October 23, 2020
Dear Interested Readers,
Finally, The Debates Are Over. What Did We Learn About The Future of Healthcare? What Did We Learn About The Candidates That We Did Not Already Know?
My expectations were low. What should your expectations be when you watch a political debate? Recently, debates have been more like wrestling matches or stock car races where there is the expectation of watching physical attacks or wrecks than thoughtful discourse. Conversations in the media before the debate speculated on whether or not the president would try to act “presidential,” or whether he would return to his usual pattern of behavior and be more outrageous this time than ever before.
Now that the debate has occurred, we know that the moderator, Kristen Welker did a very credible job of controlling the president and the flow of the debate. The fact that both speakers were muted during the two minute answers of the other candidate to the questions that Ms. Welker directed to each of them created some order. The mute was off during the follow up responses. Perhaps the discipline introduced by muting during the initial question did carry over to the responses because the major difference between this debate and the first debate was that it had a higher level of civility and was more like a debate than a food fight. Not being able to speak did not prevent either debater from saying a lot through facial expressions and body posturing, but at least they were not talking at the same time, and it was possible for complete statements to be made without interruption.
The president has been running a very unusual campaign. There was a time when politicians tried to get out the message of what they would do if elected. The president has been holding rally after rally where his main message has been to catalog all of the bad things that will happen if his opponent is elected. During the debate Biden correctly pointed out that the president will not discuss “substantive issues.” The president’s response was that Biden was talking like a politician.
The president’s implications at the rallies have been that his Biden is “sleepy,” senile, and possibly demented, but also dangerous because of the people behind him. During the evening, Biden was clearly more composed and logical during the debate than the president. In his rallies the president has tried to spread the message that electing Joe Biden would amount to turning the government over to a shadowy cabal of far left socialists who would destroy the American way of life. The president was somewhat restrained in the debate, but he did make snide remarks about Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and “others.” In his rallies he implies that if Biden was elected cities would burn from riots. He says that Biden would end employer sponsored healthcare. Personal rights like the ability to bear arms would be lost. Religion would be banned. The economy would go into the tank. At his rallies he presents a dark and dystopian vision of the future unless he is elected. The sense of his usual rally presentation is that things were just fine before the pandemic, and will be fine again if we just go back to our lives and refuse to kowtow to our fears. We should turn off the advice from Dr. Fauci like he has. He complains that the opposition is composed of law breakers who are enabled by deep state operatives. The fact Biden and his conspirators are not locked up is evidence of sinister influences.
In the debate the president maintained many of the same ideas that he uses in his rallies, but he toned them down. Trump was able to bring up Medicare For All, but Biden effectively pushed back by saying that it was the other 20 plus Democratic presidential candidates who advocated for Medicare For All. He reminded the president that he was not against employer based insurance, but did advocate for a public option. It was during the healthcare discussion that the president presented many of his false accusations about what America would be like under Biden. He actually said that Biden would end Medicare and Social Security. He never gave answers that would allow us to see what healthcare would be like if he were given another four years. Welker did do a good job trying to foster a conversation about healthcare. She asked the president what he was going to do if the Supreme Court ruled the ACA to be unconstitutional. I heard no acceptable answer.
All of the best responses of the evening came from Biden. He pointed out the need for universal access to healthcare. He advocated for a $15 dollar an hour minimum wage. He was strong on the need for protecting the environment and investing in solar and wind energy as a way of reducing carbon emissions and creating jobs. He presented a direction for resolving the question of illegal immigration. He promised a path to citizenship for all of our undocumented neighbors, and he pointed out the there were tens of thousands of DACA dreamers who are essential workers who made sacrifices everyday for the collective good of our country.
I was flabbergasted by the steady flow of the president’s lies and misinformation. The most disgusting demonstration of his falsehoods to cover up his performance was the discussion of the separation of children from their parents at the border. His discussions of race were almost as bad. The president contends that with the possible exception of President Lincoln, no one has done more for the Black community than he has.
