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      in Elections

      Biden and Trump diverge sharply on major issues in final presidential debate

      by

      The Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden assailed Donald Trump’s handling of the coronavirus pandemic during Thursday night’s final presidential debate, as the president attempted to reset a race that shows him trailing his opponent in opinion polls less than two weeks before election day.
      The evening in Nashville began relatively calmly, with the rivals making their closing arguments to the nation amid a pandemic that has killed more than 220,000 Americans and infected millions more, including the president. In part due to the pandemic, more than 40 million Americans have already cast their ballot, shattering records and leaving Trump an increasingly narrow window to reset the debate around his handling of the coronavirus crisis and its economic fallout.
      But Trump continued to downplay the severity of the public health crisis, defending his response and predicting that a vaccine was imminent, even though his own public health experts have said one would likely not be widely available to the American public until next summer.
      “It will go away,” Trump said, offering a rosy assessment of the pandemic’s trajectory even as cases have started rising again across the US and public health experts warn that the US is on the precipice of a dangerous new wave.
      “We’re rounding the corner,” he added.
      “We can’t keep this country closed. This is a massive country with a massive economy,” Trump said. “There’s depression, alcohol, drugs at a level nobody’s ever seen before. The cure cannot be worse than the problem itself.”
      In contrast, Biden opened his remarks by acknowledging the grim toll of the coronavirus pandemic and warned that the nation must prepare for “a dark winter”.
      Biden said: “220,000 deaths. If you hear nothing else I say tonight, hear this. Anyone who is responsible for that many deaths should not remain as president of the United States.”

      The 90-minute debate was a far more coherent and civil affair than the first presidential debate last month, which devolved into a chaotic brawl with Trump incessantly hectoring his opponent and sparring with the moderator. The shift in tone was probably due to a rule change that required a candidate’s microphone to be muted while his rival delivered a two-minute response to the opening question on each of the six debate topics.
      On Thursday, Trump largely abided by the rules, allowing Biden to speak uninterrupted, and even complimenting the moderator, the NBC News correspondent Kristen Welker, who he spent the last week criticizing.
      Biden, too, was more restrained. When Trump made a false claim about his opponent, Biden looked skyward, as if calling on a higher power to keep him from reacting. But it didn’t always stop him.
      When Trump said Biden called his decision to impose Covid-19 related travel restrictions on China “xenophobic”, the Democrat shot back: “He is xenophobic, but not because he cut off access from China.”
      The stakes were high for both candidates, even if the debate was unlikely to dramatically redefine the contours of the presidential race. Despite the cascading public health and economic crises, Biden has maintained a steady lead over the incumbent, according to public opinion polls, while Trump has struggled to outline his vision for a second term and grapple with voters’ disapproval of his response to the pandemic.
      Despite the increasingly ugly and personal nature of the campaign, the evening featured a substantive policy debate as the candidates diverged sharply on the issues of race, immigration and climate.

      They were asked to speak directly to the black and brown Americans about racism in America. Biden said plainly that institutional racism exists and that combatting racial inequality would be a priority of his administration. Trump, ignoring the prompt, assailed his opponent for playing a central role writing the 1994 crime bill that many experts and critics say laid the groundwork for mass incarceration that disproportionately affected Black communities. Shielding his eyes to peer into the audience and concluding it was too dark to see properly, Trump was nonetheless confident that he was the “least racist person in this room”.
      Biden was incredulous. “This guy has a dog whistle about as big as a foghorn,” he said, accusing Trump of being “one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in modern history” and a leader who intentionally “pours fuel on every single racist fire”.
      In an exchange on immigration, Trump attempted to defend his administration’s decision to separate thousands of immigrant families at the southern border, even after revelations that 545 children have still not been reunited with their parents after two years apart. The president said the White House was working on a plan to reunite the children and their parents but insisted the blame lay with the Obama administration, which enforced a record number of deportations.
      Biden forcefully denied that the previous administration was responsible for Trump’s family separation policy, decrying the situation as “criminal”.
      But pressed on why voters should trust him to deliver immigration reform when the Obama administration failed to deliver on this promise, he conceded: “we made a mistake. It took too long to get it right.”

      The final moments of the debate were devoted to a discussion on climate change. Biden stressed the need to expand sources of renewable energy – while again disputing Trump’s claim that he intended to ban fracking, which he does not.
      “I know more about wind than you do,” Trump retorted, drawing an exasperated laugh from Biden. “It’s extremely expensive. Kills all the birds.”
      But at one point Biden said he would “transition from the oil industry” and replace it with renewable energy over the next several years. “That’s a big statement,” Trump said.
      Departing Nashville after the debate, Biden sought to clarify the remark: “We’re not getting rid of fossil fuels. We’re getting rid of the subsidies for fossil fuels.”

