I lasted for only about thirty minutes of the debate. It was too boring. You learned nothing about what the rival VPs really thought or about the issues they were discussing. It was Medieval jousting. And I turned back to watching the Padres-Braves baseball playoff game.
After the debate was over, I got an outraged email from a friend decrying what Trump had tweeted during the debate. I thought it would be some obscenity about Haitians, but instead it was about Pete Rose who had just died:
The GREAT Pete Rose just died. He was one of the most magnificent baseball players ever to play the game. He paid the price! Major League Baseball should have allowed him into the Hall of Fame many years ago. Do it now, before his funeral! DJT
I had three reactions to this tweet:
First, I agree with what Trump wrote about Pete Rose. I had written the previous night on Facebook:
I am for separating an assessment of an artist or an athlete from judgments about his politics or character. I have always thought Pete Rose should be in the Baseball Hall of Fame. I saw him in his prime. He should have been barred from baseball for betting, but not from the HOF. I don't feel the same way about Sammy Sosa who compiled HOF numbers, but who tested positive for steroids, and after players could no longer get away with taking them, became a run of the mill player. I am of two minds about Barry Bonds. Unlike Sosa, he was great before he appears to have been taken performance enhancing drugs. HOF yes, HR record no.
Second, I was amused that Trump, like me, was thinking about baseball while the Walz v. Vance debate was going on.
Third, Trump's tweet made me recognize again that, for all this many faults -- faults that should disqualify him from being President of the United States -- he has an unerring connection to how many Americans outside the Beltway think. Most people were, I expected, as bored by the debate as Trump or I was. Most baseball fans (fans, not moralistic sportswriters or MLB officials) think Pete Rose should be in the Hall of Fame.
Trump has a similar connection on big issues like the America's "forever wars." Most Americans don't think that Ukraine is going to defeat Russia, they reject an open-ended American commitment to funding a military victory, and they would like to see the war settled. Kamala Harris thinks she can win votes by championing more funding and arms for Ukraine's armies. Maybe she will win a few votes from Polish-Americans in Pennsylvania, but her views, and those of the Washington foreign policy thinktanks, are out of touch with what Americans think.
True enough, Trump's instinctual responses on issues where his money and political donations are at stake -- from tax cuts to Saudi Arabia or crypto -- don't accord with public opinion. His description of America's problems -- like that of illegal immigration -- are laced with bigotry; many of his solutions to what he sees as problems -- he'll settle the Ukraine War before he is even sworn in, he'll deport 12 million illegal immigrants -- are either wacky or unconscionable. But there is a way in which he gets main street America that eludes many Democrats, including my friend who was outraged by Trump's tweet.
Really interesting point about how Trump does have some connection to the way the average American thinks. It's been discouraging to watch how for nine years, Democrats have refused to reflect on why Trump is as popular as he is, or to even consider how the party could repackage some of his populist ideas. Taking the polar opposite position of everything Trump says and does just hasn't served Dems well.