VP Debate Aftermath & Electoral College Deep Dive with Jelani Cobb
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You're listening to Comedy Central. From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central, it's America's only source for news. This is The Daily Show with your host, Michael Kosta. Thank you.

Welcome to The Daily Show. I'm Michael Kosta. We've got so much to talk about tonight. J.D. Vance won the VP debate. Tim Walz also won the VP debate. And Triumph, the insult comic dog, poops on the spin room. So let's get into it. Indecision 2024. Indecision 2024.

Let's kick things off with the big vice presidential debate, the only time these candidates will face off. Well, in the United States, the European tour is kicking off next week. But for those of us who found it very exciting, there actually was one particular moment that everyone is talking about today. In what was the night's most contentious exchange, Vance refused to acknowledge that Donald Trump lost the 2020 election. I would just ask that. Did he lose the 2020 election? Tim, I'm focused on the future.

I'm focused on the future? I didn't know you could answer questions with that. Next time my wife asks me why I forgot to pick up the kids, I'll say, hey, hey, hey, hey, I'm focused on the future. Where are the kids now? Or how about the next time I get pulled over? Do you know how fast you're going? I know how fast I am going. Zero miles per hour. That's got to count for something, officer. But

I appreciate J.D. Vance. He's not focused on Trump trying to steal the last election. He's focused on Trump trying to steal the next election. And honestly, that is progress. But of course, it's not just the debate that matters. Because yeah, some people form their opinion by watching it as it happens. But a lot more people form their opinion by watching other people's opinions.

You know how you go to a fancy restaurant that took months to get reservations? It's so expensive. And at the end, you're thinking, that wasn't very good. But then the people at your table are like, that was the best meal I ever had. And then you're like, you know, it was pretty good. You know?

Maybe putting cannellini beans in ice cream wasn't disgusting. And that's why both parties put so much effort into spinning the debate result, because it's effective. So let's get to the real debate, the one between the pundits, starting with the conservatives. They thought J.D. Vance did a great job, so they were very happy to spike the ball.

It was quite obvious that J.D. Vance won the debate tonight. I'm incredibly proud of J.D. Had a fantastic performance. The future of the Republican Party is J.D. Vance. Kind of wiped the floor with Tim Walz. I don't think he could have done better under the circumstances. 10 out of 10 for J.D. Vance. It was a masterclass. He looked humble. He looked earnest, sharp, 20 years younger than Walz. He looked beautiful tonight.

Yeah. As a longtime political expert, my analysis on J.D. Vance, you're beautiful. You're beautiful. It's true. But yeah, it seemed like J.D. Vance made his party proud last night, and I'm sure nobody was more proud than the big guy himself, Donald Trump. Kristen, interesting little side note. At 10.02 p.m. Eastern time, Donald Trump, this is in the middle of the debate,

tweeted about the death of baseball great Pete Rose. The great Pete Rose just died. He was one of the most magnificent baseball players ever to play the game. He paid the price. Major League Baseball should have allowed him into the Hall of Fame many years ago. Do it now before his funeral. Do it before the funeral? You don't have to bring the body to the Hall of Fame to swear him in.

Look, I want a rag on Trump, but this is why he's so relatable. Even when it's his vice president, he can't watch the VP debate without looking at his phone like, let me see what's on ESPN, you know? Now, that tweet may seem unrelated to the debate, but Pete Rose was a beloved figure who played for Cincinnati, which is in Ohio, which is next to several swing states. So the calculus here is actually, I'm just kidding, he was bored as shit. All right, so...

And seeing this tweet, it must have been rough for J.D. Vance. Think about it. It's like hitting a home run at your little league game and looking to the stands to see your dad's proud, smiling face and realizing he's at home tweeting about the death of Pete Rose.

So that was the conservative reaction. On the liberal side, they kind of knew Tim Walz didn't crush it. So they were focused on subtly undermining J.D. Vance's performance. See if you can pick it up. One of these candidates is much slicker than the other. J.D. Vance was very slick. He is much more polished. He's slick. I've never seen someone so slick and smooth in not directly answering questions. He talks a good game. You know, he was slick with it. He was good. I'm

I mean, he was too slick, maybe. The slick debater. He looked at shifty. He looked at slick. Yes, he was slick. Slick, slick, slick. Thank God we have all these sharp political pundits to give us a broad array of opinions. They called him slick so much that I couldn't tell if Tim Walls was debating J.D. Vance or Mu Dang. Now that's a wet hippo.

