setup_postdata does not retreve comments

I’m running WP 2.0. I want to create two custom homepages for my blog, https://www.celebitchy.com (root directory runs MT)

Each are new page templates:
https://www.celebitchy.com/blog/headline_view
https://www.celebitchy.com/blog/classic_view

I’m trying to call setup_postdata to show the number of comments beneath each post, but no comments are appearing on either template. The thing is, they used to appear fine on the headline version.

I tried turning off all my plugins, deleting all comment-related plugins, and renaming each deactivated plugin in turn. I also tried replacing my comment template with the default version, and calling setup_postdata again right before the comments.

Here is the code. I suspect it’s a setting or something I changed in WP. Sorry for extraneous code, I’m not sure what’s relevant.
Classic View: https://paste.uni.cc/9732
Headline View (one post): https://paste.uni.cc/9733

If it’s relevant, here are my current plugins, which are all deactivated:
https://paste.uni.cc/9730

What am I missing?
Thanks in advance for your help with this tricky problem.