Vox - The first 2020 presidential debatehttps://cdn.vox-cdn.com/community_logos/52517/voxv.png2020-10-07T21:46:52-04:00http://www.vox.com/rss/stream/212165562020-10-07T21:46:52-04:002020-10-07T21:46:52-04:00What Joe Biden was trying to say about the Green New Deal
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<figcaption>Joe Biden at the first debate in Cleveland on September 29. | Win McNamee/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>His plan was inspired by it, but is not the same.</p> <p id="RCWi6T">The <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/29/21493926/first-presidential-debate-winners-losers-biden-trump">first presidential debate</a> between Donald Trump and Joe Biden was widely acknowledged to be, in the immortal words of CNN’s Dana Bash, a “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/30/21495046/presidential-debate-trump-biden-reviews-who-won-disaster">shitshow</a>.” Scarcely a full sentence or coherent thought was heard the entire night. Trump interrupted so often and told so many lies that Fox News moderator Chris Wallace was rendered ornamental. We should probably all just forget it as soon as possible. But before we do, it’s worth looking a little closer at one brief episode — since the Green New Deal popped up again Wednesday in the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/10/7/21498845/how-to-watch-vice-presidential-debate-harris-pence">vice presidential debate</a>.</p>
<p id="MC27gN">To everyone’s surprise (it wasn’t on the advance list of topics), Chris Wallace asked a question about climate change. As is to be expected from a conservative, he framed it as a trade-off between the environment and the economy.</p>
<p id="zUlDzz">In the ensuing shouting, Trump accused Biden of supporting “the radical <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2018/12/21/18144138/green-new-deal-alexandria-ocasio-cortez">Green New Deal</a>,” which he alleged would cost “$100 trillion.” (For those who are wondering, that number is from a ludicrous “study” of the GND by the right-wing <a href="https://www.americanactionforum.org/research/the-green-new-deal-scope-scale-and-implications/">American Action Forum</a>.)</p>
<p id="YV1igF">Biden responded, “The Green New Deal is not my plan.” </p>
<p id="2WOplo">Then, just a few minutes later, he said, “The Green New Deal will pay for itself as we move forward.”</p>
<p id="ayfPOz">Then, minutes later, “No, I don’t support the Green New Deal.” He supports “the Biden plan, which is different than what [Trump] calls the radical Green New Deal.”</p>
<p id="s3dNCY">Minutes later, sleuths on the right turned up language on Biden’s website calling the Green New Deal a “crucial framework for meeting the climate challenges we face.” </p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">The media won’t Fact Check <a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JoeBiden</a>’s lies. <br><br>His website says he supports the Green New Deal. <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@realDonaldTrump</a> is right. <a href="https://t.co/tFkop9FiXU">pic.twitter.com/tFkop9FiXU</a></p>— Richard Grenell (@RichardGrenell) <a href="https://twitter.com/RichardGrenell/status/1311152669222793216?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 30, 2020</a>
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<p id="jNUKMy">Right-wing media worked <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-presidential-debate-green-new-deal-crucial-framework">furiously</a> to make this a story, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/10/02/opinions/trump-debate-strategy-split-biden-left-weaver/index.html">trying to start an intra-left feud</a> by saying that Biden was repudiating the radical left.</p>
<p id="V5EMt7">It <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/i-am-not-upset-biden-progressives-dismiss-trump-s-effort-n1241597">doesn’t seem to have worked</a>. Climate activists, like Evan Weber, co-founder and political director of the Sunrise Movement, didn’t take the bait, perhaps because it was a little too obvious what Trump was trying to do.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">“The Green New Deal is not a bad deal, but it’s not the plan I have—that’s the ‘Biden Green Deal’”—<a href="https://twitter.com/JoeBiden?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@JoeBiden</a> <br><br>Seems right! Lol <br><br>Conversely, the Biden Green Deal is not a bad deal, it’s not the plan we have, but it’s a damn good start. <a href="https://t.co/ws7wktkgW1">pic.twitter.com/ws7wktkgW1</a></p>— Evan Weber (@evanlweber) <a href="https://twitter.com/evanlweber/status/1311731065992540160?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 1, 2020</a>
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<p id="O428VV">Nonetheless, it’s worth spelling out exactly what’s going on here, because it’s part of a political dynamic that goes back decades — and may finally, at long last, be changing.</p>
<h3 id="qsWH7k">Republicans are working furiously to shore up the “environment versus economy” frame</h3>
<p id="XlI0kg">Around the time of Ronald Reagan and the ascendance of movement conservatism, the GOP began lumping environmental policy into the same big bucket as all progressive social or economic policy: pie-in-the-sky dreams that would raise taxes and damage the economy.</p>
<p id="Cnzmly">Thanks to decades of subsequent repetition — often echoed by defensive Clinton-era Democrats — the “environment vs. economy” frame has become ubiquitous enough to seep out of politics into popular culture. Even people who claim to know very little about politics will have the impression, the feeling, that it’s true.</p>
<p id="ZsWvlH">It was through that basic frame that climate change entered US politics. I’ve argued for years (<a href="https://grist.org/article/2010-08-09-environmentalism-can-never-address-climate-change/">2010</a>, <a href="https://grist.org/climate-energy/two-reasons-climate-change-is-not-like-other-environmental-problems/">2013</a>) that climate is ill-suited to that frame, that calling it “environmental” serves to shrink and distort it in the public mind. But despite my best efforts, that’s how it was discussed for most of the 2000s and 2010s. </p>
<p id="oYqE1I">Climate advocates beat their heads against the frame for years, talking about “green jobs,” new industries, and competing with China in global markets. Then-Rep. Jay Inslee co-wrote a whole <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B004GTMYSC/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1">book about the green economy</a> back in 2013.</p>
<p id="na7MH1">Thanks in no small part to the youth climate movement and the Green New Deal resolution, <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/2/7/18211709/green-new-deal-resolution-alexandria-ocasio-cortez-markey">formally introduced</a> by Sen. Ed Markey (D-MA) and Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) in February 2019, that frame finally seems to be giving way, at least among Democrats, at least on climate change. Within the party, the center of gravity on climate has moved considerably to the left and there is more policy alignment than at any time in recent memory.</p>
<p id="ZFNbEV">As conservative tropes lose their potency outside the bubble, those inside the bubble double and triple down on them. So it is with the Green New Deal. </p>
<p id="R85RGJ">From the outset, the right has worked frantically to define the GND as the most unrealistic, socialist environmental plan yet. As I <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2019/4/22/18510518/green-new-deal-fox-news-poll">wrote last April</a>, in the months following the introduction of the GND, Fox News discussed it <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/blog/2019/04/09/Fox-News-discussed-the-Green-New-Deal-more-often-than-CNN-and-MSNBC-combined/223383">more than CNN and MSNBC combined</a> and its viewers evinced the highest awareness of it.</p>
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<cite>Javier Zarracina/Vox</cite>
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<a class="ql-link" href="https://www.changeresearch.com/" target="_blank"><strong>Change Research</strong></a> online survey March 4-6, 2019, of 1,384 likely 2020 voters in the US.</figcaption>
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<p id="e0pqu5">In the same poll, only 1 percent of Fox viewers were undecided about their opinion of the GND; 91 percent opposed it.</p>
<p id="7VINjT">The right seized on the GND and defined it in the most lurid terms — it would ban cows and planes, take away everyone’s SUVs, and cost “one-hundred TRILLION dollars.” They no longer have any particular need for sophistication or mainstream credibility outside their echo chamber, so the GND has simply become a trigger for every moldy critique of environmentalism that the right had laying around, in its silliest possible terms. “They want to <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/09/29/us/debate-fact-check#they-want-to-take-out-the-cows">take out the cows</a>!” Trump said. (<a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/08/trumps-ever-expanding-claims-of-bidens-destructive-potential-410458">Similarly</a>, Joe Biden is going to destroy <a href="https://www.curbed.com/2020/8/4/21352657/trump-suburbs-housing-election-2020">suburbs</a>, the <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/514343-nra-biden-will-destroy-second-amendment-if-elected">Second Amendment</a>, the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/10/trump-biden-economy-2020/">middle class</a>, and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/video/2020/aug/07/trump-falsely-claims-joe-biden-is-against-god-and-guns-video">God</a>.)</p>
<p id="JG5lvW">During the vice presidential debate, Vice President Mike Pence brought it up, saying: “Joe Biden and Kamala Harris want to raise taxes, bury our economy over a $2 trillion Green New Deal.” Later, he added, “They would impose the Green New Deal, which would crush American energy, would increase the energy costs of American families in their homes and literally would crush American jobs.”</p>
<p id="0GhaM5">The GND of the right-wing imagination bears virtually no resemblance to the spirit or language of the thing itself. It has become a symbol, a vessel for stale resentments.</p>
<h3 id="SD4VBK">The Green New Deal is a symbol on both sides now</h3>
<p id="sUcWIQ">Of course, the GND has become a symbol on the left, too. It was never a specific set of policy proposals, and there is, to this day, no “official” GND policy agenda. Numerous nonprofit research and advocacy groups have released their own versions; the Green Party has a version; various international groups and groups in other countries have their own versions.</p>
<p id="ixVn88">The GND is not a particular set of policy proposals but an idea: an ambitious effort equal to the challenge of climate change, led by the generation that will suffer most from it, free of the political dogmas and self-imposed restraints of neoliberalism and focused on equity and justice. Different groups and constituencies will fill in policy details based on their individual interests and concerns. </p>
<p id="YR12Hc">It’s the idea of the GND, the positive symbol, that has remained resilient in the face of concerted right-wing attacks. And it is the idea that Biden cites as his inspiration.</p>
<p id="bmGJjw">But he cannot, and should not, simply adopt it as his own.</p>
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<img alt="A protester holding a placard during the Sunrise NYC-organized rally in support of the Green New Deal outside Senator Chuck Schumer’s (D-NY) New York City office, April 30, 2020" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/Zz0x3Sd_rK9aZ2bW33_BaiY2QVE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21936924/1140423365.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Michael Brochstein/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>A protester holding a placard during the Sunrise NYC-organized rally in support of the Green New Deal outside Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer’s New York City office, April 30, 2020.</figcaption>
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<h3 id="LgpJli">The Green New Deal has given birth to a whole litter of policy proposals</h3>
<p id="iw8oK3">Insofar as the GND has any policy content, it suggests ambitious action in three areas: stringent <strong>standards</strong> to accelerate decarbonization in key sectors like electricity, buildings, and transportation; large-scale, job-creating public <strong>investments</strong> in clean energy projects, green infrastructure, and vulnerable communities; and an overall focus on <strong>justice</strong>, such that the communities most at risk, from either climate change or the clean energy transition, receive the most assistance. </p>