I don't think that sentence has ever been said on late night television before. Now, if you're wondering what they meant by slick, slick is liberal speak for he was good and we're mad about it.

It's such a backhanded compliment. If you look up slick in the dictionary, it says smart, but in a bad Italian-American kind of way. Well, like, it doesn't really matter who the pundits think won the debate. The only thing that matters is whether the debate will have any effect on the election. And on that point, voters are answering with a resounding, nope.

In a new CBS News poll, 42% said Vance won versus 41% for Walls. The rest said it was a tie. Look at the CNN polling. It's very evenly split for Vance, 51%, and Walls, 49%. Great. The entire debate was pointless and irrelevant. So, in a way, it really did prepare them to be vice president. For more... That's true.

For more on the debate and its fallout, we go live to the spin room with Troy Iwata. Troy, can you give us a substantive analysis of the debate and what it revealed about the candidates' actual policies? Uh, no.

Nobody goes to the spin room to talk policy, Michael. That's like going to Coachella to hear music. We go for the drugs. Policy is so boring. It's much more fun to talk about who won and who's the big, dumb, sucky loser who sucks. But how can you tell who won the debate then? It's so subjective. It's not like there's a point system. Yeah, there is. My point system.

I give candidates points based on their statements and presentation. It's an objective, dignified series of metrics that I call Troy's Suck-O-Meter. I don't know if that's a good name, Troy. Okay, well, you can call your point system something dumb, like...

I don't know, Michael's suck-o-meter. Fine. Okay, so how did the Troy suck-o-meter rate the candidates? Okay, well, let's start with general presentation. Tim Walz had such an honest, sincere look on his face that said, America really needs this. And I found that desperate, so I docked him two points for being needy. LAUGHTER

And then, on the other hand, J.D. Vance had those dreamy blue eyes, so that's plus five points, but they're almost too blue, right? It's like if Chucky came to life and had a lot of opinions about a uterus.

You know? So that's minus three. -Okay. All right, but what about their positions? -Okay, I'm getting there. So, at one point, Tim Walz was giving his position on climate change. And while he was droning on about that, I noticed something important. His American flag pin, it had some dimension. It, like -- It wasn't just a 2-D flag. It had a wave to it. -Uh-huh. -A point of view.

And I like that. So, 10 points. And then I also, I thought J.D. Vance had a very compelling answer about how much Trump saved Obamacare. So, plus 10 for that as well. But, no, no, that's exactly what I'm talking about. Trump tried to kill Obamacare. J.D. Vance was lying. Okay, fine. Plus 9 points. Whatever. Oh, okay. Nora and Margaret looked great up there.

Classy and demure. They get three points for that. But I'll store them with Walls since they don't have their own score. This is so incredibly unscientific. Are you done with this? I have one more. Walls had a really bad moment where he forgot what month he was in China 30 years ago. So that's minus two points. And then on the other hand, J.D. Vance supports the overthrow of the U.S. government. So that's also minus two points. Don't...

No, no, no, no. Those two can't be equal. Okay. I'm sure the Michael Suck-O-Meter will reflect that, okay? But based on my objective analysis, the debate was a tie. You did this whole report, and you didn't even talk about their stances on childcare, the war in the Middle East, LGBT issues, anything. Wow, okay. Sounds like you actually watched the debate and carefully analyzed it and everything. So that's minus 10 billion points for you. I guess you lost the VP debate, Michael. What?

Troy Luana, everybody. When we come back, we set a special correspondent in the spin room, so don't go away.

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Hey everybody, Jon Stewart here. I am here to tell you about my new podcast, The Weekly Show. It's going to be coming out

Every Thursday. So exciting. You'll be saying to yourself, TGIT. Thank God it's Thursday. We're going to be talking about all the things that hopefully obsess you in the same way that they obsess me. The election, economics, earnings calls. What are they talking about on these earnings calls? We're going to be talking about ingredient to bread ratio on sandwiches.

And I know that I listed that fourth, but in importance, it's probably second. I know you have a lot of options as far as podcasts go, but how many of them come out on Thursday? I mean, talk about innovative. Listen to The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart wherever you get your podcasts.

Welcome back to The Daily Show. After a debate like the one last night, reporters and politicians gather into the spin room where they try to explain why their candidate won. It's a place of dignity and gravitas. So we sent over a special correspondent to attend.

Quiet, everyone.

The debate is just about to start, and here in the spin room, there's a palpable dead silence that one can only compare to the sound Melania makes when Donald Trump is inside her.

