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Anatomy of squandering an argument: JD Vance talks to the NYT and somehow manages to take the very valid point about media censorship and piss is out the window
I'm really trying to emphasize that I'm saying this as someone that agrees with the premise, but this is the most retarded and ahistorical possible conclusion. Can you imagine Ben Franklin telling politicians they don't have to accept the result of a vote because the Pennsylvania Gazette wrote absurd lies about the candidates? Even if it was true, it's completely bonkers.
Worse than being ridiculous, it's a blunder to take the cause about media censorship and then piss it away on election certification. Sure in the abstract sense drawing untenable conclusions from an argument does not weaken the premises, but in actual popular consciousness those things are all woven together.
I had really hoped Vance was smarter than this. If he was baited into it he shouldn't have bitten and if it was intentional then he should have known better.
Honestly, it was a fine answer and nobody cares. If you are smart enough to realize the flaw in the argument the you are smart to realize that he has no choice but to say he wouldn’t have certified the election. Most people just zone out and don’t really remember what he is talking about, and vaguely agree that Big Tech censorship is bad. This is not going to move the needle at all.
Yeah it's obvious this is one of Trumps "red lines", and he struggles with the truth vs his boss
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I think most people that vaguely agree that censorship is bad might not agree if the next words out of your mouth are "and therefore we don't have to accept the results of the election".
They don't have to agree. They just need to come away with minimal emotional valance. If Vance said "No, because the election was fake and gay and Biden is a fake Mickey Mouse president" it might affect normie's views. Instead he just said "no" to a question that normie doesn't really understand, then complained about Big Tech, who everyone hates. It's not a "gotcha" and it's not a "blunder."
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No, but I can imagine 2017 Democrats yelling “not my President” ad infinitum, and trying to impeach on tendentious grounds for an entire term.
Vance gave the right answer here. He should have refused to certify the election - not because he had just cause, but because he who does not fight fire with fire, specious lawfare with specious lawfare, is a sucker.
Unless you actually and truly believe the election was stolen, and you can prove it (to the satisfaction of the voters, not the courts), that would have been a preposterously stupid plan. Remember: democracy is just a proxy for civil war. Parties prefer to use the proxy when things are close, even if they lose despite in theory posessing a military advantage. (See: republicans not declaring war despite the fact that they control a majority of fighting-age men, and democrats not declaring war despite controlling a majority of the total population.) But the instant you click that "defect" button, your opponents do too. Unless your evidence is so convincing the majority of the other party will tuck their tails between their legs and admit malfeasance, refusing to certify an election is exactly equivalent to starting a civil war. Which would be a truly stupid thing to do, unless you control such a proportion of the population that you can expect total victory.
Who will count the votes of the voters who believe the election was stolen?
So if one party cheats brazenly, and equally brazenly refuses to admit it, the other party taking any action against them has started the civil war? That's an odd definition of "start".
You insist on viewing this from a moral perspective, but I'm speaking from a consequentialist one. "War" is a rational choice if and only if the expected value of starting a war is higher than the opportunity cost. And given the massive costs of war, the only way for your EV to be positive is if you are SURE you will win. War is the extension of politics through other means. And in that same vein, politics are an extension of war through other means. If you exist in an equilibrium where you can win a war if and only if you can win a political conflict, it only makes sense to start a war if you already have an overwhelming political advantage. And given the scenario in question here is Trump losing an election while he's already president, it's clear he lacks that overwhelming political advantage. Either his grasp on the levers of power is so weak as to allow a palace coup, or his grasp on the population is so weak as to guarantee a loss in a civil war, or both.
Refusing to certify an election is exactly isomorphic to claiming, "I'm going to stay in power because my faction would win a civil war." The specific details-- whether the election was actually stolen, whether you have convincing evidence of that, the actual vote totals, etc-- matter only insofar as they make your claim more or less believable to the other party. If your claim to power is sufficiently believable, you might get lucky with your opponents backing down. All the logic about the EV of starting a civil war applies to them too.
But self-evidently, Pence did not have convincing evidence of election theft, and did not have an expectation of winning a civil war. It would have been stupid for him to refuse to certify the election, and it would have been just as stupid for JD vance to refuse to certify the election.
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Biden himself presided over that. Should he have voted not to certify the true count of electors in 2016 because of some retarded “not my president” wing?
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Why do you think it's a blunder? This is the classic politician move, if you're asked about a losing issue, just deflect. It sounds bad, but it's less bad than actually addressing the question. There's a reason they all do it. It distracts, it muddies the waters a bit. My opponent's asking me this ridiculous question to distract from Border Czar Harris's invasion of migrant criminals and nation-destroying inflation et cetera.
Assuming he can't say "yes" because Trump won't let him, what else should he say?