<p id="aCdHfw">This basic recipe — <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21252892/climate-change-democrats-joe-biden-renewable-energy-unions-environmental-justice">standards, investments, and justice (SIJ)</a> — is what Biden refers to on his website as a “crucial framework for meeting climate challenges.” It is the framework that inspired, to one degree or another, virtually every climate plan released across the left over the past few years, from nonprofit green and environmental justice groups to union groups to Congress to presidential candidates.</p>
<p id="VGyPmQ">It is the framework that inspired Biden’s <a href="https://joebiden.com/climate-plan/#">beefed-up climate plan</a>. He didn’t take everything from the original GND — he’s not offering a <a href="https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/5/4/21243725/coronavirus-unemployment-cares-act-federal-job-guarantee-green-new-deal-pavlina-tcherneva">job guarantee</a> or <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/6/3/21275755/coronavirus-us-stimulus-economy-universal-basic-services">food and housing guarantees</a> — but he put together a credible version of the basic SIJ framework.</p>
<p id="CdI9w1">Nonetheless, he would rightly be seen as presumptuous and insincere if he simply called his plan the “Green New Deal.” The GND is, and ought to remain, its own thing.</p>
<h3 id="F8Oyph">Biden needs to steer between the symbols, toward policy</h3>
<p id="03PK2e">Biden’s political challenge, in the debates and the race more broadly, is to steer clear of the symbol that the GND has become on both sides. </p>
<p id="K9LTI5">He needs to avoid getting tangled up with the dark, garish fantasy that Fox News has made of the GND — the one with no hamburgers, the one Trump kept yelling about onstage at the debate. Believe it or not, there are wavering, undecided voters out there who might hold that against him. It feeds the “Biden is controlled by the radical left” narrative being pushed so hard on conservative and social media right now.</p>
<p id="AvArWL">He also needs to avoid being seen as appropriating what has become a kind of North Star to climate activists. He needs to be seen charting his own path, not simply accepting what the left has offered. That’s why he calls his plan (or at least did at the debate) the “Biden Green Deal.” </p>
<p id="frBkIm">He needs, and climate activists need, for there to be a symbol of ultimate progressive ambition that is too far for him to reach, something that he, as a moderate, can publicly opt against. Activists need room on the left from which to push him when he takes office. And he needs to be seen sanding off the edges and producing a more sensible version of the progressive agenda.</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Fact check: Biden says the "Green New Deal is not my plan." His plan borrows heavily from it. <a href="https://t.co/WpDAvcRlN5">https://t.co/WpDAvcRlN5</a></p>— NBC News (@NBCNews) <a href="https://twitter.com/NBCNews/status/1311300786488516610?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 30, 2020</a>
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<h3 id="mu9t9d">Biden could pull off a political hat trick on climate</h3>
<p id="FvQvQS">Not many committed lefties wanted Joe Biden as their candidate, but looking back over the race so far, in light of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/2/21409364/trump-approval-rating-2020-election-voters-coronavirus-convention-polls">stability of the polls</a> and Biden’s strength among key swing demographics (like <a href="https://www.vox.com/21419972/older-voters-joe-biden-polls-trump-2020">older people</a>), there does seem to be a weird match of the man to the moment. He might be just the guy to put a genial, moderate face on a bold left agenda.</p>
<p id="ViFpSx">A newly resurgent left is pushing ambitious policies on Biden, from Medicare-for-all to justice system reform to the Green New Deal. He has room to welcome their spirit but to adopt more reasonable versions of his own, and because he is widely seen as a moderate, a party man, it’s plausible to voters.</p>
<p id="ePS1Jz">But the thing is, those “moderate” versions Biden is crafting amount to <a href="https://www.vox.com/21322478/joe-biden-overton-window-bidenism">the most ambitious progressive policy agenda a Democratic presidential candidate has run on in the modern era</a>, far more ambitious than anything Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton ever put forward (and far more ambitious than anything Congress is likely to pass). It’s true on health care, race, policing, and infrastructure — and it’s true on climate.</p>
<p id="0Jhp3R">Biden’s climate plan is easily the most ambitious ever put forward by a presidential candidate. It would target 100 percent clean electricity by 2035, which is faster than even the most progressive states have pushed. It would invest $2 trillion and channel 40 percent of all federal green spending to vulnerable communities. It would retrofit millions of buildings, ramp up federal research, reorient US foreign policy around climate, beef up EPA enforcement, and on and on.</p>
<p id="CKsD3I">It’s not the GND, but it’s a really good deal. </p>
<p id="k7dIHe">To have any hope of doing any of it, Biden needs to get elected, and to do that, he needs to walk a fine line: avoid appearing too closely aligned with the activist left, to avoid spooking swing voters, but remain closely enough aligned to keep the left on his side. That, in a nutshell, is what he was trying to do at the debate, and what Trump was deliberately trying to prevent him from doing. </p>
<p id="eNUwuk">No one would ever accuse Biden of being rhetorically fleet of foot. And on the debate stage he was up against a torrent of obnoxious, badgering bullshit, which would be difficult for anyone. So his answers on the GND weren’t exactly clear, and they were easy for the right to demagogue.</p>
<p id="8gF3V6">But the story, such as it was, faded quickly and did not produce the hoped-for intramural fight on the left. As much as it loves intramural fights, even the left isn’t that foolish. Climate activists understand <a href="https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/2020/8/27/21374894/trump-election-second-term-climate-change-energy-russia-china">the stakes of this election</a> all too well. It is the most important of their lives. They know that only a decisive Biden victory makes any kind of deal — new, green, Biden, or otherwise — possible. </p>
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https://www.vox.com/energy-and-environment/21498236/joe-biden-green-new-deal-debateDavid Roberts2020-10-01T10:12:12-04:002020-10-01T10:12:12-04:00The Proud Boys, explained
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<figcaption>Far-right protesters jeer at members of Antifa during protests organized by the far-right group the Proud Boys. | LightRocket via Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The far-right street fighting group has embraced violence — and Donald Trump.</p> <p id="2gqVTP">During Tuesday night’s debate between President Donald Trump and Democratic nominee Joe Biden, Trump was asked by moderator <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/29/21455848/trump-chris-wallace-fox-news-2020-presidential-debate"><strong>Chris Wallace</strong></a> of Fox News whether he would be “willing to condemn white supremacists and militia groups and say they need to stand down and not to add to the violence” taking place in cities like Portland, Oregon, and Kenosha, Wisconsin.</p>
<p id="K65M4K">Trump asked whom he should condemn; Biden suggested the Proud Boys, a far-right street fighting organization that has gained a following both online and in major cities across the country.</p>
<p id="I0ZiCs">“Proud Boys, stand back and stand by,” Trump said. “But I’ll tell you what, somebody’s got to do something about antifa and the left, because this is not a right-wing problem, this is a left-wing [problem].” </p>
<p id="hZj6Jx"><a href="https://twitter.com/JenniferJJacobs/status/1311375753456553986">On Wednesday</a>, Trump said he meant the group should “stand down” and let law enforcement do their jobs, then denied knowing who they were at all. But, as Vox’s Fabiola Cineas <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/29/21494841/trump-proud-boys-stand-white-supremacy">detailed</a> Tuesday night, the Proud Boys took this moment as a sign of Trump’s support for their group, even producing merchandise bearing the phrase “stand back and stand by”: </p>
<blockquote><p id="19Sj7b">One Proud Boys leader, Joe Biggs, wrote on the social media platform Parler, “Trump basically said to go fuck them up! this makes me so happy,” <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-refuses-to-condemn-white-supremacists-says-this-is-not-a-right-wing-problem?ref=scroll"><strong>according to the Daily Beast</strong></a>. Proud Boys national chair Enrique Tarrio, who organized the recent Portland event, wrote “I will stand down sir!!! Standing by sir. So Proud of my guys right now.”</p></blockquote>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">The Proud Boys have already put this "standing by" t-shirt up for sale on their official merch website <a href="https://t.co/dAN4EtuBJH">pic.twitter.com/dAN4EtuBJH</a></p>— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) <a href="https://twitter.com/Shayan86/status/1311317063332442115?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 30, 2020</a>
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<p id="a4XJZq">So who are the Proud Boys? Created by Gavin McInnes, a “<a href="https://www.villagevoice.com/2017/02/15/gavin-mcinnes-wants-you-to-know-hes-totally-not-a-white-supremacist/">provocateur</a>” and one of the original co-founders of Vice Media, who has described himself as “<a href="http://thefederalist.com/2016/03/15/why-your-top-10-reasons-for-not-having-kids-are-stupid/">an old punk from Canada</a>”<em> </em>and turned right in 2008 (the same year he left Vice over “creative differences”), the Proud Boys are a strange amalgamation of a men’s rights organization, a fight club, and what some may see as a hate group — one that loves Donald Trump, hates Muslims (and Jews and trans people), but permits nonwhite membership. They’ve <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-the-proud-boys-became-roger-stones-personal-army-6">provided “security”</a> for former Trump adviser Roger Stone, who allegedly joined the group. </p>
<p id="vYTMus">The group has a magazine where members who win fights are <a href="http://officialproudboys.com/proud-boy-of-the-week/proud-boy-week-rufio-panman/">celebrated with the slogan</a> “They fucked around. They found out.” And in the age of concerns about “civility” and growing worries about political violence, the Proud Boys — <a href="https://twitter.com/RVAwonk/status/1050998339490189314">and McInnes</a>, who believes <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6SJGSrYLWxQ">violence</a> is “a really effective way to solve problems” — are more interested in fighting antifa. </p>
<p id="03uYAA">As Jared Holt at Right Wing Watch told me back in 2018, “The Proud Boys have been the right wing’s enforcers in the streets against those who dissent against them.” And in 2020, not much has changed.</p>
<h3 id="Rkp1bJ">From Vice Media to “cuckmercials”</h3>
<p id="Zb8btA">In 1994, McInnes, alongside Shane Smith and Suroosh Alvi, launched Voice of Montreal, which later became Vice Media. McInnes was already the voice of a particular strain of right-wingerdom<strong> </strong>within the company, telling <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/28/style/the-edge-of-hip-vice-the-brand.html">the New York Times</a>, “I love being white and I think it’s something to be very proud of.” </p>
<p id="V7zu65">In what would become a standard McInnes move, he later attempted to couch his remarks as ironic humor in a <a href="http://gawker.com/013468/letter-to-gawker-from-gavin-mcinnes">letter to Gawker</a>, telling the website that his words were a joke and adding, “It’s unfortunate that people in the know like Gawker are taking it all so seriously. I thought we were on the same page: baby boomer media like The Times is a laughingstock and we should do whatever we can to ridicule it.”</p>
<p id="kkuI8u">McInnes left Vice Media in 2008. He then moved to what he calls the “New Right,” which he seemed to define as a combination of “Western chauvinism” and social and political libertarianism or perhaps libertinism (for example, he <a href="http://archive.is/bKK5u">has written extensively</a> on how women want to be “downright abused” and that he had to stop “playing nice” and begin “totally defiling the women I slept with” to get more women to have sex with him).</p>