So there's an application called the CBP One app, where you can go on as an illegal migrant. So far, the candidates have been quite civil and respectful to each other. Yes? Boring! Hey, Adon, what do you think so far? Very substantive. Substantive. I know. I want to turn to the show about the Menendez brothers. These guys have much more chemistry. For all of us here at CBS News, thank you and good night.

A lot of people are reacting to the debate. Rachel Maddow said it was a slam dunk for the Democrats. But Mark Robinson said the video was so boring he couldn't even finish.

I'm here with Illinois Governor J.D. Pritzker. Everyone loves Tim Walz, right? He's so cute with his round face. He's like a cabbage patch of dough. On the one hand, a guy who's got real heart. On the other side, you got a guy who's, frankly, we're concerned might be eating a dog's heart. And so I'm worried about you. You know what?

I was concerned about you, I have to be honest. For a second, he looked at me like I was a chocolate eclair, I swear to God. How do you say tampon Tim did? Oh, I remember, he did in the boys' room. In the bathroom. Why did he do that? Here's what really doesn't make no sense. If he's okay with putting tampons in a bathroom, what's his big problem with installing a couple of douchebags in the White House? This is legendary.

Senator and former astronaut Mark Kelly, as a former astronaut, do you have any plans to reveal the name of J.D. Vance's home planet? You know, that stuff's classified. If he just doesn't try to get caught up in how big the moment is. It's a big moment. Something's funny over here. I smell pills and cocaine. There we go.

I'm waiting to talk to the great Senator Katie Britt, whose post-State of the Union speech last January is now considered a Halloween holiday classic. Don, how do you feel about J.D. Vance? Is it hard to see your dad ignoring someone besides you? I guess none of these Republican spin bitches are going to talk to a liberal daily show dog. But I do know who they would talk to.

Gather round, the Hulkster's here! We want some spins from the Hulkster! Whatcha gonna do when JD's mascara runs wild, brother? Whatcha gonna do when I ask for a lift home, brother? How about some bus fare, brother? The Hulkster needs bus fare! Who's that behind me? Is that a Democrat? Oh yeah, Jasmine Crockett.

She's going down. And protect them. And they don't have... Brother, you're lucky I don't throw a punch at you right now that misses your feet. I have a book. The Hulkster's here to spin the debate for you, Tapper. I've met Hulk Hogan. You're not Hulk Hogan. Listen to me, Jay Tapper. I didn't spend my career beating up immigrants to let that Kamala take over the game.

People got to understand I know Kamala back when she was Kamala the Ugandan giant Triumph triumph what's going on? I'm not trying from Van Jones here. Oh Vance. Yes. Hi man. Yeah, I'm here to spin Oh Jake What we saw tonight You're weeping What we saw tonight was two men coming together Looking inside their differences

and focusing on this. I can't hold it together. It was so beautiful, Jake. That's not, that is not how he cries. He's got a question for me, Ma. Try this little me, Ma. That's me. For the me, Ma of the JD events. Oh, hi, Jake.

It's Mamo. Meemaw. Meemaw? But it's spelled Mamo. Sorry. Did you make these? You Jewish people don't know how it's spelled. It's okay. I'm not Jewish.

What makes you think I'm Jewish? Things aren't that bad, Jake. You don't have to deny it. My boy, my little JD, is the American dream. He started out in rural Ohio, and now all the people he grew up with can turn on the TV and say, there's the hometown boy who's going to cut off my Medicaid. Oh, God.

moments there that I think Walt sort of let slide and allowed Vance to... Triumph, you can come over here. Triumph, do you want to come? We're live on CNN. Oh, boy. This is Triumph the Insult. This is Triumph the Insult comic. So, I don't know that you're miked. I'm miked. You're stuck with me. We're not going to make fun of J.D. Vance's grandmother, but thank you. The Hulkster. How about the Hulkster? The Hulk...

This is Triumph signing off from the greatest vice presidential debate in history for me to poop on. Thank you, Triumph. When we come back, Jelani Cobb will be joining me on the show. Don't go away.

Did you know Tide has been upgraded to provide an even better clean in cold water? Tide is specifically designed to fight any stain you throw at it, even in cold. Butter? Yep. Chocolate ice cream? Sure thing. Barbecue sauce? Tide's got you covered. You don't need to use warm water. Additionally, Tide Pods let you confidently fight tough stains with new Coldzyme technology. Just remember...