      The candidates also clashed sharply on their finances and family business entanglements.
      Citing revelations in the New York Times that Trump only paid $750 a year in federal income taxes while maintaining an undisclosed bank account in China, Biden implored Trump to “release your tax returns or stop talking about corruption”. Trump, who has not yet released his tax returns, claimed his accountants told him that he had “prepaid tens of millions of dollars” in taxes.
      In turn, Trump repeatedly leveled unsubstantiated claims about the former vice-president’s son Hunter Biden. The Democratic nominee defended his son and categorically denied the accusations as he sought to turn the conversation back to policy.
      “There’s a reason why he’s bringing up all this malarkey,” Biden said, speaking directly to the camera. “He doesn’t want to talk about the substantive issues. It’s not about his family and my family. It’s about your family.” More

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      in US Politics

      Biden fends off flailing Trump but most voters have already decided | Moira Donegan

      by

      Shockingly, the second and last presidential debate, which was held in Nashville, Tennessee, on Thursday night, actually contained some discussion of policy. This was not thanks to President Trump, who spent much of the evening dissembling, spreading disinformation and attempting to lend credence to a suspicious story circulating in the rightwing media about a laptop that supposedly once belonged to Joe Biden’s son.
      Instead, the substantive moments of the night were almost all secured by the efforts of NBC’s Kristen Welker, the only one of the debate moderators this cycle who was able to handle the president with the calm authoritativeness and unyielding confidence that is required. She did what the previous debate’s moderator, Chris Wallace, could not do: she kept the candidates as close to the designated topic as possible, she maintained her dignity throughout, and she handled the president’s outbursts with the demeanor of sedate decisiveness that experts recommend when handling ill-behaved dogs.
      As a result of Welker’s temperament and acuity, the debate contained fewer of Trump’s interruptions and outbursts, and at times almost approached a substantial, if not exactly serious, discussion of the policy differences between the two candidates. This may have also been the result of a visible effort by Trump to contain his temper and avoid the tantrums of the last debate, a chaotic circus of chicanery and contempt that left voters repulsed by Trump and caused his already poor poll numbers to nosedive. At times early in the debate, Trump seemed to be attempting to restrain himself with almost a physical effort, gritting his teeth as he recited memorized sentences drafted by a communications staffer.
      Maybe Trump’s performance of attempted restraint was meant to convince the thin and dwindling slice of persuadable voters – estimated at roughly 5%, according to NPR – to vote for him, instead of the challenger. But amid Trump’s viscerally polarizing presidency, that group of undecided voters seems marginal at best, probably too small to meaningfully influence the outcome in most states. Rather, Trump’s comparatively sedate performance in the first 20 or so minutes of the debate seemed aimed at people who voted for him in 2016 – particularly white suburban women – who have since been disappointed, even humiliated, by his presidency.
      By attempting to appear calmer, more cogent, Trump was trying to reassure these voters who might not vote this year, or might even be voting Democratic, that he’s not so embarrassing after all. The complete sentences, uttered without those flying drops of involuntary spittle from the president’s mouth that characterized so much of the last debate, seemed designed to give these voters permission to come back to Trump, to vote Republican again, and to convince themselves that a Republican vote is compatible with their own dignity and decency.
      Will it work? That probably depends on how long people kept watching. Trump’s coherence seemed practiced and difficult for him, and not long into the debate, he dropped the act and returned to his usual rambling and petulant self.
      He made frequent references to obscure conspiracy theories born of the far-right internet, references that were illegible to most viewers and designed more as signals to his already devoted base. He made bizarre claims about the Covid-19 pandemic, boasting that his response was successful because not as many people died as probably could have, and blaming his own infection on his meetings with the families of American soldiers who have been killed overseas. He mocked Biden for the former vice-president’s concern for the welfare of ordinary families. He claimed that he had done more for Black Americans than anyone except maybe Abraham Lincoln, and asserted that he was “the least racist person in the room” – the sort of claim that seems dubious by the mere fact of its having been made. He chillingly described children who his administration kidnapped at the southern border as having been “very well taken care of”. News reports showed these children in cages, and have recently revealed that the federal government cannot locate the parents of more than 500 of them. Trump claimed that Joe Biden, under the direction of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, would dismantle buildings in order to rebuild them with smaller windows.
      For his part, Biden handled Trump’s attacks with relative aplomb. Policy discussions are not his strong suit: Biden ran on a famously non-specific agenda during the primaries, and has focused his general election campaign more on appeals to Americans’ moral sensibilities than to their policy preferences. But he scored some meaningful points by insisting on tying his climate plan to jobs growth, and levelled attacks on Trump and the Republican party by decrying their inaction on a much-needed economic relief package and pointing out, correctly, that Trump’s Ahab-like focus on the performance of the stock market ignores the real economic conditions of ordinary Americans.
      Careful observers would have noticed that Biden stumbled once or twice, repeating lines he had already used in the last debate – his image of an empty chair at the dinner table in homes that have lost a family member to Covid, his insistence that the election is “Not about his family or my family, but about your family.” But Biden did not have to be very good in the debate – he merely had to be better than Trump, and that much he achieved with ease. Trump, meanwhile, is certain to be hailed as having made a pivot in a softer, gentler direction by pundits impressed that he managed some moments of lucidity on the debate stage, but this will be an exaggeration. Expectations were so low for the president after his performance in the first debate than anything more dignified than an on-camera fart would have been hailed as presidential and sophisticated.
      But Biden did manage to make one point late in the evening when he copped, disarmingly to the reality of the Obama administration’s limitation. Throughout the night, Trump ceaselessly attacked Biden for his supposed inaction and ineffectiveness while vice-president – “It’s all talk and no action with these politicians,” the sitting president said. But Biden explained this with refreshing candor: they didn’t achieve all of their agenda, he said, “because we had a Republican Congress”. If you want him to enact his aims, the subtext went, you have to vote out the Republicans down ballot, too.
      Will voters heed Biden’s call and deliver Congress to the Democrats? It seems that way. For all the drama and preparation that went into tonight’s event, the fact remains that most voters have already made up their minds, and the polls – though they have been horrendously wrong before – seem to indicate that Biden will win the popular vote and that Democrats will expand their lead in the House and possibly retake the Senate. Virtually nothing that could happen during the last debate could change that. An estimated 40 million Americans have already voted, a number that suggests that turnout this year will far exceed 2016. “The character of the country is on the ballot,” Biden said. Many Americans seem to agree with him.
      Moira Donegan is a Guardian US columnist
      Legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward will discuss the Trump presidency at a Guardian Live online event on Tuesday 27 October, 7pm GMT. Book tickets here More

