foreign barbarians who threaten not just Good White Americans but even their pets.

This prelude to the concentration camps has deserved the scorn and jokes with which it has been greeted, but, at the same time, is being embraced by the people who are willing to let the concentration camps be built, even though, in a more serious moment, Dear Leader promised a “bloody” process of filling them.

Ella Baron points out that the overwrought racist claim not only inspired mockery from his immediate opponent on camera at the moment, but was worthy of being mocked by Liberty, by Justice and, perhaps worst of all, by Taylor Swift.

And Matt Wuerker (Politico) points out how Trump’s attempts to bury Harris and Walz in a flood of lies — led by a campaign coordinator who torpedoed John Kerry’s campaign with vicious falsehoods in 2004 — has been countered by the enthusiasm and joy of Harris’s campaign, and he plays on the “swiftboating” term to indicate how Trump’s hate-filled dishonesty drew the major star into endorsing Harris.

Again, this was not unforeseen: Trump’s circulation of a ridiculous AI image claiming that Taylor Swift had endorsed him was met, at the time, with dire predictions that he had awakened a giant, as well as speculation over whether he was that dishonest or simply gullible enough to think the image was real.

Note that there is little relevance to whether a potential national leader is stupid or dishonest, but the net effect of Trump’s move, plus his repetition of the slur against immigrants, did indeed draw Taylor into the fray.

Lisa Benson (Counterpoint) is a decidedly loyal rightwinger, but felt the Taylor Swift endorsement merited a comment, though she seems to downplay its significance.

She’s not the only observer who, out of loyalty to Trump or misunderstanding of popular culture, seems to believe that Swifties are all 14 years old and thus politically irrelevant. They are, however, simply wrong.

Swift has been producing hit records and filling stadiums long enough that many of her fans are in their 20s today, and her endorsement sparked a sudden surge in interest in the election, with some 337,000 inquiries directed towards the vote.gov registration website immediately following her remarks.

As Fiona Katauskas suggests, Trump’s comments did him far more harm than good, and it’s likely that those who wanted to believe the hatemongering about Haitians were already firmly in Trump’s camp.

Even Rick McKee, a conservative by nature, was aghast at Trump departing from substantive arguments, and discernible truth, to make an absurd accusation that seems harmful to his campaign.

And on that topic, it’s worth suggesting that form has become far more important than substance. In 1976, Gerald Ford misspoke at a debate with Jimmy Carter, meaning to salute the freedom-loving spirit of those behind the Iron Curtain, saying “There is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe.”

The comment caused an uproar and became one of the most emblematic and unrecoverable moments not only of the debate but of the campaign.

By comparison, when Trump declined to support Ukraine the other night, Harris dared him to repeat his views in front of Pennsylvania’s 800,000 Polish-Americans, but the moment has gone largely forgotten, overwhelmed by excited chitchat about her offering him a handshake and her facial expressions in response to his more outrageous remarks.

Not to mention the conspiracy theories over her earrings, which don’t resemble the earbuds that paranoid loons accuse her of wearing. The bulge under George W. Bush’s jacket in 2004 was a more credible, if not any better grounded, accusation.

Which brings us to our

Juxtaposition of Vain Regret

Gary Varvel — Creators

Bob Gorrell — Creators

Dana Summers — Tribune

Now, to be fair, there was no announcement that the moderators intended to do real-time fact-checking during the debate. And, in a debate, it is chiefly the job of the opponent to challenge false statements.

But there is a substantial difference between citing a statistic that may be off by some amount and making an inflammatory statement that is glaringly false on its face. The absurd remarks that the moderators noted — about murdering newborns and about eating pets — deserved to be quashed rather than permitted to bog down the process in a game of he-said-she-said.

They were moderators, not just cue-card holders, and it’s silly to imagine that moderators from CBS, NBC or NPR would have behaved any differently.

And given that even Fox News and its panel of voters gave Harris the victory, there’s no call to accuse ABC of prejudice.

Though Fox recovered from its shock and it’s not hard to see where the cartoonists got their inspiration.

Still, as Adam Zyglis puts it, Trump self-destructed, with Harris more a bemused onlooker than the agent of his failure. She may have, as Zyglis suggests, loosened the screws a bit, but, while she suggested his interest in Project 2025, she didn’t force him to lie about his interest in it, and she wasn’t the one who brought up Vance’s tales of Haitian felineivors in Ohio.

And if she gazed at him with an expression of astonishment as he raved, so did many of us at home.

Leaving the final word to Joe Heller.