If it's got to be clean, it's got to be tied. Hey everybody, Jon Stewart here. I am here to tell you about my new podcast, The Weekly Show, coming out every Thursday. We're going to be talking about the election, earnings calls. What are they talking about?

on these earnings calls. We're going to be talking about ingredient-to-bread ratio on sandwiches. I know you have a lot of options as far as podcasts go, but how many of them come out on Thursday? Listen to The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to The Daily Show. My guest tonight is the dean of the Columbia Journalism School and staff writer at The New Yorker who's featured in the new PBS documentary One Person, One Vote. Please welcome back Jelani Cobb.

Thank you for coming on. Thank you. Thank you for coming on. The Electoral College. How did we get here? Well, okay. Right. No.

Most Americans cast their vote and they think it's for the president. Who are they actually voting for? Who are we actually voting for? They're actually voting for a slate of electors who are pledged to, in turn, vote for that particular candidate. And if your candidate wins that state, you will send a slate of electors who will be the people who are responsible for making sure that your person actually achieves the office that they have been elected to.

90% of our audience just said, what the f***? We are the only place in the world that has this system. It doesn't make any sense. Nobody else around the world understands it. Most of us in this country don't understand it. And so it's one of those kind of peculiarities of American politics. Why do we have it? What's one of the big reasons we have it?

So one of the reasons that we have, the really fundamental reason we have it, is to balance out the political power of large states and smaller states. Now that's a generic answer.

The real answer is that it was a means by which slaveholders would be able to use the bodies of the people they were holding in slavery to count in the census in order to give them additional political power. Because the Constitution also has the three-fifths clause, which allows them to count 60% of the enslaved population. In 1860, that meant 2.4 million people who were enslaved

were counted in the census when you determined how much congressional representation the South would have. Now, bear in mind, this is a country that owes its existence to a war fought over the idea of no taxation without representation. - Right. - Slaves cannot vote. - Right. - But the four million people who were enslaved in the South

are counted as part of the political system that gives the authority to Southern voters. Is contradiction too soft of a word? I think hypocrisy is probably a better word. Watching the documentary, hearing you talk about it, I vaguely remembered some of this, but man, is it powerful to relearn and...

besides watching this, how can we relearn this stuff? How should we be approaching voting knowing this?

So, I mean, one, we should be educated about this. There's a lot of literature on it. I mean, it sounds not that interesting, but when you actually look at the way that the story plays out, it becomes immensely interesting. Correct, yeah. The biggest political conflicts that we've had in this country's history have been around the electoral college, some of them. Certainly, it factors into the politics that lead to the Civil War. It factors into the explosive election of 1876.

Many of us are old enough to remember all of the conflict of the election of 2000. We saw the Electoral College popular vote split in 2016 and all the attention that we got out of that. And so it really is, even though it sounds abstract and complicated and kind of ridiculous, it really is something that has the potential to affect your lives every time you go into the ballot booth and cast that ballot.

I think the movie did a great job at making me feel like history was affecting me today. Sure. What are the barriers to changing the Electoral College? Why don't we or can't we just have a national popular vote?

Well, there's an attempt to have a national popular vote. Solve all of our problems right now. I realize this is a big burden to put on you, but you know more about it than me and everyone else. There are much smaller political problems that we have not summoned the will to address. Or I should say much more direct and kind of fundamental problems.

We haven't summoned the will to address those things. And so with the Electoral College, one of the big barriers is explaining to people why we need to do something about it. Because we say, oh, well, this goes back to 1787 and we've had the same system and we've done pretty well in the world since then. And so why would we change as opposed to saying we might need to avert a potential catastrophe on the horizon because this system has never really served us well?

The more we know about this country and our government, the better, right? Absolutely. Right? The history? Absolutely. Right. Okay, good. Just I wanted every teacher to hear that, every kid who's like, I don't want to go to civics. I was talking to you backstage, but I was actually watching this and reading more about it. I was actually kind of proud that growing up in Ann Arbor, Michigan, I had some understanding of this. But, man, we should all have way more understanding of this.

We should. I mean, because we talked about this. I grew up in New York. I went to New York City public schools where I got an excellent education. But we did not get the particular political implications of the electoral college. We weren't taught that. We certainly were not taught that this was rooted in slavery. Right. And an attempt to use slaves for political leverage. Yeah. And so those are things that if I didn't know it and many other people didn't know it, it makes it that much difficult, more difficult for us to understand why it's important now.