    • 100 Shares99 Views

      in US Politics

      The final Biden-Trump presidential debate: our panelists' verdict

      by

      Jill Filipovic: ‘Trump has given up trying to articulate a plan’
      If one single thing shone through in Thursday’s debate, it was that Donald Trump has absolutely nothing to say. He has no agenda. He has no plan. He has no ideals or hopes or purpose. All he has is the raw pursuit of power – for his own benefit, no one else’s.
      Trump failed to put forward even one specific policy he will push in his second term. He offered some vague hand-waving – he (or the US supreme court) will get rid of Obamacare and he’ll replace it with something better, no you haven’t seen his plan, even though he’s had four years to create it, but he’s working on it, it’s almost done, he swears – but gave Americans no vision for a second-term Trump presidency. Instead, he was purely reactive. Joe Biden would put forward an idea, and Trump’s response was: “Well why didn’t you do that when you were in office?”
      Trump is in office, and while a lot has changed in four years, there’s little he can be proud of. More than 220,000 Americans are dead from a disease that has also tanked the economy and pushed thousands of American families to the brink. America is notorious the world over for ripping children from their parents and putting them in cages; more than 500 of those children are still not reunited with their parents, a human rights catastrophe. The US is increasingly a pariah state, having alienated our allies. The president lies with abandon and leads a party that has increasingly moved to the fringes, its followers and even candidates embracing obscene conspiracy theories.
      This is Donald Trump’s America. It’s no wonder he doesn’t want to answer for it. What’s stunning, though, is the degree to which he has simply given up on articulating any plan for the future – and that he’s so sure voters won’t care.
      Jill Filipovic is the author of: OK Boomer, Let’s Talk: How My Generation Got Left Behind
      Art Cullen: ‘Trump needed a big win. He didn’t get one’
      He bulled over the moderator, he sucked up the time, spread scurrilous claims, said he did more for black people than anyone since President Lincoln, and that those children in cages were well cared for. He was Donald Trump back from Covid as bellicose as ever during Thursday’s debate, a failing candidate on a flailing campaign. “He’s flat-out lying,” Joe Biden declared. “You know who he is. Look at him. And you know you I am.”
      Biden holds the lead. Trump shouting down the questions was not what he needed to score an upset and make up lost ground in the final debate. Dredging up Rudy Giuliani’s escapades trying to dig dirt on Biden’s family isn’t selling with the public. Trump failed to slow down Biden just days before the election. The president needed a big win, but Biden maintained his ground with that one statement, looking straight into the camera: “You know who he is.”
      Art Cullen is editor of the Storm Lake Times in north-west Iowa, where he won the Pulitzer prize for editorial writing. He is a Guardian US columnist and author of the book, Storm Lake: Change, Resilience, and Hope in America’s Heartland

