The First Debate: The Winner Depends On How You Judge It

The terribleness of the moderator was almost irrelevant. The first post-primary gubernatorial debate saw both candidates performing as expected. Challenger Brenda Siegel was feisty, edgy, full of ideas, and unafraid to confront a three-term incumbent. Gov. Phil Scott served up a reheated platter of customary talking points (hey, there was even a “6-3-1” callback) and getting lost in word salad whenever he strayed too far from the script.

Oh, and showing his fangs more often than you’d expect from a Nice GuyTM. He does that a lot.

So who won?

It depends.

If you judged it as a debate contest, awarding points for consistency, logic, and clarity of argument, it was Siegel. Easily.

But…

Many voters evaluate debates on personality, not policy. It’s the old “who would you want to have a beer with?” test, and Scott is our very own George W. Bush. (Without the pointless wars.) He makes people feel comfortable, especially if they just let the words flow gently by. And we do like to feel comfortable. You sit down with Siegel, she may make you a bit uneasy with her energy and passion and inconvenient litany of crises. She’s Rage Against the Machine; the governor is Ray Conniff. (Ask an old person.)

Or, she’s a straight-backed chair and Scott’s a recliner. Where you going to sit?

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Before We Discuss the Debate, We Must Have a Word About the Moderator

The trying-too-hard-to-smile fellow pictured above is Lee Kittell, program director at WDEV Radio. Quiet, very hardworking, seemingly pleasant enough fellow.

But my God, he put in a disgraceful performance as moderator of the gubernatorial debate held at the Tunbridge World’s Fair. He did a good job managing the flow, but his questions. They were long-winded, bombastic, and straight outta the QAnon/Trumpiverse.

The two candidates handled the situation as you might expect. Gov. Phil Scott slid past the questions and stuck to his canned talking points. Democrat Brenda Siegel responded strongly, even directly upbraiding Kittell on at least one occasion.

Let’s start with the nadir of this piece of performance art. The issue, you will be shocked to learn, was abortion. Kittell brought up Article 22 and asked if the candidates “approve the right to have an abortion right up to the delivery room?” Which is straight out of the anti-abortion playbook.

His follow-up was even worse. He referred to our current workforce issues and asked if “the 60 million abortions performed in the last 50 years” is a cause of worker shortages.

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How Many Mulligans Does This Guy Get?

Another week, another cockup by the allegedly competent managers in the Scott administration. This time it’s a mysteriously sidelined program to give retention bonuses to child care workers. The Legislature approved $7 million for the purpose in the spring; now it’s September, and the administration not only hasn’t spent a dime of the money, it has no idea when it will.

Meanwhile, child care is already difficult to find getting harder, as operators are stretched to the limit because of a lack of workers.

Seven Days‘ Alison Novak broke the story on Monday. As she tells it, the state Department for Children and Families’ Child Development Division has given out precious little information — and what they have disclosed is riven with inconsistencies and unmet deadlines.

Which raises the question, does the administration really want to spend the money at all? If they did, you’d think they would have gotten it going by now. The only other explanation is incompetence of a kind that we are seeing regularly from this regime.

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Someone Feeling a Little Bit Grudgy?

The Democratic primary for U.S. Congress ended in a decisive victory for Becca Balint. She enjoyed a 23.6 percentage point margin of victory in what was expected to be a close contest. She cemented her status as a leading figure in the Vermont Democratic Party, and put herself in prime position to become the future leader.

There are a disgruntled few, however, who can’t seem to put the primary behind them. Meaning certain members of Team Molly Gray.

I hear this whenever I talk with anyone in Democratic circles or the state policy sphere. Malcontented Gray backers are, in the words of one advocate, “salting the earth.” They’re taking names and doling out threats as if they, um, actually run this joint. Which, having badly lost the primary, they decidedly don’t.

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“Uncharted Territory of Destruction” Seems a Bit… I Don’t Know… Suboptimal?

Cheery little piece in The Guardian carries an informed warning that we are rapidly running out of time to avoid truly disruptive impacts of climate change:

The consequences are already being seen in increasingly extreme weather around the world, and we are in danger of provoking “tipping points” in the climate system that will mean more rapid and in some cases irreversible shifts.

This latest canary to gasp for air in the mine shaft is a report from “United in Science,” a multi-agency international effort that issues a new climate change report each year. The new entry warns that the Earth is heading into an “uncharted territory of destruction.”

The signs are already clear. We seem to get a new catastrophe every day. Wildfires from Chile to Mongolia, the destruction of Antarctica’s Doomsday Glacier, water shortages in the American Southwest, one-third of Pakistan underwater, and widespread heat waves that pose an immediate threat to human health and the web of life itself.

Meanwhile, here in Vermont, the Scott administration’s top environmental official says it doesn’t really matter if we miss our 2030 emissions reduction target as long as we get where we need to go by 2050.

Thirty-eight years from now.

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I Seem to Have Sparked a Mike Pieciak Boomlet

Lookin’ kinda sweaty there, Mike

When you push content out into the ether, you never know what’s going to catch fire and what’s going to vanish forever without a trace. The most viral post I’ve ever written was a silly little thing about a proposal (sponsored by Sen. Joe Benning, credit where it’s due) to create a Latin motto for Vermont. A bunch of ignorant conservatives reacted angrily because they didn’t know the difference between Latin and Latin America. It was plenty of fun, but not exactly meat and potatoes.