<p id="PRY1YZ">His shift to the far right also included espousing anti-Muslim sentiments (“the Muslim world is filled with shoeless, toothless, inbred, hill-dwelling, rifle-toting, sodomy-prone men”) and an embrace of anti-Semitism<strong> </strong>and anti-Israel sentiments, including a video he made for the far-right <a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/08/23/another-one-bites-the-dust-bizarre-right-wing-site-rebel-media-implodes-after-charlottesville/">Canadian outlet Rebel Media </a>initially <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/vice-co-founder-lists-the-10-things-he-hates-the-most-about-jews-1.5449718">called</a> “10 Things I Hate about Jews” (or as he would later <a href="http://www.canadalandshow.com/rebel-media-hosts-antisemitism/">tweet</a>, “10 THINGS I HATE ABOUT THE GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING JEWS!”). He’s also <a href="https://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2014/02/04/gavin-mcinnes-vice-jewish-canadaland_n_4724230.html">argued</a> that historically, perhaps Jews “were ostracized for a good reason.”</p>
<p id="voA9e0">These videos, and <a href="https://www.mediamatters.org/video/2016/01/28/frequent-fox-guest-gavin-mcinnes-calls-jada-pin/208251">some of his others</a>, earned him a host of new fans, including David Duke. And though McInnes has attempted to push aside accusations of racism (which he argues <a href="http://archive.is/LRSZ7">doesn’t exist</a>), he has written for both <a href="https://www.vox.com/2018/8/22/17768296/peter-brimelow-vdare-kudlow-white-house-racism">VDare</a> and American Renaissance, the latter the <a href="https://dianerehm.org/shows/2016-08-29/the-rise-of-the-alt-right-movement-and-its-place-in-this-years-presidential-campaign">publication</a> of the “race-realist, white advocacy organization” New Century Foundation. </p>
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<figcaption>From former KKK grand wizard David Duke’s Twitter feed. March 11, 2017.</figcaption>
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<p id="WBnotX">Much of McInnes’s work, and that of a large swath of what he would call the New Right, is focused on what he views as the “feminization” of culture and politics, from <a href="https://www.therebel.media/_cuck_mercials_portray_men_as_incompetent_wimps">commercials</a> or “cuckmercials” that show “emasculated men” (or <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/gavin-mcinnes-path-to-the-far-rightfrontier/article36024918/">too many interracial couples</a>) to politics. In an i<a href="https://www.metro.us/news/gavin-mcinnes-speaks-out-after-nyu-protest-cancels-event/zsJqbh---FxD2szu1meZg">nterview last year with Metro</a>, he said, “There is a real war on masculinity.” </p>
<p id="GespUQ">And it’s that search for the renewal of a very specific kind of masculinity — and McInnes’s belief that Western culture is in trouble because of “social justice warriors” and the mainstream media <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/arts/television/gavin-mcinnes-path-to-the-far-rightfrontier/article36024918/">“belittling” white men</a> — that resulted in the Proud Boys.</p>
<h3 id="rHHN9G">“Proud of Your Boy” </h3>
<p id="ogkrlQ">The Proud Boys were officially launched in September 2016, on the <a href="http://archive.is/9Xs2K">website</a> of Taki’s Magazine, a far-right publication for which white nationalist Richard Spencer once served as executive editor. </p>
<p id="f6g1br">It<strong> </strong>started out as a joke, using the song “<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DX4YR3ItBsw">Proud of Your Boy</a>” from Disney’s <em>Aladdin </em>musical as the basis for the name of the group and the hashtag #POYB, which appears alongside Proud Boys content on Twitter. Women are not permitted to be Proud Boys, as McInnes <a href="http://archive.is/9Xs2K">explained</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p id="AxqsSg">The basic tenet of the group is that they are “Western chauvinists who refuse to apologize for creating the modern world.” Like Archie Bunker, they long for the days when “girls were girls and men were men.” This wasn’t controversial even twenty years ago, but being proud of Western culture today is like being a crippled, black, lesbian communist in 1953.</p></blockquote>
<p id="hsNpsN">According to the Proud Boys, “We do not discriminate based upon race or sexual orientation/preference. We are not an ‘ism,’ ‘ist,’ or ‘phobic’ that fits the Left’s narrative.” </p>
<p id="3LZ0Da">However, McInnes himself decided he no longer supported marriage equality because he<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZFEYG4uBCzs"> believed it’s part of a secret plan to destroy Christianity</a>, and Facebook pages for Proud Boy chapters in Florida feature Holocaust denial (like a meme implying the number of those who died during the Holocaust was simply invented) and <a href="https://www.miaminewtimes.com/slideshow/offensive-miami-proud-boys-facebook-posts-10947158">virulently racist rhetoric</a>. </p>
<p id="19WRKo">There are four levels of Proud Boy membership. First is to declare yourself to be a Proud Boy (“This means you make your Western chauvinism public and you don’t care who knows it.”) The second level is the swearing-off of masturbation (known online as “nofap” or #NoWanks) combined with a “cereal beat-in” — if you want into the group, you have to get beaten up while successfully reciting the names of five breakfast cereals, because “defending the West against the people who want to shut it down is like remembering cereals as you’re being bombarded with ten fists.”</p>
<p id="TvCbHS">(As the Daily Beast’s Will Sommer <a href="https://medium.com/@willsommer/the-fratty-proud-boys-are-the-alt-rights-weirdest-new-phenomenon-7572b31e50f2">wrote</a> in February 2017, the Proud Boys’ rules are a “mindbender.” But this is real.) The third level is to get a specific Proud Boys tattoo. </p>
<p id="vxpq9W">But it’s the fourth and newest level that gets the most attention: get into a physical altercation for the “cause.” “You get beat up, kick the crap out of an antifa,” McInnes <a href="https://www.metro.us/news/gavin-mcinnes-speaks-out-after-nyu-protest-cancels-event/zsJqbh---FxD2szu1meZg">explained</a> in 2017. He <a href="https://www.metro.us/news/gavin-mcinnes-speaks-out-after-nyu-protest-cancels-event/zsJqbh---FxD2szu1meZg">added</a>, “People say if someone’s fighting, go get a teacher. No, if someone’s f---ing up your sister, put them in the hospital.”</p>
<p id="Q4neGO">It’s that violence that the Proud Boys have become best known for, with the group even <a href="http://officialproudboys.com/news/the-kids-are-alt-knights/">boasting</a> of a “tactical defensive arm” known as the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights (or “FOAK”) reportedly with McInnes’s backing. McInnes made a video praising the use of violence this June, saying, “What’s the matter with fighting? Fighting solves everything. The war on fighting is the same as the war on masculinity.” </p>
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<p id="DZ82vD">In parades and rallies across the country, from Berkeley, California, to New York City, members of the Proud Boys have fought with counterprotesters, antifa, and anyone who gets in their way. Jared Holt, of Right Wing Watch, told me that the group “acts as a violent pack of enforcers for the far right.” </p>
<p id="4otaYH">And at <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/02/us/politics/white-nationalists-alt-knights-protests-colleges.html">events</a> for conservative commentator Ann Coulter and right-leaning speaker Milo Yiannopoulos, members of the Proud Boys have even attempted to act as “security,” but those efforts have descended into chaotic violence (although they spun it as a victory):</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Proud Boys Declare Victory in Berkeley by <a href="https://twitter.com/Gavin_McInnes?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">@Gavin_McInnes</a><a href="https://t.co/WK70FSKzc9">https://t.co/WK70FSKzc9</a></p>— Ann Coulter (@AnnCoulter) <a href="https://twitter.com/AnnCoulter/status/855535137856946176?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">April 21, 2017</a>
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<p id="FQF5yq">For his part, McInnes believes the violence of the Proud Boys (in his view, a response to left-leaning violence) is a logical response to how the “left” has responded to right-wing speaking events, <a href="http://takimag.com/article/this_is_war_gavin_mcinnes/#axzz4irAsUBja">writing</a> in June 2017:</p>
<blockquote><p id="NC6TYl">The right isn’t violent. The left is. By allowing these sociopaths to shut down free speech with violence you are all but demanding a war. Okay, fine, you got it. It’s official. This is a war.</p></blockquote>
<p id="CWIoVP">But McInnes left the Proud Boys in 2018 after the group was involved in a violent clash with anarchists on the streets of Manhattan, following an event in which McInnes portrayed Otoya Yamaguchi, a young far-right extremist who assassinated the leader of the Japanese Socialist Party. McInnes even had a fake katana (a type of Japanese sword), which he was filmed swinging at counterprotesters. Ten members of the group were eventually charged following the violent melee, with <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/nyregion/proud-boys-antifa-sentence.html">two ultimately sentenced to serve four-year terms</a> in prison in October 2019. </p>
<p id="wTEIyC">In a since-deleted video, McInnes said, “I am officially disassociating myself from the Proud Boys. In all capacities, forever, I quit,” adding, “I’m told by my legal team and law enforcement that this gesture could help alleviate their sentencing,” referring to the Proud Boys who were facing legal problems. </p>
<p id="SiKM2a">The group also faced allegations that the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/nov/19/proud-boys-fbi-classification-extremist-group-white-nationalism-report">FBI had classified the organization</a> as “an extremist group with ties to white nationalism,” but in a statement to me made on background by a law enforcement official, I was told that “the FBI doesn’t designate groups.” </p>
<h3 id="7QY2iH">The Proud Boys’ embrace of violence — and Trump</h3>
<p id="q1HmFn">While McInnes no longer technically leads the group, his inspiration remains visible, particularly in the violence embraced by the organization. At rallies in Portland and Seattle, the group — alongside right-wing militia organizations like Patriot Prayer — have taken part in <a href="https://komonews.com/news/local/125-million-lawsuit-filed-against-believed-proud-boy-members-09-26-2020">events</a> that <a href="https://www.portlandmercury.com/blogtown/2019/11/11/27463107/physical-fight-at-portland-proud-boy-rally-ends-without-arrests">have frequently turned violent</a>. </p>
<p id="41ctDi"><a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/8/21417403/patriot-prayer-explained-portland">Like Patriot Prayer</a>, another multiracial far-right group that has embraced street fighting as a political tactic, the Proud Boys often rely on the actions of their opposition to draw attention to themselves and their cause. <a href="https://www.opb.org/news/article/patriot-prayer-proud-boys-political-violence-law-enforcement/">In an interview with Oregon Public Broadcasting in November 2019</a>, Oren Segal, director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, said the Proud Boys hold events purely to attract counterprotesters, with the understanding that provoking any counterprotesters can feed a “victimization narrative.” “So when antifa throw stuff at them ... Proud Boys and Patriot Prayer are able to say, ‘See, they are trying to silence us and stop our freedom of speech,’” he said. </p>
<p id="fAs14a">The group has also effectively parlayed its anti-liberalism into MAGA-centric politics, <a href="https://www.orlandoweekly.com/Blogs/archives/2019/02/26/matt-gaetz-defends-a-central-florida-proud-boy-who-was-banned-from-twitter-for-islamophobic-post">intersecting</a> with right-leaning politicians like <a href="https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/florida-rep-matt-gaetz-poses-with-proud-boy-in-pepe-shirt-10903617">Rep. Matt Gaetz</a>. And Trump’s mention of the group and the resulting media attention might provide the group with its largest narrative boost of all. Enrique Tarrio, who serves as chair of the Proud Boys, shared in a since-deleted tweet that he was “extremely PROUD” of Trump, and that “stand back and stand by” is what the Proud Boys have “ALWAYS” done. </p>
