Will late campaign gaffes trash either candidate’s chances?

KCRW's Left, Right & Center

KCRW

352865, News

4.2 • 4.8K Ratings

🗓️ 1 November 2024

⏱️ 51 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Polling shows the election is gridlocked in a tie. With both candidates preaching existential threats if they lose, and promising to save the country if they win, is fear or vibes a greater force in this election? Even after an assassination attempt, a sitting president stepping down, and felony convictions, neither side shows a strong lead. Whose charisma will prevail?

Comedian-podcaster Tony Hinchcliffe stirred up controversy when he referred to Puerto Rico as a “floating island of garbage” during Donald Trump’s rally at Madison Square Garden last Sunday. Despite the hateful comments and boos, Trump called the rally “a beautiful event.” To make matters more complicated, President Joe Biden made a gaffe of his own when he said the only garbage he sees floating out there are “his supporters.” The White House says he meant supporters of the “floating island of garbage” statement, but is the damage already done?

With less than a week before election day, the Washington Post agitated its subscribers and employees with the decision not to endorse Kamala Harris for president. Thousands of readers unsubscribed. Some consider it a calculated business choice from owner Jeff Bezos, while others think it’s a step in the right direction for news media. The Left, Right, and Center panel analyzes how newspaper endorsements (or a lack thereof) influence the election and political press at large.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey, everyone, welcome to the last left, right, and center before election day.
0:05.0	The next time we meet, we will know who will be the nation's next president, or at least
0:09.6	that's the plan.
0:11.5	Moelethy, Sarah Isger, are here to help talk through this moment in our country, in our
0:16.9	politics, and the three of us, I think, have talked for months now about this being an election
0:24.5	that is largely based on vibes.
0:27.6	If any word defines our discussions from previous months, I kind of want to return to that
0:34.2	and ask each of you what that means to you as we are getting close here.
0:40.3	What is what is the vibe and what do you see in terms of this moment?
0:46.0	I'll separate that into two different buckets for me because I want to define vibes and then I
0:51.2	want to like sort of explain where I see the vibes I guess to some extent.
0:55.8	So part of how to define a vibes election is that people feel like the candidates are night and day from
1:06.4	each other. And yet, when you drill down, there's a lot of similarities in terms of policy,
1:14.7	even in terms of their closing messages, right? Both closing messages were something like,
1:18.7	I'm going to be a president for everyone. I'm the big tent. This is where you can feel like
1:22.9	you belong. But also all those other people, they are an existential threat to you.
1:28.0	They aren't like you and they hate you.
1:31.4	That's amazing the way you've set that up.
1:33.5	If you actually dig down into policies and message, there's a lot that's the same,
1:37.2	but don't you dare vote for the other person because the world will end.
1:40.6	Right.
1:42.3	And, you know, we'll, I'm sure talk about garbage at some point. But right, on the one hand, the argument from the Democrats is that Donald Trump is Hitler. He's a fascist. He's Nazi adjacent. And also, of course, we would never call people who support him garbage. No, that makes no sense. We would never say that. Like, there's attention there. Like, wait, don't you think people who support Hitler probably are garbage? I mean, I'm on board with that. I don't think Trump is Hitler. So the whole thing kind of falls apart for me, but okay. And then vice versa, right? People correctly point out that Donald
	...

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