I thought that Alexander Burns and Jonathan Martin of the New York Times did an excellent job of getting their ideas about the debate in print a few minutes after the event was over. Political writers these days are about as fast as sportswriters. Their article, “In Calmer Debate, Biden and Trump Differ Sharply on Virus, Immigration and Climate” summed up the president’s performance in just a few words:
Mr. Trump, who badgered Mr. Biden with increasing aggression over the course of the debate, appeared determined to cast his opponent as a career politician who was, as he jabbed toward the end of the debate, “all talk and no action.” And the president used the event as his most prominent platform yet for airing unsubstantiated or baseless attacks about the finances of Mr. Biden and members of his family.
Mr. Trump, however, did little to lay out an affirmative case for his own re-election, or to explain in clear terms what he would hope to do with another four years in the White House. He frequently misrepresented the facts of his own record, and Mr. Biden’s. And on his most important political vulnerability — his mismanagement of the pandemic — Mr. Trump hewed unswervingly to a message that happy days are nearly here again, even as polls show that a majority of voters believe the worst of the coronavirus crisis is still ahead.
Turning to Biden their comments were much more positive, although I am sure that the president would refer to the authors as members of a liberal elite and purveyors of fake news.
Mr. Biden, for his part, stuck to the core of the argument that has propelled his campaign from the start, denouncing Mr. Trump as a divisive and unethical leader who had botched the federal response to a devastating public-health crisis. Though Mr. Trump pushed him onto the defensive repeatedly, the former vice president also laid out a fuller version of his own policy agenda than he managed in the first debate, calling for large-scale economic stimulus spending, new aid to states battling the pandemic and a muscular expansion of health care and worker benefits nationwide.
Shortly after the debate Aaron Blake of the Washington Post pointed out four takeaways from the final 2020 presidential debate. They are:
- Trump offers no course correction on coronavirus: …With his very first words, Trump recycled the misleading claim that 2.2 million people were “expected to die” from the coronavirus. In fact, one model said that many could die, but only with precisely zero mitigation — which is an extremely low bar to brag about clearing…
- Biden sharpens his coronavirus closing argument: …Biden responded to Trump’s “learning to live with it” by pointedly saying: “People are learning to die with it” — a comment that reflected some of his harshest comments yet about Trump’s coronavirus response.
- Trump tries to make an issue of Hunter Biden, in fits and starts: If there was one thing Trump wanted to talk about at the start of the night, it was Hunter Biden. Non-conservative media have trodden uneasily around the story, given concerns about its veracity and the possibility that the information might have been filtered through foreign sources, which Trump lawyer Rudolph W. Giuliani and Trump have repeatedly engaged in their quest for some kind of dirt on the Bidens. (Trump was impeached over precisely this.)
- A better debate: The format changes, which included muting one candidate as the other spent two minutes initially responding to a question, were contentious. Trump and his allies also built up the debate by repeatedly attacking moderator Kristen Welker for allegedly being biased against him…There were far fewer interruptions — perhaps because Trump recognized it didn’t really work for him last time, but also because of the changes — and there was a far more substantive exchange on the issues. Welker moved things along frequently, allowing many different topics to get discussed.
Welker tried to ask questions about the social determinants of health, especially in relationship to the environmental questions, and brought up the fact that many minorities must live close to refineries and other sources of pollution. Trump responded that Black Americans were making more money than ever before and gas prices were low. He then turned to the camera and asked Texas and Pennsylvania to remember that BIden would destroy the oil industry. Biden responded with empathy for those who for economic reasons can find housing only in polluted neighborhoods. He described his own experience as a child when he lived near oil refineries in Delaware. Once again on the environment and healthcare. Throughout the evening Biden demonstrated a knowledge of the healthcare and environmental issues that challenge us, and he also demonstrated empathy for those whose lives are damaged by a lack of access to care and continuing economic inequities.
I listened to the debate twice. First, I heard and watched the debate on television. It was a difficult experience. After the debate was over, I listened to a replay of the debate on Sirius XM’s Potus channel 124. Hearing it the second time reinforced my original impression that considering everything, including the president’s inability to speak the truth, Biden won the debate hands down. Trump presented no clear picture of what he would do in a second term or how he would address any of the major issues of our time from COVID, to Global Warming, to Black Lives Matter, to healthcare reform, to economic inequity, to healing the divisions in the country. Biden had positive responses to every question, even when honesty might cost him, as his response to questions about the oil industry may.