<p id="wYm5xy">Tarrio, <a href="https://floridapolitics.com/archives/328526-salazar-edges-shalala-fundraising">who briefly ran for Congress against Rep. Donna Shalala</a> earlier this year, attended the 2017 “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia (but allegedly left before the murder of Heather Heyer). He got involved with the Proud Boys after volunteering at an event for the far-right commentator Milo Yiannopoulos in 2017, and <a href="https://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/inside-miami-alt-right-and-proud-boys-chapter-10945821">became a fourth-degree Proud Boy</a> after punching a purported member of antifa in the face in June 2018. </p>
<p id="KYGgWs">He is also the <a href="https://latinosfortrump.us/team-trump">Florida state director for a “Latinos for Trump”</a> organization. In an email on Thursday, the Trump campaign told me that Tarrio and his “Latinos for Trump” group is not associated with the campaign or the family. The campaign also provided cease and desist orders sent to the group in 2019 demanding the group “immediately cease and desist all activities suggesting that it is affiliated, authorized, endorsed, and/or sponsored by the Campaign.”</p>
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<p lang="en" dir="ltr">Him telling the ProudBoys to stand back and standby is what we have ALWAYS done.<br><br>I’m am extremely PROUD of my Presidents performance tonight.<br><br>2/2</p>— Enrique Tarrio (@enrique_tarrio) <a href="https://twitter.com/enrique_tarrio/status/1311177673083949061?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 30, 2020</a>
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<p id="iYBjtp">The point of the Proud Boys is reflective anti-leftism, in which “leftism” is defined as “whatever they don’t like.” While they purport to speak for free speech and Western values, their overarching goal is to use violence as a political solution, with “the left” as the amorphous enemy they purport to fight — by any means necessary. </p>
<p id="VOKTv8"><strong>Update, October 2:</strong><em> </em>This piece was updated to clarify Rep. Matt Gaetz’s relationship with the Proud Boys.</p>
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https://www.vox.com/2018/10/15/17978358/proud-boys-trump-biden-debate-violenceJane Coaston2020-09-30T17:40:00-04:002020-09-30T17:40:00-04:00The debate’s segment on race was doomed before it even began
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<figcaption>President Donald Trump speaks during the first presidential debate against former Vice President Joe Biden at the Health Education Campus of Case Western Reserve University on September 29, 2020 in Cleveland, Ohio. | Olivier Douliery/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The first presidential debate of the 2020 general election, which featured a segment on “race and violence in our cities,” centered Donald Trump’s racism. </p> <p id="So21Im">At the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/28/21452515/first-presidential-debate-trump-biden-2020">first presidential debate</a> of the 2020 general election on Tuesday, President Donald Trump was given ample room to dog whistle, stoke racism, and encourage white supremacists in response to a series of questions from moderator Chris Wallace. </p>
<p id="y1pURv">When Wallace, who hosts <em>Fox News Sunday</em>, announced the debate topics on September 23, he immediately faced criticism for planning to devote time to “Race and Violence in Our Cities.” Critics argued that associating race and violence in that way — conflating the two, even — was racist in and of itself, creating the implication that violent crime is a matter of skin color. The topic played<strong> </strong>into anti-Black fearmongering, the progressive Jewish organization <a href="https://twitter.com/jewishaction/status/1308482736739487745">Bend the Arc</a> said, as well as age-old <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/23716977?seq=1">stereotypes about Black people</a> being inherently more violent and prone to crime. </p>
<p id="cwjKMp">And Wallace’s framework was filled with exactly the sort of rhetoric activists were worried about; Trump answered a question about why he was the better candidate on race with an extended statement on his support for the police, before going on to decry anti-racism training as a “racist” and “insane” scheme that is “teaching people to hate our country,” and characterizing Biden’s presidency as one under which “<a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/8/3/21347565/suburban-lifestyle-dream-trump-tweets-fair-housing">our suburbs would be gone</a>.”</p>
<p id="7LpiLs">In answering Wallace’s questions this way, Trump prioritized pandering to white supremacists, skirting what’s at the center of one of the largest civil rights movements in American history: the enduring impact of systemic racism.</p>
<p id="taxzcK">The questions allowed the president to embrace his ugliest impulses, but overall, the structure of the conversation meant it was dominated by surface-level ideas and falsehoods about the nature of most of this year’s protests, leaving little room for consideration of how violence in cities on the part of the state disproportionately affects Black Americans. </p>
<h3 id="2CyRpG">The debate gave Trump a platform to move his divisive rhetoric out of his rallies and Twitter feed and onto the international stage</h3>
<p id="J5xEg9">When Wallace launched into the topic of race, he failed to provide important and timely context. </p>
<p id="yAmyhj">Protests erupted across the country in late May after the police killing of George Floyd, who died after a Minneapolis officer held a knee to his neck for nearly nine minutes. Video of the incident went viral, galvanizing millions to take to the streets in favor of justice for Black lives and intensifying attention on numerous police killings that followed. The movement has pushed America to rethink its relationship with the police, and led to ongoing protests and uprisings. </p>
<p id="6VE6t3">Rather than giving this vital background before asking his first question on race — “Why should voters trust you rather than your opponent to deal with the race issues facing this country over the next four years?” — Wallace instead noted that Biden has said he was driven to launch his campaign due to Trump’s response to racist violence in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017<strong> </strong>and that Trump has claimed he’s done much for Black Americans.</p>
<p id="FKnkXE">Ultimately, by failing to specify which “race issues” he was referring to, Wallace created an opportunity for the candidates to merely face off and point fingers about who was worse than whom. </p>
<p id="CbgdFT">Biden was first to answer. In his response, he didn’t talk about his <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/8/19/21372408/joe-biden-racial-justice-policy">plans to address racial inequality</a>, but targeted Trump for failing to support Black communities, recalling the moment Trump gassed protesters in Washington, DC’s Lafayette Square, and citing the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/29/21494803/presidential-debate-2020-joe-biden-us-covid-deaths">scary but true statistic that 1 in 1,000 Black Americans have died of coronavirus</a> under Trump’s leadership. </p>
<p id="gpeJW4">In response, Trump also didn’t talk about why he’d be better on race but immediately called out Biden for his role in crafting the <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2019/6/20/18677998/joe-biden-1994-crime-bill-law-mass-incarceration">1994 crime bill</a> that contributed to mass incarceration in the 1990s (Black people are disproportionately likely to be incarcerated) and made <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/live-blog/first-presidential-debate-trump-biden-n1241282/ncrd1241486#liveBlogHeader">misleading comments</a> about Biden calling Black people superpredators. Then things took a turn. </p>
<p id="Y6wT0o">In the middle of chastising Biden for his role with the crime bill, Trump, unprompted, shifted to talk about the amount of support he said he has received from law enforcement, and highlighting unrest in cities across the country. “The people of this country want and demand law and order and you’re afraid to even say it,” Trump told Biden.</p>
<p id="FaXCVk">Wallace responded to these comments by telling the president he only wanted answers focused on race, but by grouping the topics of race and violence together, he’d linked them before the debate even started, making this request a fool’s errand.</p>
<p id="CvmC7B">When Trump did attempt to focus on race, he did so by defending his decision to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/24/21451220/critical-race-theory-diversity-training-trump">sign an executive order that cut funding to anti-bias training programs</a>. </p>
<p id="9w41t6">“I ended it because it’s racist,” Trump said. “A lot of people were complaining they were asked to do things that were insane, that it was a radical revolution that was taking place in our military, in our schools, all over the place.” </p>
<p id="EJdm8S">Trump went on to suggest that his biggest problem with the trainings is that they reject white supremacy,<strong> </strong>explaining that the courses posited a “sort of a reversal” that meant “if you are a certain person, you had no status in life.” This, he said, was unacceptable, because it led to instructors “teaching people that our country is a horrible place, it’s a racist place, and they were teaching people to hate our country.”</p>
<p id="u06qMX">In perhaps the most memorable exchange of the night, the president refused to condemn white supremacy. Instead, pressed by Wallace and Biden, he told the far-right group the Proud Boys to “stand back and stand by,”<strong> </strong>before saying, “somebody’s gotta do something about antifa and the left.”</p>
<p id="hT0cIQ">Wallace failed to seek clarity on Trump’s message to the Proud Boys, but in the absence of further debate on the issue, the group reportedly took the remarks as a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/09/30/trump-debate-rightwing-celebration/">call to action</a>.</p>
<h3 id="Dvbcd6">Wallace’s framing of the debate topic doomed the discussion from the start</h3>
<p id="HtGkiF">It was not just the framing of the topic that provided an arena for statements seeming to support white supremacy and racism; the way Wallace asked his questions also failed to provide much-needed nuance to the nominees’ conversation.</p>
<p id="EgF3Jp">For instance,<strong> </strong>when Wallace asked a question about ongoing protests in Portland, Oregon, he incorrectly claimed that many of the protests “turned into riots,” and asked Biden whether he’d made calls to elected officials to “knock off 100 days of riots.” </p>
<p id="LtdVYU">But few of the summer’s protests became “riots.” According to a September <a href="https://acleddata.com/acleddatanew/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/ACLED_USDataReview_Sum2020_SeptWebPDF_HiRes.pdf">report</a> from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data project, more than 93 percent of the ongoing protests have been peaceful. In fact, the report noted that violence only escalated with the increased police and National Guard presence Trump has touted.</p>
<p id="MlaZzG">Language like this reflects activists’ concerns that the race segment would be a partisan one. Wallace is a Fox News anchor — albeit one of the network’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/29/21455848/trump-chris-wallace-fox-news-2020-presidential-debate">most critical personalities on Trump</a> — and the network has repeatedly equated race with violence amid the summer’s unrest.</p>
<p id="R029ug">Trump has done the same, calling protesters “thugs” and insisting they be met with force and “law and order.” In May, Trump <a href="https://www.vox.com/identities/2020/5/29/21274754/racist-history-trump-when-the-looting-starts-the-shooting-starts">notoriously tweeted</a> that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” in response to unrest in Minneapolis. </p>
<p id="ZHDaFl">For Fox News, Trump, and conservatives to equate race with violence only serves as a reminder why<strong> </strong>millions of people have chosen to join together and make their voices heard in the first place: The “violence in our cities” against Black Americans has long come from the state. And any discussion of that violence must reflect that.</p>
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https://www.vox.com/2020/9/30/21494162/presidential-debate-donald-trump-race-and-violenceFabiola Cineas2020-09-30T16:20:00-04:002020-09-30T16:20:00-04:00The world already had low views of the US due to Trump. The debate didn’t help.
