Checks and Balance: Quality control
Checks and Balance from The Economist
The Economist
4.6 • 1.7K Ratings
🗓️ 14 October 2022
⏱️ 43 minutes
🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS
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Summary
A celebrity doctor who recently lived out of state. An ex-football player beset by controversy. When Mitch McConnell said that “candidate quality” might handicap Republicans’ chances of taking the Senate, it’s likely he was referring to Mehmet Oz and Herschel Walker. Democrats have some flawed candidates too, but the Republican bad batch is getting more attention. Why is that?
Georgia journalist Stephen Fowler explains how voters in the state are reacting to the accusations against Walker. We rank some of the all-time worst Senate candidates. And we revisit the Pennsylvania Senate race, where both candidates have some pretty striking weaknesses.
John Prideaux hosts with Idrees Kahloon and Jon Fasman.
Join the Checks and Balance team for a live Q&A discussion about the upcoming midterm elections. We will explore the most heated races and what their outcome means for America. That's all in a one-off live webinar for subscribers at 9pm UK time, 4pm on America's East Coast, on Thursday October 27th. You can sign up now at economist.com/checkswebinar
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The video opens with a man staring silently into the camera, a stern expression on his face. |
| 0:08.4 | He's white-haired with rimless glasses, probably in his 70s, wearing a beige blazer over |
| 0:13.7 | an open-cold blue shirt and black jumper. |
| 0:16.8 | It's a grey day, the small lake behind him is gently rippling, the trees that line |
| 0:22.1 | it swaying in a hint of breeze. |
| 0:25.0 | The footage is a bit grainy, it looks like a home video. |
| 0:28.8 | A minute in and he's still standing there, still staring, still silent. |
| 0:34.6 | After one minute and ten seconds, he turns and walks towards the lake, picks up a rock |
| 0:39.3 | and throws it in. |
| 0:40.9 | As he walks away, some text appears on the screen, grovel2008.us. |
| 0:47.7 | The white-haired man was Mike Grovel, a former two-term senator for Alaska. |
| 0:52.4 | The video wasn't a piece of data at his start, but rather a campaign ad for his outsider |
| 0:57.5 | and low-budget run for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. |
| 1:02.7 | Grovel was never considered a serious candidate, but in the Trump age, do we even know what a |
| 1:08.3 | serious candidate looks like? |
| 1:12.3 | With 25 days to go until the midterm elections, I'm John Prado and this is Chex and Balance |
| 1:17.1 | from the Economist. |
| 1:19.7 | Each week, we take one big theme, shaping American politics and explore it in-depth. |
| 1:25.7 | Today, how much the candidates matter in the midterms? |
| 1:48.7 | A celebrity doctor who recently lived out of state, an ex-football player, beset by controversy. |
| 1:54.9 | When Mitch McConnell said that candidate quality might handicap Republican's chances of |
| 1:58.8 | taking the Senate, it's likely he was referring to Mem orz and Herschel Walker. |
... |
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