      Lloyd Green: ‘Trump spoke to his base, Biden spoke to the country’
      On Thursday, the interruptions that marred their first debate were gone. In the end, the American public, Joe Biden, and Kristen Welker, the moderator, emerged as the ultimate winners.
      The president’s answers were cliched and Biden’s responses were detailed. He successfully demonstrated his capacity to parry Trump’s attacks. The notion that Biden was less than sentient was left in tatters.
      Trump’s tropism toward paying taxes in China and his failure to release his tax returns was put front and center with less than two weeks before election day, not exactly great timing for a candidate down by nearly 10 points. Likewise, the president proclaiming “I have many bank accounts … and they are all over the place” sounded tone deaf.
      More than 220,000 Americans are dead and the economy lurches. The stock market is clearly not the measure of all things. Four years ago, Trump’s mantra was tailored to US workers. Now, the president sounds like a pitchman for the donor class. When Trump says “I’m the least racist person in this room”, you have to roll your eyes.
      Both men had their share of missteps. Trump again predicted the end of Covid and bragged of an imaginarily low mortality rate. Biden attacked the oil industry. The president did nothing to endear himself to seniors, Biden may have lost Texas.
      By the end of the evening, Biden had reinforced his middle-class message: Medicare, check; social security, check; compassion, check. The president engaged his base. Biden spoke to a country.
      Lloyd Green was opposition research counsel to George HW Bush’s 1988 campaign and served in the Department of Justice from 1990 to 1992
      Malaika Jabali: ‘A frustrating debate that ignored big issues’
      With the final chance to make an impression on the electorate before election day, Thursday’s debate was short on forward-looking policy and more about complaints and past controversies. There was mud-slinging about who was getting paid by which Russians, whose racist rhetoric and policies were worst, and when businesses should have been shut down because of Covid-19, among other fodder you can find in your average Facebook comment section.
      Yet, for all the talk about Covid-19 that opened the debate, it took 45 minutes to address healthcare, and it took an hour to talk about an economic stimulus. Less than 10 minutes were dedicated to race. This is an indictment of the framing of the debate itself as much as it is the candidates. The foreign disputes that entice legacy media editors probably make most Americans’ eyes glaze over when eviction, homelessness and economic strife have either arrived for millions of Americans or they’re on the horizon.
      Sorely lacking was the sense that either of these men have bold ideas to respond to the biggest social justice movement in US history and a transformative plan to help people recover from the health and economic impacts of a pandemic. There was the usual delusional grandstanding from Trump about being (maybe) better for Black Americans than Abraham Lincoln and Joe Biden stating that his response to Covid-19 would be to tell people to wear a mask. There was no discussion about potential domestic voter suppression, less than two weeks before the election. Nothing about far-right white supremacists, who pose the deadliest terror threat in the country. Nothing about policies to reduce racial disparities in unemployment, essential work, Covid-19 deaths and cases, or small business closures.
      There was little in this debate to give Americans a substantial sense of security and financial solvency. Apart from the possibility of ridding America of a Trump presidency, that can apply to the election in general.
      Malaika Jabali is a Guardian US columnist
      Legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward will discuss the Trump presidency at a Guardian Live online event on Tuesday 27 October, 7pm GMT. Book tickets here More

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      in US Politics

      Donald Trump reverts to type in debate – and it isn't 'magnificently brilliant' | Richard Wolffe

      by

      Normal presidents get their third debate right.
      They flunk their first in a fit of presidential pique about standing on stage with their upstart rivals. They over-correct their second after a frantic period of long-delayed rehearsals. By the time the third comes along, they usually remember what got them elected in the first place.
      Donald Trump is not a normal president.
      He whiffed his first debate by forcing himself down the throat of Joe Biden. He skipped his second debate because he was sick with the pandemic he failed to take seriously. And he never prepped for the third debate, on Thursday night.
      It showed. After 25 minutes of failing to shout down his opponent, Trump couldn’t hold it in any longer.
      As soon as Joe Biden mentioned how Wall Street was warned about the pandemic before the American people, Trump accused Biden of making money from Wall Street. Then he accused him of not making enough money from Wall Street.
      “I would blow away every record, but I don’t do that,” Trump yelled. “I could blow away your records.”
      If the Donald Trump who showed up at the final debate was the kinder, gentler version, he measured his kindness in stock market indices. As the candidates clashed over how to fix healthcare, in the middle of a pandemic, Trump retreated to his empathy-free comfort zone.
      “They say the stock market will boom if I’m elected president,” he barked. “It will crash if he’s elected.”
      There is a limit to how long Trump can pretend to care. Judging from his debate performance, it’s about as long as it takes for a goldfish to swim around a bowl.
      When asked how he would reunite the more than 500 children his own officials have separated from their parents – and lost track of them – Trump berated Biden about building cages.
      “Who built the cages, Joe?”
      “The kids were ripped from their arms. Now the kids are alone,” Biden replied. “It’s criminal.”
      “They are so well taken care of,” Trump insisted. “Who built the cages?”