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<figcaption>People watching the first presidential debate from outdoor seating at a bar. | Mario Tama/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>The debate didn’t tarnish America’s reputation. Trump already had.</p> <p id="utx1we">The <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/29/21493926/first-presidential-debate-winners-losers-biden-trump">first 2020 presidential debate</a> between President Donald Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden was an <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/29/21493926/first-presidential-debate-winners-losers-biden-trump">international embarrassment</a>, exposing the rot of US politics to the world.</p>
<p id="tcbaUH">The sorry display had pundits in <a href="https://www.lemonde.fr/idees/article/2020/09/30/face-a-face-trump-biden-un-debat-inquietant-pour-la-democratie-americaine_6054200_3232.html">France</a> calling it “worrying for American democracy,” in <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/first-debate-international-reaction-embarrassment-for-us-on-global-stage-2020-9">Italy</a> bemoaning that “never had American politics sunk so low,” and in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/30/trump-debate-national-humiliation-analysis">UK</a> predicting “this dark, horrifying, unwatchable fever dream will surely be the first line of America’s obituary.”</p>
<p id="BJ8FQc">That’s shocking stuff, and it would only be natural to conclude that the debate radically shifted the globe’s perceptions of the US. But the reality is far more troubling: In the Trump era, the US is historically disliked because of the president and his inept leadership. </p>
<p id="9iGOHd">The debate didn’t shatter positive perceptions of the US. They were already broken.</p>
<h3 id="1WJAHu">Polls show few really like America as much as they used to</h3>
<p id="5Yt9PV">The <a href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/09/15/us-image-plummets-internationally-as-most-say-country-has-handled-coronavirus-badly/">Pew Research Center</a> published a survey on global attitudes toward the US earlier this month, and the results weren’t pretty. Some of America’s allies — the UK, France, Germany, Japan, Canada, and Australia — now have record-low views of the US.</p>
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<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/vS-AlzoYXzgUdY7VRH5mSrvCMQE=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21924798/Screen_Shot_2020_09_30_at_2.38.43_PM.png">
<cite><a class="ql-link" href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/09/15/us-image-plummets-internationally-as-most-say-country-has-handled-coronavirus-badly/pg_2020-09-15_u-s-image_0-01/" target="_blank">Pew Research Center</a></cite>
</figure>
<p id="JXI7zw">The key reason? Trump.</p>
<p id="SQc5BJ">“Since Donald Trump took office as president, the image of the United States has suffered across many regions of the globe,” the report begins. It continues:</p>
<blockquote><p id="Q4JqH8">As a new 13-nation Pew Research Center survey illustrates, America’s reputation has declined further over the past year among many key allies and partners. In several countries, the share of the public with a favorable view of the U.S. is as low as it has been at any point since the Center began polling on this topic nearly two decades ago.</p></blockquote>
<p id="U0Ag4u">Let that sink in: Views of the US have dropped to a two-decade low in large part because of Trump and the way he has run things. One of the top reasons cited is the country’s weak response to the coronavirus, with only 15 percent of respondents saying the US has done a good job. </p>
<p id="VzUMbV">Yet it’s clear from the chart below that even before the coronavirus pandemic hit, Trump was already disliked compared to his predecessor, Barack Obama. How could it be otherwise? After all, Trump has spent much of his presidency <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/1/16/14285232/trump-eu-nato-interview">bashing allies</a>, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2018/7/16/17573692/trump-putin-meeting-helsinki-mueller-russia">hobnobbing with autocrats</a>, and occasionally acting like an autocrat himself.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/v2z2ECQ9KZ8Chn9LK0R9eU6ImO0=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21924840/Screen_Shot_2020_09_30_at_2.45.50_PM.png">
<cite><a class="ql-link" href="https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2020/09/15/us-image-plummets-internationally-as-most-say-country-has-handled-coronavirus-badly/" target="_blank">Pew Research Center</a></cite>
</figure>
<p id="Y51yM5">What Pew’s survey makes clear, then, is Trump’s shenanigans remain a global problem because they’re a globally recognized quantity. The tarnishing of America’s standing thus began years ago — and the debate didn’t help reverse course.</p>
<p id="JvYT8d"></p>
https://www.vox.com/2020/9/30/21495769/trump-biden-debate-2020-global-opinionAlex Ward2020-09-30T11:50:00-04:002020-09-30T11:50:00-04:00Trump promised 200,000 Covid-19 vaccinations a day. That’s 5 to 9 years to vaccinate the US.
<figure>
<img alt="President Donald Trump at the first presidential debate." src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/KLnSOCIj5llvCg38NdVI1sx2iJc=/549x0:7145x4947/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/67559049/1277464690.jpg.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>President Donald Trump at the first presidential debate. | Scott Olson/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Despite Trump’s debate promises, experts say vaccines will take months or years to roll out.</p> <p id="Ws6pmx">At the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/28/21452515/first-presidential-debate-trump-biden-2020">first presidential debate</a> of the 2020 general election, <a href="https://www.vox.com/donald-trump">President Donald Trump</a> tried to reassure viewers about his <a href="https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19">Covid-19</a> response by promising that he’s ready to distribute a vaccine: “We have the military all set up. Logistically, they’re all set up. We have our military that delivers soldiers, and they can do 200,000 a day. They’re going to be delivering the vaccine.”</p>
<p id="XktzkG">In reality, this would be a paltry amount of vaccine distribution. At a rate of 200,000 vaccinations a day, it’d take more than 1,650 days — nearly five years — to vaccinate the entire country. If everyone needs two doses, which could be the case with the <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/covid-19-most-complicated-vaccine-campaign-ever/616521/">first generation of vaccines</a>, it would take more than nine years.</p>
<p id="vZnwrP">Presumably, Trump was saying the military would play a supplementary role to other efforts, with hospitals, family physicians, pharmacies, and others distributing the vaccine alongside the military. But if the military piece is really the highlight of Trump’s plan, the math shows it’s so little it shouldn’t reassure anyone.</p>
<p id="Un8r45">Trump also claimed that the US will have a vaccine in the coming weeks, echoing <a href="https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-archive-fecd2157ba73f72f43c600783c773089">previous comments</a> he’s made that a vaccine will be ready in October. In the past, he’s also <a href="https://apnews.com/article/virus-outbreak-archive-fecd2157ba73f72f43c600783c773089">claimed</a> that the vaccine will be available to everyone quickly — what he called “full distribution.” He repeated that last night, claiming, “Well, we’re going to deliver it right away.”</p>
<p id="wb6IOX">If you talk to experts, including some within the Trump administration, they disagree with Trump’s assessment across the board. It’s possible, even likely, that we’ll get a vaccine by the end of the year, but October is far too soon for the ongoing, necessary trials to conclude, with November or December much more likely.</p>
<aside id="WaTprU"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Why it’s still unlikely we’ll have a Covid-19 vaccine before Election Day ","url":"https://www.vox.com/2020/9/30/21495092/2020-debate-coronavirus-vaccine-covid-19-election-trump-biden-fact-check"}]}'></div></aside><p id="vCblUv">Even once a vaccine is approved by federal regulators and made available, supply will be limited. And the distribution process <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/09/covid-19-most-complicated-vaccine-campaign-ever/616521/">will likely be extremely difficult and slow</a> for the first generation of vaccines. (One of the big challenges: One of the leading vaccine candidates in the US must be kept at temperatures as low as -94 degrees Fahrenheit, which requires freezing equipment that even some advanced facilities don’t have.)</p>
<p id="90hWmR">That’s why many experts believe the vaccination process could take well into 2021 — and potentially 2022 or 2023. That means the Covid-19 pandemic could be with us for up to years, even after if we get a vaccine, and could remain a significant problem until the next round of elections. </p>
<p id="YXiPwx">Covid-19 “will continue to come up as an issue in the next midterms,” Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21455918/biden-covid-coronavirus-pandemic-response-president-trump">previously told me</a>. “It’s not going away.”</p>
<p id="uWNccT">It would be one thing if Trump had done anything to assure the American public that he has the pandemic under control. Maybe that would have earned him some faith in how he and his administration will roll out a vaccine.</p>
<p id="YFcbqe">But Trump has done the opposite, <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21366624/trump-covid-coronavirus-pandemic-failure">repeatedly blundering his response to the coronavirus</a>: He’s <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21439628/trump-covid-19-coronavirus-pandemic-bob-woodward-rage">deliberately downplayed</a> the pandemic, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/4/17/21225134/trump-liberate-tweets-minnesota-virginia-michigan-coronavirus-fox-news">demanded</a> states reopen too quickly, <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/4/28/21239729/coronavirus-testing-trump-plan-white-house">punted</a> problems with testing and tracing down to local and state governments with more limited resources than the federal government, <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/03/politics/trump-biden-coronavirus-mask/index.html">mocked</a> masks, and <a href="https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21436459/cdc-trump-mmrw-covid-19-coronavirus-pandemic">tried to politicize</a> public health institutions instead of letting science lead the response.</p>
<p id="CRp0yb">As a result, America has more than 200,000 deaths from Covid-19 — by far the <a href="https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html">highest recorded death toll in the world</a>. When controlling for population, the US hasn’t had the highest death rate for Covid-19, but it’s among the top 20 percent of <a href="https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus-data-explorer?zoomToSelection=true&time=2019-12-31..latest&country=AUS~AUT~BEL~CAN~CYP~CZE~DNK~EST~FIN~FRA~DEU~GRC~ISL~IRL~ISR~ITA~JPN~KOR~LVA~LTU~LUX~MLT~NLD~NZL~NOR~PRT~SMR~SGP~SVK~SVN~ESP~SWE~CHE~TWN~USA~GBR~EuropeanUnion&region=World&deathsMetric=true&interval=total&perCapita=true&smoothing=0&pickerMetric=location&pickerSort=asc">developed nations</a>, and has seven times the death rate of the median developed country. If the US had the same Covid-19 death rate as, say, Canada, more than 120,000 more Americans would likely be alive today.</p>
<p id="RlAdYe">Trump, however, has repeatedly refused to admit any fault or culpability. That continued at last night’s debate, in which he tried to shift blame: “It’s China’s fault. It should have never happened. They stopped it from going in, but it was China’s fault.” </p>
<p id="b9wsXx"></p>
https://www.vox.com/21495224/presidential-debate-trump-vaccine-coronavirus-covidGerman Lopez2020-09-30T10:40:00-04:002020-09-30T10:40:00-04:00The growing concerns over Trump and a peaceful transition, explained
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<img alt="US-POLITICS-TRUMP" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/CcY-3OmrbwZhshRmsOVQ58ihVUU=/667x0:6000x4000/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/67558626/1228532520.jpg.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>President Trump deplaning from Air Force One in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, on September 15, 2020. | Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It’s unlikely that Trump will steal the election. But unlikely doesn’t mean impossible.</p> <p id="tn9ukN">At the end of Tuesday night’s chaotic <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/28/21452515/first-presidential-debate-trump-biden-2020">first presidential debate</a>, moderator <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/29/21455848/trump-chris-wallace-fox-news-2020-presidential-debate">Chris Wallace</a> asked <a href="https://www.vox.com/donald-trump">President Trump</a> if he would “pledge tonight that you will not declare victory until the election has been independently certified.” The president’s answer was, worryingly, not an automatic yes.</p>
<p id="Zg1MPx">“If I see tens of thousands of ballots being manipulated, I can’t go along with it,” Trump said, referencing unsubstantiated claims of voter fraud from his camp.</p>
<p id="HvI675">This comes on the heels of his refusal last week to commit to a peaceful transition of power when asked at a press conference — “we’ll have to see what happens,” Trump said — and <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/">recent reporting</a> suggesting that the Trump campaign is planning aggressive challenges to election results in battleground states. Taken together, this news has brought what had been brewing worries about a constitutional meltdown this November to a boil.</p>
<p id="fyXUCC">Questions like “How far is he willing to go to win?” and “Will he leave office if he loses?” were once seen as far-fetched hypotheticals pondered by experts and pundits; now, a month out from the election, they have become mainstream concerns.</p>