I am not going to reprint all the lies and misrepresentations from the debate. It will probably take a day or so for journalists to document all of the president’s lies and misrepresentations. For example, he claimed that AOC and Biden wanted to spend 100 trillion dollars to do things like knock down buildings and rebuild them with no windows or small windows. Is there anyone who is so naive that they would swallow that whopper? Once again the New York Times did try to catch all the misinformation on the fly. For your convenience here is a link to their analysis. In summary, the fact checkers documented 40 false, misleading, statements that lacked evidence, exaggerations, and only partially true statements from the president. There was one statement that he made that was called “mostly true.”
Here is the breakdown for Trump:
False: 17
Misleading: 14
Lacks evidence: 5
Exaggerated: 3
Partly true: 1
Former Vice President Biden definitely lost the award for “best fabricator.” For BIden:
False: 1
Exaggerated:1
We live in amazing times. In just a few hours after the debate was over the full transcript was available. As you read it, Trump’s lies really stand out. The president is a master of fast talk that can make many obviously false statements seem plausible. What I particularly appreciated was the ability to read each of their responses to Welker’s last question which was, “Imagine this is your inauguration day. What will you say in your address, to Americans who did not vote for you?”
She asked President Trump to go first. He did not answer the question, but continued his rant about how bad it would be if Biden were elected. His answer was:
We have to make our country totally successful, as it was prior to the plague coming in from China. Now we’re rebuilding it and we’re doing record numbers, 11.4 million jobs in a short period of time, et cetera. But, I will tell you, go back.
Before the plague came in, just before, I was getting calls from people that were not normally people that would call me. They wanted to get together. We had the best Black unemployment numbers in the history of our country. Hispanic, women, Asian, people with diplomas, with no diplomas, MIT graduates; number one in the class, everybody had the best numbers. And you know what? The other side wanted to get together. They wanted to unify.
Success is going to bring us together. We are on the road to success. But I’m cutting taxes, and he wants to raise everybody’s taxes and he wants to put new regulations on everything. He will kill it. If he gets in, you will have a Depression, the likes of which you’ve never seen. Your 401(k)s will go to hell, and it’ll be a very, very sad day for this country.
That’s what he is going to tell the people on inauguration day who didn’t vote for him? That is what he is telling them now. Everything is about money. I am cutting taxes. He is raising them. He wants to regulate everything. He will kill it [presumably he is referring to the economy]. It will be a very, very sad day for this country. Is that what he is going to say at his inauguration to people like me?
Welker then gave the same question to Joe Biden. His response was:
I will say, I’m an American President. I represent all of you, whether you voted for me or against me, and I’m going to make sure that you’re represented. I’m going to give you hope. We’re going to move; we’re going to choose science over fiction. We’re going to choose hope over fear. We’re going to choose to move forward because we have enormous opportunities, enormous opportunities to make things better.
We can grow this economy, we can deal with the systemic racism. At the same time, we can make sure that our economy is being run and moved and motivated by clean energy, creating millions of new jobs. That’s the fact, that’s what we’re going to do. And I’m going to say, as I said at the beginning, what is on the ballot here is the character of this country. Decency, honor, respect. Treating people with dignity, making sure that everyone has an even chance. And I’m going to make sure you get that. You haven’t been getting it the last four years.
One man is going to protect your 401K. He probably doesn’t know that of the 59% of Americans who could have a 401K, only 32% do. That means that there are a lot of folks in his base who don’t have what he is so proud of protecting! The other man is committed to healing the nation, creating clean energy, creating jobs, ending racism, making sure that everyone has a chance, and is going to treat everyone with dignity, honor, and respect whether or not they voted for him. Perhaps that is the biggest difference between the two candidates. I am not sure who if anyone, the president has treated with dignity, honor and respect. The president was thrown a soft ball, and he whiffed. When Biden came to the plate, he hit the same soft pitch out of the park.