      Some people think the best form of defense is offense. Trump thinks the best form of empathy is being offensive.
      As the conversation turned to racial justice, Trump insisted that he was the best president for Black Americans since Abraham Lincoln. He then proceeded to trash Black Lives Matter protesters for being offensive to the police.
      “Abraham Lincoln here is one of the most racist presidents we’ve had in history,” Biden said. “This guy has a dog whistle as big as a bull horn.”
      “I am the least racist person in this room,” Trump claimed, speaking to a nation he hoped had forgotten all about the very fine white supremacists he so admired in Charlottesville.

      As with the rest of his presidency, debate night was not a moment for message consistency by Donald Trump.
      He started the debate claiming that the first models predicted 2.2 million Americans would die, so things were looking pretty good with more than 220,000 dead. He said there were now “goggles and masks and gowns” so everything was obviously fine and dandy.
      As campaign slogans go, “It could have been worse” is not exactly the perfect sequel to making America great again.
      Then again, Trump’s closing arguments on the coronavirus were not exactly consistent – like the rest of his presidency. When asked if he took responsibility for the pandemic, Trump was definitively evasive.
      “I take full responsibility,” he declared. “It’s not my fault it came here.”

      When Donald Trump waddled on stage in the final debate of the 2020 election, he was already having a bad day.
      Not by his own standards, of course. By his own impeccable judgment, it was a magnificent day. To be precise, it was a “magnificently brilliant” day, as Trump described his own performance in front of the CBS News cameras of 60 Minutes.
      Not to put too a fine point on his presidency, this might just be the fatal flaw in the entire Trump project: the cosmic chasm between Donald’s self-regard and the way the rest of the sentient universe sees him.
      Donald apparently sincerely believes he is an elite political athlete, while the majority of American voters keep telling pollsters that his gameplan isn’t working.
      Trump is running 10 points behind his rival in national polls, and trailing by seven or eight points in the states – like Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania – that won him the election four years ago.
      It is from this winning position that our winningest candidate is going after the least obvious targets. For some reason unknown to political strategists of all persuasions, Trump is closing this election by attacking 60 Minutes for being mean to him, and attacking Joe Biden’s son for business dealings with China.
      This in the week we all learned that Trump has a secret bank account in China, where he has paid more taxes to the People’s Republic than he has to his own country.
      Watching Trump’s interview with Lesley Stahl of 60 Minutes, it’s hard to know why Trump feels so aggrieved – other than being the patron saint of the contrived grievances of old white men.
      “I will soon be giving a first in television history full, unedited preview of the vicious attempted ‘takeout’ interview of me by Lesley Stahl of @60Minutes,” he tweeted. “Watch her constant interruptions & anger. Compare my full, flowing and ‘magnificently brilliant’ answers to their ‘Q’s’.”
      Stahl’s vicious approach amounted to her questioning Trump’s facts about sundry topics, including a certain pandemic you might have heard of. Her anger was so magnificently hidden, you might call it the brilliant disguise of a mildly surprised reporter.
      These are trying times for Trump. In addition to trailing in the polls, his campaign has somehow squandered vast sums of cash to the point where he is being outspent by “Sleepy” Joe Biden and yet still has less than half the cash that Rip Van Winkle is slumbering on.
      On top of all that, he can’t get no satisfaction from his laser-like focus on the son of the other candidate. This might have more resonance if the year was 2016, or if the supposed corruption involved Joe Biden himself.
      Instead, the case against Hunter Biden is being prosecuted by Rudy Giuliani, who was just caught by Borat with his hand down his pants. His co-prosecutor is Steve Bannon, the former campaign guru currently indicted for fraud for bilking Trump fans who wanted to fund the infamous wall on the Mexican border.
      Both men are working for an impeached president, whose own daughter works in his White House but somehow secured a fistful of new patents from China.
      To the extent Trump had a consistent message at Thursday’s debate, it was about what he called “the laptop from hell” or what the moderator delicately called “foreign entanglements”.
      In Trump’s retelling, Biden took millions from Russia and China, while he closed his accounts and never made a penny from either country.
      There’s a reason why Donald Trump was impeached, and it wasn’t because he was trying to end corruption.
      There’s a reason why he’s losing this election, and it’s not because of his magnificently brilliant approach to the pandemic, which hospitalized him between the last debate and this one.
      With less than two weeks to the final day of this historic election, Donald Trump needed to change his flight path dramatically before this Trump Shuttle plunges into the Hudson River. Instead, the captain of this doomed vessel insists that the loss of both engines is a sign of his own aeronautical genius.
      Political gravity pulls every leader down to earth eventually. In Trump’s case, the time for stunts is over. This president is in a tailspin; all that is left is the crash landing.
      • Legendary Watergate reporter Bob Woodward will discuss the Trump presidency at a Guardian Live online event on Tuesday 27 October, 7pm GMT. Book tickets here More