<p id="page-title">Trump has a long history of attacking the integrity of America’s elections. He <a href="https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2019/jun/24/donald-trump/pants-fire-trumps-latest-california-voter-fraud-cl/">chalked up his 2016 popular vote</a> defeat to the fact that “millions of people voted illegally.” In 2018, <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1061962869376540672?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1061962869376540672%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F2020%2F9%2F24%2F21453184%2Ftrump-peaceful-transfer-of-power-mail-voting-supreme-court-ginsburg">he accused Democrats</a> of trying to steal the Florida Senate and gubernatorial elections using “massively infected” ballots. And earlier this year, <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/512424-trump-the-only-way-we-are-going-to-lose-this-election-is-if-the">he claimed</a> that “the only way we’re going to lose this election is if the election is rigged” — repeatedly arguing, with no evidence, that Joe Biden and the Democrats will <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/live/2020/09/24/us/trump-vs-biden-election#after-the-white-house-said-trump-would-accept-the-results-of-the-election-he-once-again-suggests-it-may-be-tainted">use fraudulent mail-in ballots to steal the election</a>. </p>
<p id="rKHjXN">Trump’s focus on <a href="https://sr.gdprvalidate.de/redir/clickGate.php?u=8otB939m&m=12&p=3b121G4eNI&t=33&splash=0&s=&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.vox.com%2F2020%2F9%2F30%2F21494840%2F2020-debate-fact-check-trump-vote-by-mail-fraud">mail-in ballots</a> is pernicious, and intentional. Because of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/coronavirus-covid19">Covid-19</a> pandemic, many, many more Americans are planning to cast their ballots by mail. And polls have shown that <a href="https://www.axios.com/democrats-mail-voting-pivot-838522b7-8dac-42b4-a566-1ba93818654d.html">Democrats are likelier to vote by mail</a> than Republicans. One can easily imagine a scenario where the battleground states take quite a long time to count their mail-in ballots — and if those tilt the outcome toward Biden, Trump voters will be primed to see the results as tainted.</p>
<p id="7YaDed">Beyond casting doubt on the legitimacy of a Trump defeat, talk of fraud also lays the groundwork for Trump and his allies to interfere with the electoral process itself. Such attempts can take many forms: <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/24/21453184/trump-peaceful-transfer-of-power-mail-voting-supreme-court-ginsburg">lawsuits even more brazenly political</a> than <em>Bush v. Gore;</em> convincing Republican state legislators in battleground states to <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/sep/25/trump-attack-election-electors-republicans">override the vote count</a> and send Trump supporters to the Electoral College; or <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/6/3/21257133/trump-2020-election-meltdown-lawrence-douglas">quite simply refusing to leave the White House on January 20</a> and hoping the military will take his side.</p>
<p id="BFeDfT">Which leaves us with a question: How worried should we be? </p>
<p id="wFKoG9">The <a href="https://twitter.com/rickhasen/status/1309146704344690702">general sense among experts</a> on American politics is that the nightmare scenarios — an outright stolen election, each party attempting to inaugurate a different president on January 20, or clashes between armed supporters of each side — are only plausible if the election is close, and even then, they remain unlikely.</p>
<p id="mhQ21c">“Unless there’s a catastrophic failure on Election Day ... then the election only goes into overtime if the election is close enough to litigate in a state that is essential to the Electoral College outcome. That’s unlikely if the polls are even close to accurate,” Rick Hasen, a law professor at the University of California Irvine and author of the recent book<a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0849NPC95/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1"> <em>Election Meltdown</em></a>, tells me.</p>
<p id="BPoXLc">But Trump’s 2016 win and the emergence of a pandemic earlier this year were both “unlikely,” too. If we’ve learned anything from the past few years of politics, it’s that this kind of low-probability, high-impact event can happen — and needs to be planned for if the worst is to be avoided.</p>
<p id="Iti01E">“In my mind, the worst-case scenario is the possibility of dueling inaugurations ... a situation where we’re facing the end of the republic as we know,” says Franita Tolson, an election law expert at the University of Southern California.</p>
<h3 id="Xca7r8">Trump’s various options for stealing the election</h3>
<p id="nA8TjH">The two most distinctive features of the 2020 election are the coronavirus pandemic and a president unlike any other who has held office before him. These factors combine in a particularly dangerous way, creating the conditions for a constitutional crisis on November 3.</p>
<p id="U9EZBe">Covid-19 has obviously caused a massive increase in mail-in ballots. A <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/25/politics/ballot-requests-voting-election-2020/index.html">CNN survey</a> published on September 25 found that states already had plans to mail at least 71 million absentee ballots to voters — a figure about 50 percent higher than the number of absentee ballots cast in the entire 2016 election.</p>
<p id="LFi5E1">Trump has long been hostile to mail-in ballots (<a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/8/18/21373478/absentee-ballot-vote-by-mail-voting">despite using them himself</a>), treating remote voting as<a href="https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/for-trump-all-democratic-election-wins-are-rigged.html"> a fraudulent Democratic tool</a> for stealing elections. In 2020, there is <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/22/us/politics/absentee-voting-trump.html">an unusually high partisan split</a> in mail-in voting, as the president’s rhetoric seems to be dissuading Republicans from voting remotely. If Biden wins in a close election, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/8/18/21373478/absentee-ballot-vote-by-mail-voting">mail-in ballots</a> — which can take longer to count than day-of ballots — will almost certainly be the decisive factor in his victory. </p>
<p id="ZZEyMj">Though there is virtually no evidence for Trump’s claim that mail-in ballots are vehicles for fraud — a point that veteran Republican attorney Ben Ginsberg <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/09/08/republicans-have-insufficient-evidence-call-elections-rigged-fraudulent/">recently conceded in a Washington Post op-ed</a> — this has not stopped Trump or Republican Party leaders from claiming that fraud is endemic. </p>
<aside id="lOirG1"><div data-anthem-component="readmore" data-anthem-component-data='{"stories":[{"title":"Vote-by-mail is not full of fraud, despite Trump’s debate claims","url":"https://www.vox.com/2020/9/30/21494840/2020-debate-fact-check-trump-vote-by-mail-fraud"}]}'></div></aside><p id="Hu9212">These are the conditions under which the 2020 election could melt down. If Trump continues to insist that mail-in votes are fraudulent, and the institutional GOP continues to support his claims, they have options under the American legal and political system to challenge the results — and potentially flip them. </p>
<p id="zLhHAc">The first and most straightforward tool is lawsuits. As of September 29, <a href="https://healthyelections-case-tracker.stanford.edu/cases">more than 300 Covid-related election lawsuits</a> had been filed across the country. In Pennsylvania, the Trump team has already won a state Supreme Court case on “naked ballots” (mail-in ballots sent in without a secrecy envelope) that could <a href="https://www.vox.com/21452393/naked-ballots-pennsylvania-secrecy-envelope">lead to thousands of votes being discarded</a>.</p>
<p id="1nshKI">In the event of an election where mail-in ballots are the decisive factor, it’s easy to imagine the Trump camp filing a series of lawsuits aimed at blocking the counting or disqualifying mailed ballots. In such a scenario, the election will be decided not by voters but by the Supreme Court, as it was in 2000. Today, <em>Bush v. Gore</em> is seen by <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/11/just-how-bad-was-bush-v-gore/343247/">many experts</a> as less an exercise in legal reasoning than in power, a 5-4 partisan split in which Republican justices elevated their candidate for essentially political reasons. There’s a reason no Supreme Court ruling has ever cited <em>Bush v. Gore</em> as a precedent: The justices themselves described it <a href="https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2010/12/06/precedent-and-prologue">as a one-off</a>.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt="US Supreme Court Begins New Hand Count Hearing" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/cuitnLlMfPicGuGZN6ULbA5fLBk=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21921635/1311452.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Alex Wong/Newsmakers</cite>
<figcaption>Gore and Bush supporters face off during a protest on December 11, 2000, outside the Supreme Court in Washington, DC. </figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="jMHklT">Fears of Supreme Court meddling in 2020 don’t come out of nowhere: Trump has been musing about this very thing out loud. “I think this will end up in the Supreme Court, and I think it’s very important that we have nine Justices,” <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/elections/2020/09/23/trump-need-fill-supreme-court-seat-quickly-because-election/3501368001/">he said last week</a>. And some Court observers believe that if Trump’s Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett is confirmed, she’d be likely to take his side in election-related litigation.</p>
<p id="sej319">“Thomas, Alito, and honestly probably Barrett are out of reach,” says Leah Litman, a constitutional law scholar at the University of Michigan. “Kavanaugh worked on the Bush recount litigation.”</p>
<p id="zn0OuN">Another option for the Trump campaign runs through Republican-controlled state governments. </p>
<p id="APEluK">The <a href="https://www.vox.com/21142223/electoral-college-2020-election-jesse-wegman">Electoral College</a> is an exceptionally strange institution, designed in the 18th century around fears that people would make bad decisions and elevate dangerous leaders. To that end, the framers put in a failsafe around presidential elections: People would not directly elect the president. Instead, the people would vote — and then, based on that vote, elected officials at the state level would designate which party’s representatives would be sent to the Electoral College and then actually choose the president.</p>
<p id="nZiTvV">But there’s nothing in this system that compels governors and state legislatures — <a href="https://twitter.com/rickhasen/status/1309145625078898689">the relevant law is unclear</a> on how delegate selection works, but USC’s Tolson tells me that governors should in theory have the final say — to pick electors who will actually vote for the person whom the state board of election certifies as the winner. Again, this is consistent with the overall design of the Electoral College: The framers wanted an out in case the people voted for a demagogue. </p>
<p id="V3aWlh">It’s grimly ironic, then, that a demagogue may be preparing to use this system to hold on to power if he loses. According to Barton Gellman’s reporting in <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/11/what-if-trump-refuses-concede/616424/">the Atlantic</a>, the Trump campaign is laying the groundwork for convincing Republican-controlled state legislatures in battleground states like Pennsylvania and Wisconsin to attempt to override the voters in the event of a narrow defeat.</p>
<p id="qBS9EY">“The state legislatures will say, ‘All right, we’ve been given this constitutional power. We don’t think the results of our own state are accurate, so here’s our slate of electors that we think properly reflect the results of our state,’” one Trump legal adviser told Gellman.</p>
<p id="DeCgt1">The key words there are “think” and “accurate.” This entire strategy depends on Trump convincing a critical mass of Republicans — voters, national politicians, and state elected officials — that mail-in voting is a vehicle for fraud, and that legislatures can bypass official vote counts and Democratic governors to coronate Trump. In this sense, the legal strategy and state-override strategy go hand in hand: The more court decisions by Republican-appointed jurists <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2020/09/election-litigation/616439/">cast doubt on the legitimacy of absentee ballots</a>, the more cover Trump and his local allies will have to act to discount or overrule them.</p>
<p id="BGkcvP">“The idea is to throw so much muck into the process and cast so much doubt on who is the actual winner in one of those swing states because of supposed massive voter fraud and uncertainty about the rules for absentee ballots that some other actor besides the voter will decide the winner of the election,” UCI’s Hasen writes in <a href="https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/trump-plan-supreme-court-stop-election-vote-count.html">Slate</a>. </p>
<p id="eN7i9v">These strategies are, needless to say, flagrantly undemocratic and tantamount to a kind of legal coup. Democrats would almost certainly contest them; if they refuse to accept a Supreme Court ruling as binding, or if they get (for example) Pennsylvania’s Democratic governor to send a competing slate of Biden electors to the Electoral College, there is no mechanism for forcing either side to back down.</p>
<p id="LzUYT4">In this scenario — or one where Trump loses the key court cases and refuses to accept their results — you could end up with some truly terrifying possibilities. </p>
<p id="AgzGBR">“It’s possible to imagine, come January 20 [Inauguration Day], that we don’t have a president,” Lawrence Douglas, a professor at Amherst College, <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/6/3/21257133/trump-2020-election-meltdown-lawrence-douglas">tells Vox</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p id="qBGyyo">By the terms of the 20th Amendment, Trump ceases to be president at noon on January 20 and [Mike] Pence likewise ceases to be vice president. At this point, by the terms of the Presidential Succession Act of 1947, the speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi, could become acting president, but only if she resigns her House seat. </p>
<p id="cBQbQF">But what if Trump continues to insist that he has been reelected and is the rightful president? Imagine if, come January 20, Trump stages his own inauguration ceremony with Clarence Thomas issuing the oath of office. Then we might have Nancy Pelosi and Trump both claiming to be the commander in chief. </p>
