September 30, 2020

New Podcast Episode: The Debate Gave Americans the Starkest Choice Yet. That’s a Good Thing.

Julio Cortez/AP

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The first presidential debate of the 2020 election this was a night of headache-inducing Trumpian nihilism, as our colleague Clara Jeffery wrote last night. Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden was visibly trying to stay calm, focus on the camera, and speak as directly as possible to the American people—while President Donald Trump attacked, interrupted, and talked over everyone, moderator Chris Wallace included, whose 11th hour recommitment to the rules of the debate came far too late to somehow contain the wreckage.

But, in the end, was this debate a good thing for voters? Trump’s careening performance rendered a debasing spectacle of American democracy, making the usual post-debate analysis feel practically pointless. Typically we ask: who won and who lost? But today, that question seems less relevant: This was about a stark choice, laid bare. “I understand why people wanted to rush to the shower afterwards. It was ugly. It was brutal. It was indeed debasing, but it was Trump revealing Trump,” says Washington D.C. Bureau Chief David Corn, on a new episode of the Mother Jones Podcast. And in that sense, Corn argues, “this was a great night for America.”

Trump, in essence, proved Biden’s point, Corn argues: “It’s out in the open. He sees saying the quiet part aloud. And when a political opponent does that, it makes your work—if you’re a Democrat, if you’re someone who wants to see Trump gone—easier.” (Check out his debate-night essay here.)

Podcast host Jamilah King also interviews DC-based reporter Nathalie Baptiste about her experience of the debate, and her main takeaways. They get into the mind-boggling  contrast between Donald Trump and Joe Biden on the debate stage, the racism embedded in the debate topics, and whether voters might have any reason at all to feel hopeful as November 3 approaches.

Listen to their full conversations on the latest episode of the Mother Jones Podcast:

 

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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