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      in US Politics

      AOC played Among Us and achieved what most politicians fail at: acting normal

      by

      On Tuesday night, US members of Congress Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ilhan Omar held what is perhaps the most unusual voter outreach event in recent memory. They signed on to play a livestreamed video game on Twitch, and joined a crew of online strangers to build a spaceship and try to get away with murder – literally.They were playing the incredibly popular Among Us – a 2018 game currently in the middle of a revival in interest, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic and its faddish attraction to influencers. To play the game, crewmates complete mundane tasks on a spaceship while an impostor tries to kill members of the crew without getting caught. In the first round, Ocasio-Cortez – a complete newbie to the game – was picked as the impostor, while Omar, her confidante on Capitol Hill was none the wiser, so the live stream was set to be fun from the start.And it was, by every metric we have for this kind of event, an incredible success. Ocasio-Cortez’s Twitch channel garnered a staggering audience of 439,000 viewers, all watching her in real time (the record for a Twitch stream is about 628,000 concurrent viewers) with approximately 5.2 million viewers watching the stream in aggregate. Meme-makers extended the conversation well into the week. Politicians do not draw this large of an online audience so quickly on these platforms: when Donald Trump and Joe Biden stream on Twitch for campaign events, total views peak at around 6,000 and 17,000, respectively.The success of Ocasio-Cortez and Omar’s stream extends beyond their already-established popularity among young progressives. The game itself is great sport. Much like the party game you may know as Werewolf, or Mafia, Among Us casts suspicion from the start, because although players know that there is an impostor “among us” (perhaps two), they don’t know who the impostor is.AOC’s stream was as good a sale as any: she fretted over the anxiety of having to play the role of the impostor, nearly giving herself away and saying “nooooo” out loud when she realized she would be the first person evading suspicion. In later games, where she was just a crewmate, she lamented to viewers about how she was “running so behind” on her tasks, and was shocked when an impostor found and killed her little pink avatar.When another player’s body was found, viewers could speculate with her: who’s the most suspicious player? (“I’m voting early,” she would say when casting her lot against a suspect, using every opportunity to stay on-message). You don’t really have to know a thing about video games to get drawn into the suspense of the game.But Ocasio-Cortez and Omar aren’t just famous people playing an unusually popular video game; they’re members of Congress trying to get out the vote. And in this, they achieved something most politicians attempt and fail at daily: they looked like completely normal people. They were having fun, accusing each other of being the impostor, cheering when they won, shouting about how they knew all along when an impostor was finally revealed.Credibility goes a long way here: AOC, in particular, has an established online presence, and engages with the public online in an almost-collegial manner. This, like the notion of playing a video game when she and Omar ostensibly have “more important” things to do, has earned her the scorn of others in Congress, but consider the things other candidates do to get out the vote: fish fries, baby kissing and benefit concerts. You go where people are, and in 2020, young people are watching video games played on Twitch.In internet culture, there’s nothing more vulgar than a tourist, someone with a purely transactional interest in a scene. And no matter how earnest Joe Biden is, or how cynically exploitative Trump is, in certain online circles, they will always be tourists simply because they’re too far removed from what young people are doing online to do what Ocasio-Cortez did: notice that there was a game people loved to watch on Twitch, asking if anyone wanted to play with her, and sitting down for a few hours to do it with nearly half a million people watching. And in the end, that’s the secret to Ocasio-Cortez and Omar’s success: that, for a little while, they weren’t opportunistic politicians, but motivated fellow citizens, just a couple of Twitch streamers among us. More

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      in Elections

      Joe Biden plans special commission to suggest supreme court reforms

      by

      Joe Biden has confirmed he would appoint a special commission to study the US court system over 180 days, if he is elected next month, to provide reform recommendations relating to the supreme court and beyond.
      In response to questions about the US supreme court during an interview for this Sunday’s 60 Minutes news magazine, the former vice-president and Democratic presidential nominee told CBS TV managing editor Norah O’Donnell that the court system is “getting out of whack” and that “there’s a number of alternatives that go well beyond ‘packing’”, ie increasing the number of seats on the nine-justice supreme court bench.
      “The last thing we need to do is turn the supreme court into just a political football, [that means] whoever has the most votes gets whatever they want,” Biden said in the interview, which airs just nine days ahead of the 2020 presidential election.
      “Presidents come and go. Supreme court justices stay for generations,” he added.

      60 Minutes
      (@60Minutes)
      Watch more of @NorahODonnell’s interview with Joe Biden, Sunday. pic.twitter.com/wJmb8MatVg

      October 22, 2020

      In keeping with the show’s election tradition, both candidates will be featured in separate interviews to spell out their plans for the country. The previews come following reports that Donald Trump abruptly ended what was intended to be an hour-long interview at the White House after 45 minutes, before chastising correspondent Stahl for her professionalism and lack of mask.
      Meanwhile, the US president has been talking about doing his own pre-emptive defense.