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<p id="4hvo0B">With political factions deadlocked, disagreeing on both who should be in office and what procedures should decide on the result, there is no rule that can be used to resolve this dispute. We would be in a situation like <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2019/1/24/18196026/venezuela-president-protest-maduro-guaido">Venezuela</a> today, where two elected leaders — Nicolás Maduro and Juan Guaidó — both claim to be the rightful president.</p>
<p id="xq854d">In Venezuela, Maduro rules because the army backs him: In constitutional crises, force is always the deciding factor of last resort. It should be impossible to imagine this kind of situation in the United States.</p>
<p id="9Ie5M4">But, increasingly, it’s not.</p>
<h3 id="QUCC7b">These nightmare scenarios are unlikely — but not impossible</h3>
<p id="Zxhg7b">You, reader, may be very scared right now. </p>
<p id="D1mPYV">But let’s take a deep breath and think a little more calmly about this. The good news is that experts like Hasen and Litman believe these nightmare scenarios to be <a href="https://twitter.com/rickhasen/status/1309146704344690702">fairly unlikely</a>.</p>
<p id="mIBkuR">The first and most obvious reason is that they seem to depend on a close election: Trump will almost certainly try to cast doubt on the legitimacy on any loss, even a decisive one, but it’ll be much harder for him to build political support for actually overturning the results if they’re crystal clear. </p>
<p id="1eZ7LN">And currently, the polls are not all that close. </p>
<p id="ejweqS">As of this writing, <a href="https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/polls/president-general/national/">FiveThirtyEight’s national poll average</a> has Biden up by 7.1 points — a significant national lead that, unlike the Clinton-Trump contest, <a href="https://theweek.com/articles/940116/lets-real-biden-cruising-victory?utm_source=links&tum_medium=website&utm_campaign=twitter">has been relatively consistent </a>for the entirety of the campaign. <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/elections/trump-vs-biden-top-battleground-states/">RealClearPolitics</a>’ average of the six most important swing states (Florida, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, North Carolina, and Arizona) has Biden leading in all of them, some by large margins. Biden also recently <a href="https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/oh/ohio_trump_vs_biden-6765.html">pulled ahead in Ohio</a>, a state many observers had chalked up to Trump, and is within striking distance in the previously red strongholds of Texas and Georgia.</p>
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<img alt="Joe Biden Accepts Party’s Nomination For President In Delaware During Virtual DNC" data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/gqcsYwS9B1HReKOsixfCplKfrEU=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21921648/1267516985.jpg.jpg">
<cite>Win McNamee/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Biden’s acceptance speech at the 2020 DNC.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="GgWoNy">This is not to say that a Biden win is a certainty. Rather, it’s to say that the best evidence we have points toward a healthy Biden victory as the likeliest scenario. And if Biden wins Florida, which permits counting absentee ballots before election night, and hence <a href="https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/florida-clear-winner-1.5734892">will likely have a full tally on November 3</a>, the election would likely be called quickly — which could make it hard for Trump to claim that Democrats are winning through some kind of fraud.</p>
<p id="fus6ul">Second, Trump’s strategy depends on courts going along with him for purely partisan reasons. They might not. </p>
<p id="KjUWaz">“I do think that the chief justice has internalized the lesson of 2000,” Tolson says. “It is entirely possible he questions whether [<em>Bush v. Gore</em>] was worth the legitimacy of the Court, which was in question for a number of years after the decision.”</p>
<p id="vwDIrh">Given the clear fact of the matter — that mail-in ballot fraud is astonishingly rare — any court ruling throwing out enough of them to swing the election to Trump could be even more brazenly partisan than <em>Bush v. Gore</em>. Chief Justice John Roberts has shown himself to be deeply sensitive to public opinion; while skepticism is certainly called for when it comes to this Supreme Court weighing in on the election, a 5-4 ruling in favor of Trump is not a foregone conclusion, especially if Trump keeps telegraphing that he expects the Supreme Court to keep him in power. </p>
<p id="n2Jdah">“If we have something like <em>Bush v. Gore</em>, then the Court dividing along party/ideological lines is quite possible. [But] I think Chief Justice Roberts would try like hell to avoid such an outcome,” Hasen tells me.</p>
<p id="qNThYD">There’s some encouraging evidence from an<strong> </strong>August case on absentee voting, <a href="https://www.supremecourt.gov/orders/courtorders/081320zr_8mjp.pdf"><em>Republican National Committee v. Common Cause Rhode Island</em></a><em>.</em> In this case, justices upheld Rhode Island officials’ decision to waive a state requirement that absentee ballots be validated by two witnesses or a notary by a 6-3 margin — with Roberts and Trump appointee Kavanaugh siding with the liberals. </p>
<p id="Il6G6P">“The Rhode Island decision,” <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/8/13/21365122/supreme-court-voting-rights-republican-national-committee-common-cause-john-roberts">my colleague Ian Millhiser writes</a>, “suggests that the Supreme Court will not act entirely as a rubber stamp for the Republican Party when the GOP asks the Court to limit voting rights.” </p>
<p id="w4i4cp">Third, Trump’s strategies all depend on full institutional cooperation from the Republican Party, which is hardly a guarantee. After Trump’s refusal to commit to a peaceful transition of power on Wednesday, the Senate passed <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/09/24/916440816/republican-leaders-reject-trump-hedging-on-transfer-of-power-amid-war-over-confi">a unanimous resolution</a> reaffirming a “commitment to the orderly and peaceful transfer of power.” Prominent Republicans, including <a href="https://twitter.com/MittRomney/status/1308932877229477890">Sen. Mitt Romney</a> and <a href="https://twitter.com/Liz_Cheney/status/1309103227472936961?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1309103227472936961%7Ctwgr%5Eshare_3&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.npr.org%2F2020%2F09%2F24%2F916440816%2Frepublican-leaders-reject-trump-hedging-on-transfer-of-power-amid-war-over-confi">Rep. Liz Cheney</a>, tweeted criticisms of Trump’s comments. Even Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell distanced himself from the president:</p>
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<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">The winner of the November 3rd election will be inaugurated on January 20th. There will be an orderly transition just as there has been every four years since 1792.</p>— Leader McConnell (@senatemajldr) <a href="https://twitter.com/senatemajldr/status/1309126971058794499?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 24, 2020</a>
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<p id="hRwjLR">McConnell’s tweet matters, mealy-mouthed as it may be. Given that he’s the most important (and ruthless) Republican leader in the country, aside from the president himself, for<strong> </strong>him to<strong> </strong>even suggest that there is such a thing as “too far” is putting Trump on a kind of notice.</p>
<p id="uRwuA4">The president needs the full weight of the GOP behind him to pull off any kind of election theft scheme. If a few key Republicans break ranks, at either the state or the national level, some pathways (like state electors overriding local vote counts) could actually be blocked. The more significant the internal dissent becomes, the harder it is for Trump to rally the party faithful in support of his procedural shenanigans. </p>
<p id="DX8S3f">Finally, the international comparisons are reassuring.</p>
<p id="I0Sxzx">In the political science literature on democracy, one of the central ideas is the notion of “democratic consolidation” — the process by which a country’s commitment to the basic rules and norms of democracy become broadly accepted by the general population that its replacement with authoritarianism is seen as unthinkable. </p>
<p id="MdfOGI">The United States has long been seen as a paradigmatic consolidated democracy, with all the features scholars typically associate with solid democratic foundations: an extremely high GDP per capita, a professionalized military (that has <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/06/03/868929288/pentagon-chief-rejects-trumps-threat-to-use-military-to-quell-unrest">already pushed back on Trump’s attempt to politicize them during the summer protests</a>), an independent judiciary, a generally accepted written constitution, and a long history of peaceful power transitions. There’s just never been a country like the contemporary United States that has had a complete breakdown of the electoral process of the sort we’re currently contemplating.</p>
<p id="2J1jOR">For all these reasons, the odds of Trump actually trying one of these election theft scenarios and getting away with it are very low. </p>
<h3 id="eQkV6j">Let’s not forget that it’s 2020</h3>
<p id="DYqy5R">If we’ve learned anything from the past few years, <em>implausible</em> is not the same as <em>impossible</em>.</p>
<p id="mScnty">You can imagine a systematic polling error that narrows the election considerably; <a href="https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-polls-missed-trump-we-asked-pollsters-why/">it happened in 2016</a>.</p>
<p id="jQ2Ykh">You can imagine the Supreme Court ruling in a deeply political way — just look at <em>Bush v. Gore</em>.</p>
<p id="JUzWQd">You can imagine Republicans going along with one of Trump’s election-rigging schemes: Think of all the unacceptable things, like the Ukraine scandal or the botched Covid-19 response, that they’ve aided and abetted.</p>
<p id="SInsih">And you can imagine American institutions failing even if it’s novel by international standards. Democracy has only been a major feature of human political life for the past few centuries, a relatively short period in our species’ history. It’s possible that whatever we think we know about it, and despite the fact that “rules” of political behavior seem ironclad in recent history, our system just hasn’t been tested under the right circumstances.</p>
<figure class="e-image">
<img alt=" " data-mask-text="false" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/PkUJ_ALND5C_vWX7HKIvPJBUuTc=/800x0/filters:no_upscale()/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_asset/file/21921662/1228753151.jpg.jpg">
<cite>John Lamparski/SOPA Images/LightRocket/Getty Images</cite>
<figcaption>Pro-Trump demonstrators in Portland.</figcaption>
</figure>
<p id="k9wOh5">When thinking about the possibility of an election meltdown, then, the best way to think about it is like any other rare but hugely significant event. And life during the pandemic — itself an unlikely but extremely consequential event — is full of useful analogies here.</p>
<p id="Gxczok">If you’re in an area with little community spread, you probably won’t infect your aging parents by visiting them. But the potential consequences, killing your parents, would be unimaginably bad. Therefore, many of us still take extra precautions — sitting farther away, staying outdoors for the most part, wearing a more heavy-duty mask, self-isolating for two weeks and getting tested prior to the visit.</p>
<p id="aNpVhi">American democracy now needs this kind of emergency precaution. Both <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/14/us/politics/biden-legal-challenges-trump.html">the Biden campaign</a> and <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/the-left-secretly-preps-for-violence-after-election-day?ref=author">Democratic-aligned groups</a> are setting them up, creating legal teams to fight Trump’s delegitimization of ballots and organizational infrastructure to gin up public opposition to a stolen election. </p>
<p id="zHGeIa">But ordinary citizens have a role to play here, too. As I’ve spent the past few weeks reporting on the increasing threats to American democracy, one thing experts have consistently told me is that the most important safeguard for democracy is citizen participation. </p>
<p id="B7Fi0L">“The first thing everybody can do is you can call your senator, your member of Congress, your state legislator, your governor, and insist [upholding] basic democratic principles,” Nils Gilman, the vice president of programs at the Berggruen Institute think tank, tells me. “The second thing we need is for people to be prepared to take to the streets in nonviolent protest if that doesn’t happen.”</p>
<p id="RE7tyh">The American political system is rotting for two basic reasons: an outdated Constitution that allows for minority rule, and a Republican Party that follows a demagogue willing to exploit these constitutional flaws to cement its own power. We wouldn’t be in this situation <a href="https://www.vox.com/21430806/ginsburg-2020-election-legitimacy-trump">if Republicans hadn’t embraced anti-democratic politics long before Trump</a>; we have no guarantees that Election Day will mark some kind of turnabout.</p>
<p id="Hdcxc9">“I’m a constitutional law scholar. I would love to be able to say these issues are complicated, and both sides have points: that is the academic thing to do,” Litman tells me. “But the reality is that when one side is not committed to making elections more democratic and counting ballots, that’s a threat to democracy. It just is.”</p>
<p id="0u3YnP">If Republicans aren’t prepared to check Trump, Americans need to be ready to do it on their own. The fact that the system is being pushed to the breaking point doesn’t mean it’s become irreparable. Sketching doomsday scenarios shouldn’t be demobilizing; it should galvanize action.</p>
<p id="BOXZKH">The more we as a nation prepare for the worst-case scenarios, the less likely they become — we hope.</p>
<p id="mOY19J"></p>
<p id="eU0Lfj"></p>
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/9/30/21454325/trump-2020-peaceful-transition-election-stealingZack Beauchamp2020-09-30T10:30:00-04:002020-09-30T10:30:00-04:00CNN fact-checked the presidential debate. It was almost all about Trump’s lies.