Anyway, exhibit B in the category of “you never know” is a recent piece observing that treasurer-to-be Mike Pieciak seemed to be destined for higher office. I’d like to make it clear, as if I won’t later in this piece, that I don’t necessarily endorse the idea. I just saw the signs.

The post went live on August 10, the day after Pieciak had waltzed, unopposed, to the Democratic nomination. Three weeks and a day later, VTDigger ran a story that Pieciak was “generating significant buzz” as a potential gubernatorial candidate.

The first bee whose buzz was cited: yours truly. I appreciate that, but in retrospect maybe I should have copyrighted the idea.

To be fair to reporter Lola Duffort, she did a lot of additional digging and put quite a bit of meat on the bones. Pieciak was praised by various notables as “trustworthy,” “charming,” “very smart,” “a serious straight shooter,” “a nice guy.”

And now Vermont Public has jumped on the Pieciak Parade. Twelve days after Duffort posted her story, “Morning Edition” host and Vermont’s human alarm clock Mitch Wertlieb interviewed her about Pieciak’s bright political future. During the chat, Mitch basically stole a line from my original piece, by now a month old, when he noted that a hypothetical Gov. Pieciak “would be the state’s first openly gay governor.”

Glad to have provided some content for you all. But now that I seem to have warmed up the bandwagon, I’m disembarking.

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The Fearmongering Continues Apace

Shit’s flyin’ these days around the subject of crime in Burlington. In spite of the actual crime statistics, and in spite of the voters’ thorough rejection of Law ‘N Order Lite candidate Ted Kenney, the news can’t stop hyping the largely imaginary epidemic of lawlessness in the Queen City.

Yes, there’s been a substantial jump in gun incidents, and although three fatal shootings may be just another Tuesday afternoon in big cities, it’s a lot by Burlington standards. Nobody wants a hail of bullets from their Welcome Wagon. Otherwise, though, Burlington has quite a bit less crime — including violent crime — now than, say, ten years ago.

But some people, prominent white people, feel unsafe. And if prominent white people have a feeling, it must be a real problem, right?

I mean, we’ve got Moderate Nice Guy Phil Scott out here lying about defunding the police: “…with all due respect to Burlington, they defunded the police. They did that.”

Nnnnnope.

Not unless you think “defunding” means “a modest temporary reduction.” Which it doesn’t. Look, if we’re going to ceaselessly demagogue every cut to the police budget, criminal justice reform is gonna be a long time coming.

Last Friday, a gaggle of conservatives under the rubric of “Keep Vermont Safe” held a Panel Of Grievance in Burlington City Hall. VTDigger, for some reason, sent a reporter and a photographer to cover the event. And cover it they did, despite a pitifully small turnout. “Roughly two dozen,” Digger reported. There were almost that many people on stage.

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Dan French Rides Again

Hey kids, if you’ve never seen Tim Conway’s infamous dentist sketch, take a minute and watch it now.

Got it?

Now you know why, when they film The Dan French Story, they need to fire up the time machine and bring back Tim Conway to play the lead. Because man oh man, if that isn’t Dan French on a platter, I don’t know what is.

We’ve covered the misadventures of our Education Secretary in these spaces before, oh so many times before. And now he’s back for another round.

French’s latest is yet another twist in the Gotthard Pass that is the Scott administration’s Covid policy for schools. For months, his agency had strongly discouraged schools from imposing mask mandates — even to protect students at high risk for Covid complications.

Well, now he’s kinda-sorta walking it back, but also not. Take it away, VTDigger:

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It’s Like a Cat Toying With a Mouse, Except the Mouse Thinks It’s a Dog

We’re in for a lot of this, aren’t we? The higher reaches of our ballot feature grossly one-sided contests between able, experienced Democrats and unknown, untested Republicans whose long residencies in the Fox News bubble are plain for all to see.

Last night’s Welch/Malloy debate was… a bit of a letdown. Gerald Malloy was the boring kind of ultraconservative, not the entertaining kind. He was Mike Lee, not Paul Gosar. Instead of a guy verbally stepping on rakes á la Sideshow Bob, we got a flavorless plate of boiled meat with a side of willful ignorance.

It wasn’t as much fun as I hoped. I think we’ll get better results next week, when Libertarian-of-convenience Ericka Redic brings her unique brand of acerbic egotism to a debate with Becca Balint and mock Republican Liam Madden. If Malloy was stepping on rakes, Redic will march blissfully through a minefield.

Peter Welch was, well, Peter Welch. Always on top of his rhetorical game and incredibly energetic for a mid-septuagenerian*. Impressive, in short. Well, not to the 35% of the electorate that will see Malloy as a military hero answering the call of duty to clean up Washington, D.C. But they don’t matter. He did nothing last night that could push his share of the vote past the mid-30s.

*Seriously. I’ve written that he might be one-and-done in the Senate but the way he looks and speaks, he might keep going for three or four terms.

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Vermont Republicans Are Trying to Sneak Their Way Into Election Oversight

How much time do you spend researching your local candidates for Justice of the Peace? I follow politics closely and try to learn about the people on the ballot. But do I pay attention to JP races? Nope, can’t say that I do. Does anybody?

Well, the Vermont Republican Party is giving us a reason to care. One of the items on its website concerns running for the resolutely obscure office.

Justices of the Peace are best known for officiating at weddings. But in Vermont they also play a significant role in overseeing local elections. And that’s what the Republicans are interested in. They want election truthers to run for JP so they can get in there and raise hell.

Well, that’s not what they’re saying out loud. But it’s clearly what they mean. Here’s the dog whistle:

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