      Donald J. Trump
      (@realDonaldTrump)
      I will soon be giving a first in television history full, unedited preview of the vicious attempted “takeout” interview of me by Lesley Stahl of @60Minutes. Watch her constant interruptions & anger. Compare my full, flowing and “magnificently brilliant” answers to their “Q’s”. https://t.co/L3szccGamP

      October 22, 2020

      Biden vowed that if he prevails in November’s election he will “put together a bipartisan commission of constitutional scholars – Democrats, Republicans, liberal, conservative” over “180 days come back to me with recommendations” on the US court system.
      “It’s the way in which it’s being handled and it’s not about court packing,” Biden argued, adding “there’s a number of other things that our constitutional scholars have debated and I’ve looked to see what recommendations that commission might make.”
      While the Democrat kept the focus on the recovery from a pandemic and recession, Trump, meanwhile, vaguely looked forward to one goal: “To get back to normal”.
      “Get back to where we were, to have the economy rage and be great with jobs and everybody be happy,” he said. “And that’s where we’re going, and that’s where we’re heading.”

      60 Minutes
      (@60Minutes)
      Watch more of Lesley Stahl’s interview with President Trump, Sunday. pic.twitter.com/zA5q4pFxeI

      October 22, 2020

      The president then took aim at China, calling them “an adversary,” “a competitor” and a “foe” before slamming the country for giving rise to the Covid-19 outbreak.
      Interviews with their running mates, Republican vice-president Mike Pence and California Senator Kamala Harris, will also air during the broadcast. More

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      in US Politics

      Fight to Vote: why early voting history is being made right now

      by

      Hello Fight to Vote friends,
      The election is extremely under way, with a record number of Americans casting their ballot via mail or in-person during early voting hours across the country.
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      I’m personally shocked (in a mostly good way) how many people are voting early instead of waiting for election day and it seems like I’m not the only one. While it’s partly the Covid-19 pandemic driving people to be more proactive, there are also signs that the turnout signals a swell of civic engagement.
      Just look at these early voting stats
      An estimated 39.8 million people have voted in the US as of Wednesday morning.
      20% of the votes cast are by people who did not vote in 2016.
      Texas is leading the US in most ballots cast so far, with 4.6m votes – that’s more than half of the state’s voter turnout in 2016.
      Florida also beat its early voting record, with 350,000 voters casting their ballot on Monday, the first day of early voting.
      Is early voting good for Democrats or Republicans?
      There’s no easy answer to that. Currently, there are more registered Democrats voting early than their Republican counterparts. That includes voting by mail, which we’re tracking in swing states here at the Guardian.
      It could be that Republicans are opting to vote on election day because the president has tried to sow confusion and fear around mail-in voting . But will there be enough red votes to make up for the groundswell of blue early votes? We won’t know until 3 November at least.
      So the election system is functioning well?
      I wouldn’t say that. While voters are turning out in droves, the election process itself is under fire. Here’s why:
      State officials such as Florida’s secretary of state are still trying to change rules and put burdensome restrictions in place.
      Mail-in votes are being rejected over small technicalities. In North Carolina, this is disproportionately affecting Black voters.
      Strange voter intimidation issues are cropping up across the country, like these threatening emails at the University of Florida or this policeman who showed up at the polls in Miami. More