Now that the debates are behind us, there is still much uncertainty ahead. Gaining a majority of the vote does not guarantee Joe Biden’s election, especially since the Senate is likely to soon confirm Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the Supreme Court, and the result of the election, if contested, may be decided there. I have already voted. I urge you to vote soon to ensure that your vote will be counted. We have endured a great deal of damage, pain, and loss over the last four years. The president had an opportunity to convince us that he can lead and has a positive agenda. He failed. He has no idea about how to do either of those things. He has no demonstrable interest in improving the social determinants of health. He doesn’t even recognize the risk that many poor Americans bear because they can’t afford housing at a distance from a source of pollution. He demonstrates no concern for the uninsured. He is a taker and a generator of misinformation who has been, and will continue to be, a threat to the health of the nation. He needs to go, and I am so happy that I will not need to suffer through any more debates for that point to be made beyond all reasonable doubt.
Homeward Bound
On Monday we started our trip toward home from Felton, California, 6 miles north of Santa Cruz in the coastal redwoods. I was not looking forward to the first part of the trip down the San Joaquin Valley to Bakersfield and the East across the expanse of the Mojave desert. In fact, I really enjoyed the display of agriculture in America’s breadbasket, and the beauty of the mountains and broad expanses of emptiness east of Bakersfield, Needles, and Barstow. As a child I loved “Death Valley Days” which was hosted by Ronald Reagan (it was his last gig before becoming the governor of California in 1966) and others before and after him, and brought to us by “Twenty Mule Team Borax.” As you cross the vast expanses it is hard to imagine what it might have been like to try to exist in the area during the era of mules and wagons. These days there is still plenty of tumbleweed, sand, and rocks, but now there are about ten eighteen wheelers for every car on I 40.
We spent our first night in Borax, California, but we did not visit the Twenty Mule Team Museum. Borax is a tough looking place with a lot of trailers and “double wides.” On my walk, I passed the high school, a small Catholic church, and an even smaller Baptist church that suggested that its members were quite poor. I am not sure what most people do for a living in Borax, but my guess is that life is hard.
Day two brought us to Williams, Arizona where we met some old friends who had moved to Arizona from New Hampshire a few years ago. They came up in their RV from the Tuscan area to meet us and share a visit to the Grand Canyon. I was last at the Grand Canyon in 1958. My wife had never been there. One of my favorite books as a young reader was Brighty of Grand Canyon. It had been a thrill for me to see the canyon not long after reading the book. What has changed are the hotels, the tours, the shuttle buses, and all of the amenities that help to manage the usual crowds. There is a great rim walk from the South Rim Visitor Center which is closed because of COVID. If you have been to the Canyon you know that words are inadequate to describe its many views, and its enormous size. If you haven’t been, I hope that it will not be long before you get to see it. Now is a great time to visit because the pandemic has led the National Park Service to close much of the park and the crowds are small. I was impressed by the efforts of a majority of the visitors to wear masks and maintain proper social distancing.
Our next stop was the San Juan River in Northwest, New Mexico. I am writing this note about 20 feet from this pristine river which is nestled under a bluff and lined by enormous cottonwood trees that have turned shockingly yellow for fall. As soon as I have finished writing, I will spend most of the weekend fly fishing with the “significant other” of one of my wife’s best friends since they were in nursing school together at Roger Williams Hospital back in the mid sixties. These friends live in Sante Fe, and like our friends in Arizona, they drove up to meet us for the weekend. He was an engineer for the National Park Service for over forty years and will be a great guide to the San Juan which is one of the most famous trout rivers in America.
If we did not live in the age of COVID, we would go from the San Juan down to Albuquerque to visit my son and his wife, but that is not possible because if we were to visit them, their employer, the Albuquerque Public School would require them to quarantine for two weeks before returning to work. The remainder of this year may be a continuing disappointment. We will probably be having Zoom Hanukkahs, Zoom Christmases, and a Happy Zoom New Year. Perhaps a socially distanced Zoom inauguration of Joe Biden in January will lead to a better 2021.
Be well! Enjoy the fall. When you are out and about, wear your mask and practice social distancing as best you can. Look for opportunities to be a good neighbor. Let me hear from you. I would love to know how you are managing the uncertainties of our times,
Gene
