with John McCormack & Brittany Bernstein
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Wednesday, October 26, 2022
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The Fallout from Fetterman's Disastrous Debate |
On Tuesday night, the lies told about Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate John Fetterman's cognitive abilities were painfully exposed on live television. |
The lies were so blatant that many in the mainstream media could not bring themselves to spin for Fetterman. CNN: |
Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a CNN medical analyst and interventional cardiologist who has treated several high-profile politicians, said the debate was "difficult to watch." "Fetterman's residual neurological injury is substantial," Reiner said. "Much greater than his campaign has led the public to believe. It's more than just processing hearing. It's incredibly sad to watch." |
Time's senior correspondent: |
From my report from Harrisburg: |
After John Fetterman sat down in early October with NBC News for his first in-person interview since suffering a stroke in May, conventional wisdom has held that the Pennsylvania Democratic Senate candidate might struggle to comprehend questions without closed captioning but is basically fine so long as he has use of the technology. "As long as I have captioning, I'm able to understand exactly what's being asked," Fetterman told NBC's Dasha Burns in the interview. After the recorded interview aired, Burns reported: "During some of those conversations before the closed captioning was rolling, it wasn't clear that he could understand what we were saying." Burns was viciously attacked by left-leaning journalists and the Fetterman campaign for saying the candidate might have trouble understanding questions without captioning. What made Tuesday night's debate so shocking was that Fetterman raised very serious doubts about his ability to comprehend questions even with captioning. During the debate, Fetterman was able to identify the topic of questions and was able to deliver scripted lines — sometimes those lines were delivered cleanly; at other times they looked like word salad. But it was not clear that Fetterman could comprehend every question. |
The Fetterman campaign promised after the debate that he would conduct live televised interviews: |
In the spin room following the debate, the Fetterman campaign did its best to brazen it out. "John Fetterman performed great tonight for a man who was in a hospital bed just several months ago," Fetterman spokesman Joe Calvello told reporters. "John spoke better tonight than he did in the primary. I'm not sure if you were there. He gave a better performance tonight than he gave in the primary." "For a guy who's just been in the hospital months ago, he took it to Dr. Oz pretty f***ing hard tonight," Calvello said. The problem of course is that Fetterman suffered his stroke "just several months ago"; Election Day is less than two weeks away; and Fetterman raised very serious concerns about his cognitive abilities during the one and only Pennsylvania Senate debate. At the end of Calvello's spin-room session, National Review asked if Fetterman would commit to doing live, televised interviews before Election Day. "Yeah, of course he will," Fetterman's spokesman replied. "He's given live interviews before. He'll do more. Yeah, one hundred percent." |
But given Fetterman's performance, I'm very skeptical he'd be willing to sit down for 30 minutes with Jake Tapper or Margaret Brennan this weekend. Although the debate was a disaster for Fetterman, the race is still a toss-up. We simply can't be sure how voters will react: |
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Fetterman led by a couple of points before the debate, but Democrat Josh Shapiro could have coattails in the governor's race. And Oz has very high unfavorable ratings to overcome. Recall that back in February, a "poll conducted for a super PAC backing Democratic congressman Conor Lamb in his race for the U.S. Senate nomination found John Fetterman, the lieutenant governor and Democratic front-runner, leading Oz by nine points but trailing McCormick by three points." If Dave McCormick hadn't been defeated by the Trump-backed Oz by one-tenth of a percentage point, this race would probably be over. But Brittany's reporting, which she quotes and links to below, helps explain why Oz was the underdog in the race heading into Tuesday's debate and why the race remains competitive. |
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If Pennsylvania voters are any indication, concerns about Republican candidate quality in the midterms have not been overblown. Republican and independent voters I spoke to on the ground in Pennsylvania explained why they think GOP Senate candidate Mehmet Oz isn't up to snuff. In Perry County, where former president Donald Trump bested President Biden by 50 percentage points in 2020, several voters said they would vote for a third-party candidate, sit out the election, or even vote for a Democrat if it meant not supporting Oz. Granted, those opinions were offered before Fetterman's disastrous debate performance. As I reported from the small town of Duncannon this week, registered Republican George McKelvey, 50, said he will vote for Fetterman: |
Despite being a Republican and voting strictly party line in presidential elections, McKelvey said he does not plan to vote for Oz: "He might be a Republican but he's crooked. He's bad. He's a Democrat. He's not the right fit." Instead, he will vote for the Democratic candidate, lieutenant governor John Fetterman, who he said "has issues, but is the lesser of two evils." He said he trusts Fetterman will not make inflation or the border crisis any worse and that he's a "decent guy." McKelvey pointed to Oz's "scams he pulled with the fake pills" on his television show as a point of concern. |
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RealClearPolitics POLLING AVERAGES |
Generic congressional ballot: Republicans +3.0 Republican Senate candidates lead: Ohio: R+2.0 (Vance 47.2%, Ryan 45.2%) North Carolina: R+3.7 (Budd 47.0%, Beasley 43.3%) Nevada: R+0.3 (Laxalt 46.3%, Cortez Masto 46.0%) Wisconsin: R+2.7 (Johnson 50.7%, Barnes 48.0%) Democratic Senate candidates lead: New Hampshire: D+3.6 (Hassan 49.3%, Bolduc 45.7%) Pennsylvania: D+1.3 (Fetterman 47.3%, Oz 46.0%) Arizona: D+2.5 (Kelly 45.8%, Masters 43.3%) Georgia: D+0.5 (Warnock 47.0%, Walker 46.5%) |
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The Cook Political Report shifted Representative Sean Patrick Maloney's race, in New York's 18th congressional district, from "lean Democrat" to "toss up." Maloney, the DCCC chair, has been damaged by a recently unearthed debate clip from his run for New York attorney general in 2018 in which he said he "absolutely" supports ending cash bail and would make it a "top priority," Cook explained. Other House ratings changes: Alaska Democrat Mary Peltola's race moved from "toss up" to "lean Democrat." California Democrat Mike Levin's race moved from "lean Democrat" to "toss up." Connecticut Democrat Jahana Hayes's race also moved from "lean Democrat" to "toss up." Iowa Republican Ashley Hinson's race moved from "likely Republican" to "lean Republican." Kansas Democrat Sharice Davids's race moved from "toss up" to "lean Democrat." The open race for North Carolina's first congressional district moved from "lean Democrat" to "likely Democrat." Virginia Democrat Abigail Spanberger's race shifted from "lean Democrat" to "toss up." Virginia Democrat Jennifer Wexton's race shifted from "solid Democrat" to "likely Democrat." The open race for Wisconsin's third congressional district shifted from "lean Republican" to "likely Republican." |
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• Former president Trump and Florida governor Ron DeSantis are taking differing approaches to the Colorado Senate race, with DeSantis recording a robocall to get out the vote for Republican Joe O'Dea, whom Trump has denounced for being insufficiently supportive of Trump. Bobby Miller suggests the DSM-5 "couldn't paint a better picture of narcissistic personality disorder" than Trump's actions. • Nate Hochman refutes Jonathan Chait's claim that turnout increased in Georgia in spite of Republicans and only because Democrats have been so vocal about voter suppression. "Those allegations might seem improbable, given the scant evidence for the claim, but the only reason for said lack of evidence is that the evidence-free allegations were made in the first place. The only reason our lie turned out to be a lie is that we lied." • It's a really good year to challenge an incumbent Democratic governor, Jim Geraghty writes. Don't overlook the races in Kansas, Michigan, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico, Wisconsin, and Oregon, even if they may not all be clearly in the "Republicans are going to win pile." |
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