Fetterman vs. Oz debate: The elephant in the room

As I write this the Fetterman vs. Oz debate is just ending. Right off the bat it looks like Fetterman’s camp was wise to lower expectations for his performance.

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To be clear, Fetterman does have closed captioning for this debate so what we’re seeing tonight is not a result of his auditory processing problem.

The closed captioning in the debate will be done through real-time transcription services provided by stenographers, not through auto-captions, according to Dennis Owens, the ABC 27 News anchor moderating the debate.

One stenographer will be transcribing everything Oz is saying, and the other will be transcribing all the debate questions — but what Fetterman says will not be transcribed.

These captions will appear on large TV monitors behind the moderators, so that both Oz and Fetterman can read them.

In his opening statement, Fetterman did address the elephant in the room, his stroke.

There was an exchange on fracking. Fetterman was struggling a bit with the words.

He was confronted by the moderator with his previous claims that he was against fracking.

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It was CNN that caught one of Fetterman’s fracking contradictions. I wrote about it here. Oz pointed out that Fetterman had flip-flopped.

I’m not sure what the question was here but he’s struggling.

And in his answer on inflation, I’m not sure what he’s saying. It’s a word salad.

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This was apparently supposed to be an applause line about Oz and oil companies but Fetterman bungled it so badly it didn’t land.

He did slightly better with this line about immigration and the Statue of Liberty but it still fell apart at the end.

Fetterman also interrupted Oz’s closing remarks.

So the elephant in the room really seems to have dominated this debate. Even Chris Cuomo can see it.

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Update: A good point.

Another good point.

Update: I’ve said before that my grandmother went through this years ago. She couldn’t speak clearly. Her personality changed somewhat and about a year or so later she gradually returned to normal. I think that could happen to Fetterman as well. By next summer or fall he might be in a very different place. But right now he’s clearly got more problems than just auditory processing or whatever the media has been saying. He’s struggling to form sentences not just to understand speech. He should not be in this race right now and he definitely should not have agreed to this debate.

Update: More reactions.

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The left is eerily quiet on Twitter about that debate performance right now. Somewhere there’s a Journolist convo taking place about how best to manage this disaster. Control of the Senate could hang on this seat. It’s too important to concede the problem honestly so Democrats are waiting for marching orders which haven’t been issued yet.

Update: Is this the best they can do? Just complain that anyone who notices Fetterman’s inability to speak coherently is the problem?

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Ed Morrissey 10:00 PM | November 20, 2024
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