Will Republicans capture the Senate because the political press doesn’t like to see people with disabilities in public?
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It’s depressingly possible:
Or, you know, it looked more or less exactly like the sort of aphasia on the normal post-stroke trajectory that other reporters have been describing him as having all along https://t.co/0sXBKKlNyW— Tom Scocca (@tomscocca) October 26, 2022
No, there’s an amount. You just don’t have it. https://t.co/DMS4Uq8y8T— Jonathan M. Katz (@KatzOnEarth) October 26, 2022
Axios delivers the Conventional Wisdom:
Capitol Hill’s reaction to the Pennsylvania Senate debate was brutal for Democratic nominee John Fetterman, from Democrats and Republicans alike.
Why it matters: Multiple sources wondered why Fetterman agreed to debate when he clearly wasn’t ready. Fetterman struggled at times to respond to the moderators’ questions, even with the assistance of a closed captioning device.”Why the hell did Fetterman agree to this?” one Democratic lawmaker and Fetterman backer told Axios. “This will obviously raise more questions than answers about John’s health.”
And even corners of the nominal left are getting in on it:
There needs to be a pithy name for the particular kind of Both Sides fallacy in which hypothetical misconduct by one side is used preemptively to excuse actual misconduct by another pic.twitter.com/aZUY5HNGtx— Scott Lemieux (@LemieuxLGM) October 26, 2022
The fate of American democracy rests on so many contingent events coming out the right way that it’s hard to imagine a good outcome at this point.