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<img alt="" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/HnGobSBVfkqiiwFuSdLFwrPwIXo=/0x0:6717x5038/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/67558553/1277466228.jpg.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>President Donald Trump at the first presidential debate at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 29, 2020. | Win McNamee/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>“We had an avalanche of lying from President Trump.”</p> <p id="ICAJpw">In the first <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/29/21493926/first-presidential-debate-winners-losers-biden-trump">presidential debate</a> of the <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020-presidential-election">2020 general election</a>, there wasn’t much in the way of coherent discussion. But a CNN fact-check found that much of what was said — particularly by President <a href="https://www.vox.com/donald-trump">Donald Trump</a> — was false or misleading.</p>
<p id="MBLsm0">“We had an avalanche of lying from President Trump,” CNN reporter Daniel Dale said. “[Former Vice President Joe] Biden, conversely, made at least a couple false or misleading claims. But honestly, he was largely accurate.”</p>
<p id="sQvHTR">He added, “There was times during this debate, Wolf [Blitzer], where President Trump’s every line — specifically on mail voting — almost every single thing he said during that concluding section of the debate was inaccurate. And the other thing that stood out to me, Wolf, was that these were largely false claims the president has made before.”</p>
<div id="Nl9Zt5">
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet">
<p lang="en" dir="ltr">“We had an avalanche of lying from President Trump”<br><br>CNN’s Daniel Dale breaks down the fact check of the first presidential debate of the 2020 election between President Trump and Democratic candidate Joe Biden. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/Debates2020?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">#Debates2020</a> <a href="https://t.co/5dG7Vz0t9Z">https://t.co/5dG7Vz0t9Z</a> <a href="https://t.co/JAPcT1aCWB">pic.twitter.com/JAPcT1aCWB</a></p>— CNN (@CNN) <a href="https://twitter.com/CNN/status/1311274897570762752?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">September 30, 2020</a>
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<p id="KfTwmJ">Here are some of the highlights from Dale’s fact-checking, pulled from his CNN appearance and <a href="https://twitter.com/ddale8">Twitter feed</a>:</p>
<ul>
<li id="eVJZkF">On Trump’s claim that he banned travel from China and Europe in response to Covid-19: “Trump didn’t ‘ban’ travel from China or Europe. He imposed travel restrictions with numerous exemptions — for US citizens, green card holders, many of their family members — and the Europe restrictions exempted entire countries.”</li>
<li id="cg6cEL">On Trump’s claim that Biden wants to abolish private health insurance: “That claim is simply not true. You may recall the Democratic primary, in which a leading candidate, Sen. Bernie Sanders, proposed a Medicare-for-all plan … a single-payer plan that would indeed have eliminated most private insurance — about 100 million people with private plans. Biden rejected that approach.”</li>
<li id="cLhHQj">On Trump’s claim that he’s bringing down drug prices: “Can’t fact-check the future, but there is very much no evidence Trump’s executive order will reduce drug prices 80 percent or 90 percent.”</li>
<li id="xLzH1I">On Trump’s claim that Biden supports another lockdown: “Biden has not proposed a shutdown or put forward a shutdown plan. He said in an August interview that he’d shut things down *if scientists said that was necessary in a virus crisis.* He later walked that back, saying ‘there is going to be no need’ for a ‘whole economy’ shutdown.”</li>
<li id="aosHtc">On Trump’s claim that he brought back 700,000 manufacturing jobs: “From the beginning of Trump’s presidency through August, it’s a net loss of 237,000 jobs. We have lost manufacturing jobs under Trump.”</li>
<li id="XZLP84">On Biden’s claim that the US trade deficit with China has grown: “Biden is wrong that the trade deficit with China is now bigger than it was before. That would’ve been true in 2018, but it isn’t anymore; last year’s figure was slightly lower than the 2016 figure.”</li>
</ul>
<p id="asE9fN">After the debate ended, Dale summarized his takeaway <a href="https://twitter.com/ddale8/status/1311126031802216454">on Twitter</a>: “Biden has gotten at least a small number of things at least a little wrong; Trump has told big lie after big lie.”</p>
<p id="X6Ef1x">In a sense, the debate was a microcosm of Trump’s presidency — lying and misleading aren’t new for him. According to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/politics/trump-claims-database/?utm_term=.27babcd5e58c&itid=lk_inline_manual_2&itid=lk_inline_manual_2">Washington Post</a>, Trump has now made more than 20,000 false or misleading claims in public since he assumed office.</p>
<p id="jH2cUC">The problem is not just that Trump lied a lot during the debate, or that he lies a lot in his public statements. It’s that Trump doesn’t seem to care at all for the truth. What he says is only meant to make him look good. </p>
<p id="cxXSrR">And when the president repeats the sorts of lies he told Tuesday night, they begin to calcify, lingering despite fact-checks — making it perpetually difficult to say if he’s telling the truth or merely reciting self-serving bullshit.</p>
<p id="MUfn7e"></p>
https://www.vox.com/2020/9/30/21495151/presidential-debate-trump-cnn-fact-check-daniel-daleGerman Lopez2020-09-30T09:30:00-04:002020-09-30T09:30:00-04:00Joe Biden smashed his single-hour fundraising record after the first presidential debate
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<img alt="Donald Trump And Joe Biden Participate In First Presidential Debate" src="https://cdn.vox-cdn.com/thumbor/ytoGAlEGY-NLRfbe7Wc9Rq83tQw=/0x0:5292x3969/1310x983/cdn.vox-cdn.com/uploads/chorus_image/image/67558215/1277465689.jpg.0.jpg" />
<figcaption>Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and his wife Jill greet the audience after the first presidential debate against President Donald Trump at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio, on September 29. | Scott Olson/Getty Images</figcaption>
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<p>Biden raised nearly $4 million in one hour after the debate.</p> <p id="UMNgv3">At the end of a bruising first presidential debate on Tuesday night, Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden’s campaign announced yet another fundraising milestone.</p>
<p id="HgwGqB">The campaign saw $3.8 million raised between 10-11 pm ET during the debate, breaking its own record for the amount raised in a single hour, <a href="https://twitter.com/Rob_Flaherty/status/1311146324679688193">according to campaign officials</a>. A couple of hours later, Democratic National Committee <a href="https://twitter.com/stevensonpj/status/1311155235201712129">officials announced</a> the party had its best fundraising hour on record from 11 pm-12 am ET, although party officials did not say how much was raised.</p>
<p id="gNQSMJ">“Joe Biden spoke directly to the American people tonight and they are responding,” Biden deputy campaign manager Kate Bedingfield <a href="https://www.foxnews.com/politics/biden-cashes-in-on-debate-as-his-campaign-touts-fundraising-record">told reporters</a>. </p>
<p id="SBwPlD">The fundraising numbers are another sign of enthusiasm for the Democratic candidate, and will help ensure Biden has a cash advantage going into the last few weeks of a contentious campaign. </p>
<p id="EW8vdU">The haul — which comes after Democrats and progressive grassroots groups raised more than <a href="https://thehill.com/homenews/campaign/518621-democrats-have-raised-more-than-300-million-since-ginsburgs-death">$300 million</a> in the wake of Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg’s death — will also help keep Biden competitive against a Republican incumbent who has not been careful managing his money. President Donald Trump started out the race with a massive <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/07/us/politics/trump-election-campaign-fundraising.html">$1.1 billion war chest</a>, but his campaign has spent the vast majority of that sum. The president now has less cash on hand than his Democratic competitor, and Biden and the Democrats have been <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/05/20/858347477/money-tracker-how-much-trump-and-biden-have-raised-in-the-2020-election">outraising him in recent months</a>.</p>
<p id="o3QqNw">Both campaigns’ best opportunities for fundraising thus far have come during big televised events, like Tuesday night’s debate and the Democratic National Convention. Biden’s campaign pulled in <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-08-21/biden-campaign-pulls-in-70-million-for-convention-week">$70 million during the DNC</a>; the Trump campaign later announced it had <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/28/politics/trump-rnc-fundraising/index.html">fundraised $76 million</a> with the RNC and its various joint fundraising committees during the Republican National Convention. </p>
<p id="7BTrp1">As of Wednesday morning, the Trump campaign hadn’t yet released it’s post-debate fundraising numbers. A Trump campaign spokesperson did not immediately respond to Vox’s request for comment. </p>
<h3 id="2dSTAl">The debate was a mess, but it looks like Biden came out on top</h3>
<p id="N2mg8r">The first presidential debate is typically a chance for the incumbent president to defend their record and make the case for a second term. Trump did none of that on Tuesday. </p>
<p id="YJf2tE">Instead, his debate performance was marked by shouting, constantly interrupting Biden (who <a href="https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2020/9/29/21494785/biden-trump-debate-will-you-shut-up-man">exasperatedly said</a>, “Will you shut up, man?”) and getting into arguments with debate moderator and <em>Fox News Sunday</em> anchor Chris Wallace. Trump’s stand-out moment was when he again refused to condemn white supremacists, instead telling the violent far-right group <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/16/nyregion/proud-boys-gavin-mcinnes.html">Proud Boys</a> to “stand back and stand by.”</p>
<p id="K7EXth">Biden’s debate performance was muted at times, but the vice president more or less did what he needed to do. Biden looked directly into the camera to speak to Americans watching at home on Tuesday, with a consistent message: Trump doesn’t care about the people he’s supposed to lead, and Biden does. </p>
<p id="GXOY9a">“It’s not about my family or his family, it’s about you,” Biden said.</p>
<p id="DXycSf">As <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/9/30/21494864/who-won-debate-trump-biden-polls">Vox’s Andrew Prokop wrote</a>, we don’t yet have enough comprehensive polling data to tell decisively who won the debate. But the early polls and focus groups are in Biden’s favor. </p>
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<p id="aVAbSo">CBS News and YouGov <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/cbs-news-2020-battleground-tracker-5-things-to-know/"><strong>have been tracking</strong></a> respondents in battleground states, and they were able to quickly contact some of those respondents and ask those who watched the Tuesday debate what they thought. Overall, 48 percent said Biden won the debate, while 41 percent said Trump won, and 10 percent said it was a tie. As CBS elections and survey director Anthony Salvanto pointed out on air, this was pretty close to the support for each candidate going in.</p>
<p id="kPzOVF">Kabir Khanna of the CBS News Election and Survey Unit also points out that 42 percent of debate watchers said they thought worse of Trump afterward, and 24 percent said they thought better of him. In contrast, 32 percent said they thought worse of Biden, while 38 percent thought better of him.</p>
<p id="ihbhCL">CNN and SSRS also conducted an instant poll of debate watchers, and they found a more lopsided margin in Biden’s favor. Sixty percent of their respondents thought Biden won, while 28 percent thought Trump won.</p>
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<p id="0hthVM">Biden’s fundraising record set on Tuesday night underscores that he was able to turn an otherwise messy debate night to his advantage. </p>
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https://www.vox.com/2020/9/30/21495051/joe-biden-single-hour-fundraising-record-debateElla Nilsen