The biggest campaign news of the day is easily the Pennsylvania Senate debate between Democrat John Fetterman and snake oil peddler Mehmet Oz. But a presidential endorsement in North Carolina’s Senate race is kind of a big deal, too. Who wouldn’t want this guy narrating both your biography ad AND giving you an endorsement?
North Carolina could be the sleeper Senate race of the year. Early voting is robust, the state Board of Elections says: Through Monday, 530,000 ballots had been cast for 2022, up from 458,000 in the 2018 midterm election. Republican insurrectionist Rep. Ted Budd is the narrow favorite, but polling has remained pretty tight. As the cliché goes, it’s all in the turnout. President Obama can definitely help there.
Turning to Pennsylvania, this will be the only debate in the contest. Fetterman will be allowed to use closed captioning for a real-time transcript of both the questions and Oz’s answers, a concession for the lasting effects he’s experiencing from a stroke.
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That stroke is going to be the backdrop for pretty much the entire debate. After some early bobbles, Fetterman has handled the situation with grace and transparency as his nearly full recovery became clear. He’s conducted numerous interviews which demonstrated that the national traditional media is woefully equipped to deal with a candidate who—like millions of Americans—needs some reasonable accommodations on the job.
The Fetterman campaign, and the candidate himself, have gone a long way toward using his health status to deflecting the ableism so rampant in traditional media coverage and making his situation totally relatable to voters. So he’s set an expectation for Tuesday’s debate—that he’ll show up and do his best and this best will be good, because he’s perfectly capable of handling the situation.
Oz, however, has to undo months of shittiness on the issue, as The Washington Post’s Greg Sargent details. “Oz’s campaign spent months mocking Fetterman, blaming the stroke on his diet and ridiculing the idea that he would need to recover before debating, even as Oz simultaneously portrayed himself as magnanimous toward Fetterman himself.”
Expect Oz to try to up that magnanimity in Tuesday’s debate, where the seasoned television performer will be all about policy. One Oz campaign adviser previewed the strategy to The New York Times. “I don’t think that viewers are tuning into this debate to learn about John Fetterman’s health status.”
Oz will have to be careful to rein in the TV doctor condescension when the health issue comes up. Because the health issue will come up. Fetterman will simply need to be who he is.
There’s so much you can do in the next two weeks to help close out the election for all Democrats, all across the country. Click here for the full list of GOTV activities Daily Kos has curated for you, and find one or two where you can help out.
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How should we be reading the 2022 polls, in light of shifting margins and past misses? In this week’s episode of The Downballot Public Policy Polling's Tom Jensen joins us to explain how his firm weights polls to reflect the likely electorate; why Democratic leads in most surveys this year should be treated as smaller than they appear because undecided voters lean heavily anti-Biden; and the surprisingly potent impact abortion has had on moving the needle with voters despite our deep polarization.