The real blunder is that Trump won't just shut up about the election and let Vance say he'd certify. People who care about Trump saying the election is rigged are voting for him anyway. There's no harm in just lying here.* I have to imagine Trump and the people around him really believe it!
* obviously it's bad and corrosive but i'm taking the perspective of political strategy here, and they all lie (sorry, strategically take positions) anyway
That’s an acceptable interpretation.
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Yes, I think this is a correct take. From Vance's own perspective, he did the right thing - deflect, avoid, pivot. The question he was given cannot be safely answered. He knows his opponents will try to pin him on it (Walz tried at the VP debate as well), and he's clearly got a couple of deflections memorised. The correct move is to try to distract, maybe go on the offensive if possible, and then just get past it and return to stronger terrain for himself.
The is a blunder here, but the blunder is not Vance's, but Trump's. I'm sure that Vance could take a much stronger line on elections, democracy, and fairness if he weren't handicapped by being Trump's running mate. Unfortunately, he is.
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I think it's bad that we have a political class we can tell are lying because that's what they do, but yeah, he's a politician and his mouth is moving.
I'm actually vaguely curious why "Biden was appointed President on January 20th, 2021" isn't the goto approach. Maybe it polls badly, maybe there's some obvious counter I'm missing, maybe MAGA doesn't like it, maybe they just don't remember the appointed-not-elected chants of 2000 and 2004, but it seems kinda an obvious dodge that doesn't concede anything people care about, while 'answering'. Maybe Vance and company want the easy question to keep getting repeated?
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Maybe I'm missing some context, but what is ahistorical here? Did Vance say "the Founders would agree with me?" Maybe partisan bias and Vance simpery has blinded me to something, but I don't see the error in what he's saying. Is it because he unequivocally said, "the answer is no," placing him directionally with the "they used fake ballots" crowd?
"They used fake ballots therefore the result isn't valid" would at least be an argument that, if you accept the premise, you could see the conclusion as tenable.
He didn't say that -- he specifically said "they censored people on Twitter therefore the result isn't valid". That is what I'm claiming is the bad take here.
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Regardless of the rest of your point, this is a really bad analogy, because it completely misses the salient point that hostile government actors and agencies were putting pressure on this kind of censorship.
Hostile government actors censoring the media is absolutely something the Founders would be intimately familiar with, on both sides of the coin...
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Sure, I concede the analogy does not recreate all facets of the original.
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Nobody's perfect, but Vance has been absolutely slaying hostile journalists the last few weeks.
Let's be real here. The other people in this race (Trump, Harris, and Walz) are dumb as bricks. On the other hand, Vance is everything the modal person on this forum would say they want. He's incredibly smart and also clued into the current meta.
But that's the thing about live interviews with hostile journalists. They are difficult. My guess is that a similar media tour would have the average Mottizen tying themselves in knots in a mush of self-contradiction. I know that for my own sake, I would not be able to maintain composure when faced by these prosecutors. But Vance does it effortlessly.
IMO, finding an example like this is kinda like criticizing Lebron for missing a shot in a game where he scored 50 points. Vance's ability to give off-the-cuff answers in these interviews is among the best I've ever seen for a politician. The guy can play. We'd be lucky to have him as President some day.
Trump, Harris, and Walz are all quite smart, as one would expect from people who've managed to get some of the most coveted positions in American politics. They're not particle physicists, but it's a strong selection effect. They sound dumb in public, just like Vance did in the OP, because the score they're optimizing for is the one from voters, and voters aren't smart and aren't noticing the things you are.
Vance is at least 1 standard deviation smarter than the others, probably more.
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Kamala I'll concede does seem to be noticeably dumber than average, but Walz seems aggressively average and Trump clearly at least was smart-ish at one point, and he still doesn't come off as dumb.
Vance is smart, but he's also tied to Trump's jumble of inconsistencies and the 2020 election has been his weakpoint because of this- it was in the debate.
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That is fair. He's certainly smarter than the other 3 by a whole league, which is why I found this error to be particularly galling.
It's more akin to Lebron missing a wide-open layup by tripping himself over his own feet.
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Vance made an excellent point. I’ve made a similar point on this forum. There’s nothing bonkers about his argument.
(A) Democracy requires informed voters and free exchange of political ideas.
(B) It’s probable that 99% of all political idea exchange in America occurs on major social media companies. It may be as high as 99.99%.
(C) Default social media companies conspiring to hide essential political information in order to sway voters breaks the substance of democracy, which is related to [A] above.
(D) When one party breaks the substance of democracy, it’s a perfectly legitimate and moral reply to break it to your own advantage as well. This is mere self-defense.