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      in US Politics

      Is capital finally losing faith in Trump? | Adam Tooze

      by

      What has kept Donald Trump in the presidential race is his electoral base. It consists of white men, rural and small-town voters and small-business owners. The big bucks for the campaign come from a coterie of wealthy loyalists. This bloc will stick with Trump whatever he says or does.
      But the attitude of other groups that one might expect to be Trump’s natural supporters, such as big business, financial markets, a lobby like the chamber of commerce – “capital”, in other words – is far less clear cut. If anything, as Joe Biden’s lead has stabilised, so too has their optimism. With an eye to an impending shift of power, the Chamber of Commerce has endorsed a cluster of Democrats in tight House races, provoking outrage from the president. These unexpected alignments point to the scrambling of assumptions that is characteristic of the Trump era.
      The GOP is normally the party of business. The president himself is a businessman. His administration has been stacked with plutocrats, CEOs and lobbyists. It has delivered tax cuts and deregulation. The tax-collecting IRS is a shell of its former self; the Environmental Protection Agency has been gutted, and financial regulations slashed. Trump has packed the courts with judges who will deliver judgments against labour rights, environmentalism protection and business regulation. If, as seemed possible at the beginning of this year, the US economy had stayed on course and the Dems had selected the leftwing Elizabeth Warren or Bernie Sanders as their candidate to run against Trump, the battle lines would have been clearly drawn.
      But that is not what happened. The Democrats selected Biden, a centrist who as senator for Delaware between 1973 and 2009 represented one of the greatest tax havens in the western world during the height of financialisation. And then came the coronavirus shock and the most severe crisis that the US economy has suffered since the second world war.
      The initial response of the Trump administration and Congress was less dysfunctional than one might have expected. The Cares Act was generous both to ordinary Americans and business. But since April the intractable corona-crisis has brought out the worst in Trump. The culture wars unleashed by Black Lives Matter protests have solidified Trump’s base, but they have not widened his appeal. And, as the public mood has shifted, business leaders have remembered the issues that made them leery of Trump in the first place.
      In 2016, Trump struggled to gain endorsements. The Chamber of Commerce was neutral, backing neither Trump nor Clinton. It could not support a Republican candidate who was protectionist on trade, hostile to immigration and openly critical of the Fed chair, Janet Yellen.
      Within hours of Trump’s victory on the night of 8 November 2016, that hesitancy was forgotten. Markets boomed. And Trump has delivered the goods in terms of tax breaks and regulatory giveaways. But on the strategic issues he has been every bit as disruptive as could have been imagined. His trade policy has been the most aggressive since the second world war. Relations with China, the big play of US business since the 1990s, are deteriorating into a cold war. Last year, Trump denounced his own Fed chair, the mild-mannered and cooperative Jerome Powell, suggesting he might be more dangerous than Xi Jinping. As recently as the second week of March the markets were jolted by rumours that Trump might be about to oust Powell. Meanwhile, Trump exploits the immigration issue for rabble-rousing purposes. American business is as keen as ever on cheap labour and the actual flow of newcomers has slowed to a historic low. The real issue – addressing the racist treatment of Latin American workers in the US – remains unaddressed.
      On the climate emergency the attitude of American business has evolved more than one might have expected since 2016. Trump’s boast of reviving the coal industry is evidently absurd. Outright climate denial is no longer the order of the day, even for the likes of Exxon or Chevron. They now favour some kind of carbon tax. The smart money is on renewables as the cheap energy alternative.
      If big business were the commanding political force that its critics sometimes imagine it to be, it would come out openly and state the obvious: Trump is a menace, he needs to go.
      What stops them from doing so? They profess to fear the left. They talk up Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, “the squad” and their socialist agenda. But that is nonsense. The actual threat is on the right.
      First, in the 1990s, there were Pat Buchanan with his anti-globalisation “new nationalism” and Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution. Then, in 2008, there was Sarah Palin. In 2010, the Tea Party and the Freedom Caucus. Then there was Steve Bannon and Breitbart. Now there is QAnon. Again and again, the seam in the GOP coalition between big business interests and less aligned forms of nationalism, populism and xenophobia has torn open. The difference in 2020 is that it is the radicalised GOP base that has its man in the White House.
      Having gerrymandered the electoral districts, the GOP doesn’t fear the Democrats but primary congressional selection challenges from its own side. This is what explains the behaviour of Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, over the second round of Covid stimulus.
      It is clear that the US economy desperately needs a second boost. In an election year you would think it would be in the GOP’s interest. Business is pleading for it. But McConnell has not thrown his weight behind Treasury Secretary’s Steven Mnuchin’s effort to cut a deal with Nancy Pelosi and the House Democrats. Unemployment may be a disaster, but for the congressional Republicans it is a far bigger threat to be viewed as disloyal by the rightwing base, Trump’s loyalists; and this would happen were he to negotiate a giant government stimulus with Pelosi.
      That leaves the US, once the anchor of the western world, still the world’s largest economy, hanging in the balance. The greatest fear, of course, is of a disputed election, which would shake US institutions to their core. This is the risk that the markets have hedged against by buying the Vix, the so-called fear index. Normally, insuring yourself against future risks is more expensive than against risks in the near term. In 2020, it is the reverse. The price for insurance against volatility in the week after election day on 3 November has surged to all-time highs.
      But there is another, no less serious risk. What if Biden does win the White House, but the GOP retains its grip on the Senate? When Obama came in, in the midst of the 2008-9 financial crisis, he had at least two years with a congressional majority. Given half a chance McConnell would strangle a Biden presidency in its cradle. The American economy, business and its working population would be the first victim.
      There is also a third risk: an Obama rerun, in which the Democrats win majorities but pass a stimulus that addresses none of the fundamental issues in the economy, allowing outrageous inequalities to continue and failing to build the kind of constituency of lifelong Democrat voters that the New Deal was so effective at creating in the 1930s and 40s. This isn’t just a matter of suppressing the next wave of rightwing populism after Trump, but of widening and solidifying the Democratic bloc.
      Nonetheless, assuming a Trump victory is now unlikely, the only safe outcome for the American economy, as well as the American constitution, is a Democrat clean sweep.
      • Adam Tooze is a professor of history at Columbia University More