And it's important to understand that because it's easy. It makes it easier to make it affect change. If that's one of the foundations for this, I think we all can agree we should be changing that. Let's switch gears. You're the dean of the Columbia Journalism School. What does the average American not understand about news, trustworthy news, trustworthy journalism?

I think that because people don't understand the process and the methodology of reporting in journalism, it's easy to believe that we just kind of go back to our cubicles and make stuff up. Or that we walk into the room and we say like, who do we do

We want to win the debate. We decide to advance one of the debate. OK, that's what we're going to go with. Right. But really, there's a lot of work that goes into everything that we do that it requires a great deal of skill and craft to be able to go into an environment that you may or may not be familiar with to find out what's going on, to interview people who may be reluctant to talk to you, to get facts and then turn those facts into something that people can consume. Right.

You have editors, you have fact-checkers, you have copy editors, that we really do work very hard at producing the information that we have. And that there is a difference between the information that you can get from a vetted, qualified source and what you may get from just a random guy's YouTube station. And so... You know, I've got a lot of YouTubers in the audience. You know what I mean?

No offense. You know, I would assume, because this is how it works with jokes on a comedy show, is that you sometimes go down a path, and if things aren't checking out, you can't write the story. Yep. That's also part of it. That's absolutely true. Killing stories. Yeah, there's not a one-to-one ratio. And that's one of the reasons why reporting in journalism is so expensive. You can spend three months on a story and then come to the conclusion that there's nothing there. Right.

Now, you have learned something. So I know people who have done stories where they thought that an elected official was corrupt, and you spent a whole lot of time, and then you said, no, no.

No, guy's not corrupt. You can't do a story saying news flash. Congressman Johnson is not on the take. That's not a news story. But it is important information that you've learned in the course of doing that. And so you keep doing that. And who knows what the ratio is for when you get to an actual story. So what do you tell your students who a lot of people, especially young people, but a lot of people are getting their news from YouTube, are getting their news from TikTok,

This is not, these aren't vetted sources. These aren't facts. I mean, what do you tell them to, where do they, where should they get their news? Well, I mean, I think that it's healthy to have a really kind of diversified news diet, you

You know, and if you were going to... Oh, I like that. Yeah. Diversified news diet. Yeah. Yeah. And so you want... I have another one. Okay, please. News organizations. We have a health food store surrounded by fast food joints. Correct. Yes. And we're trying to actually get people to have the more healthy diet. Now, you can certainly go to your YouTube guy for opinion. Right.

or you can go to these other places, but we should also say that maybe you go to a public news station, maybe you go to a non-profit news outlet, maybe you go to a legacy organization, maybe you go to some podcasts. You gotta mix these things up and you should be taking in information from lots of different places and coming to your own conclusions.

I love the analogy of a diet, of we have health food, we have junk food, we have healthy news, we have junk news. But the problem is this country and its diet. Yeah. So I'm worried that people are... I mean, look, I scroll on TikTok and I feel my brain begin to rot. And then I choose to read an article in New Yorker and I feel my brain, you know, trying to absorb more information. So I know what's good for me. Mm-hmm.

But am I doing it? Well, the other part of it... Am I doing it, Jelani? No, it's like... It's hard. It's harder to do the right thing. It is, but also I think it's important for us to be on TikTok, too. Right. I like that. Maybe we bring health food to your door, so we will meet you where you are. What is good in the news right now?

not necessarily the stories, but in the idea of journalism and news. What is a positive that you see? You know, a real positive is that we have lots of people who each day, despite all the difficulties, despite all the discouragement and, you know, even some of the distrust, we have people who every day wake up and go out and report. And we have a dedicated core of journalists in this country, people who even believe that the public's

the public being informed, is more important than their own safety. And that's something that I never take for granted. And thank God you have those people. Thank you very much for talking with us. One person, one vote is now available to stream on the PBS app. Jelani Cobb, everybody, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back after this.

That's our show for tonight. But before we go, World Central Kitchen is on the ground in North Carolina, Florida, Tennessee, and Georgia, providing meals to communities impacted by Hurricane Helene. If you can, please support this amazing organization by going to the link below. Now, here it is, your moment of zen. What got me mad was I found out they let Hannity in, and they were about to let the dog puppet in, and they hadn't let me in. I'm going, come on, guys. The dog puppet?

was advocating, the Daily Show dog puppet was advocating for the Senator to be let out. The dog puppet actually said Claire should go in before the dog puppet and I said thank you for that. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts. Watch The Daily Show weeknights at 11, 10 Central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Paramount Plus. Paramount Podcasts.