Ben lived in a time where 99% of political idea exchange occurred in bars, coffee shops, and town halls. If he were prevented from talking politics in these places then he would have revolted. Nowadays that political activity occurs on a handful of websites. If Ben were alive today he would agree with Vance. He revolted for less significant reason in fact, involving representation and taxes, which was surely illegal according to the letter of the law (but not the spirit of liberty). Ben’s friends would agree with me on (A), in all of their writings on democracy they assume an informed populace.
There is indeed nothing bonkers about that argument.
That's just not Trump's argument about 2020, and neither is it what Vance was asked about. Vance was doing this - answering a different question, which he could answer credibly.
The question
was answered in his own unique away. Journalists aren’t some honorbound, virtue-trained caste of monks whose purehearted questioning must be answered like Job in the face of Jehovah. They would be a little bit below prostitutes in Dante’s inferno. They are disreputable and untrustworthy according to citizens. The American public is interested in “who is harming democracy”, and Vance answered that concern. Vance’s answer isn’t Trump’s, but Vance is clearly a more sophisticated thinker / propagandist than Trump.
I didn't say anythin about the character of journalists, so I don't see whythat's relevant. I am, however, going to have to accuse you of selective misquotation. The transcript of the interview is here. Here's the whole exchange (journalist in bold, Vance in normal script):
Vance was asked four times, very explicitly, "did Donald Trump lose the 2020 election?", and he evaded answering that question.
Is the statement that Vance actually made reasonable? Yes, I think so, and I've said that repeatedly. The argument that there isn't a fair or level playing field in terms of US elections, and that technology firms engaged in a kind of censorship such that, had it not been present, the results might have been different - that argument is fair enough.
But it is not what Vance was asked about.
It is a dodge, because, as I just said, Vance cannot safely answer that question. Either "yes" or "no" get him into trouble, so he avoids it.
If we are being pedantic, Vance answered a specific question about whether he would certify the vote. That’s not the same question as the related previous questions. He explained why he may not certify the vote, or why he would protest the certification of the vote. You can criticize him for the previous interview questions which were not the subject of the OP, though. But “neither is it what Vance was asked about” is incorrect.
It's all the one line of questioning - it's all the same dodge, it seems to me. The fifth question being slightly different doesn't erase the context of that answer, and I still object to "but big tech" being used as a motte to defend the bailey of "Trump didn't lose 2020".
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And I'm trying to implore you that every time someone spergs out on (D), it's undermining the case for (A-C) by association and scaring the
hoesnormies. No one is ever going to accept "my opponent tricked the populace into voting for him, therefore I can disregard the will of the people manifest through the ballot".And if at all this does somehow get accepted, it's 10x more likely to be deployed by the left and their TDS anyway. They've certainly parroted this 1000 times since 2016 about fascism and the end of democracy, maybe those brain worms have come home to roost.
Independent watchdog NGOs routinely declare elections flawed or invalid because of censorship. Even granting that the mechanics of ballots were fair, the insistance on only caring about it in an election is begging the question, if the people were prevented from informing themselves, their alleged "will" or consent is with defect. Like with a contract: if I deceived you, you may be able to render it void, even if you agree that the blue lines at the bottom are your signature with your own hand.
Do you have an example? I don't really follow election watchdogs, so I never heard of one complaining about censorship, but it would be funny to compare and contrast with western elections.
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And there were prominent calls for faithless electors in 2016. So this isn't even a hypothetical, it's practically the first thing some Democrats called for when faced with a Trump presidency.
And that's the crux of the issue isnt it? (pinging @Tiber727 and others)
To me most of the complaints about Trump's "norm shattering" behavior effectively boil down to Trump treating his opponents the way Clinton and Obama treated thier opponents. The norm being shattered here is that Republicans are supposed to be stoic patricician types who cooperate when thier opponents defect, and "turn the other cheek" instead of "getting in people's faces" and "punching back twice as hard".
That doesn't make him a good politician or mean that he is going to win the election, (in fact i am almost certain he wont) but i cant really judge him for it either. Afterall, turn about is fair play.
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I recall criticizing that too :-)
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I was darkly amused to see that moment, because it felt like a perfect example of something I'd just described.
Did technology companies and the overall media landscape skew public conversation and interest in a way that was generally to the benefit of one party, did this affect the election result, and was this bad? I'm inclined to answer yes, yes, and yes. I am in sympathy with Vance's point here.
But his point is also a dodge - he's retreating from a bailey ("Trump didn't lose the 2020 election") to a motte ("the 2020 election wasn't fair"). There's no rule or constitutional principle saying that elections don't count if newspapers are unfair, nor for if websites are unfair. Vance may be correct about tech firms, but that's beside the point.
I recognise that Vance is in an impossible position here - he can't say that Trump didn't lose without undermining all his efforts to appeal to moderates, and he can't say that Trump did lose without incurring his running mate's wrath, so he's got to deflect and distract. From his perspective, that's the correct strategic move. But I still feel rather sad for America that this is the situation they're in.
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