Watching the debate tonight?

Meadmaker said:
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I think Biden missed some opportunities for a really good kill shot. I'm worried that Biden will make one of the same mistake Hillary made with respect to laptop/emails. Hillary thought truth was an adequate defense, and I fear Biden might be making the same mistake. I think he has to really hammer it home that not only is there nothing there, but that Donald Trump is a major league liar for saying it is.
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It is disturbing that Biden isn't a more effective speaker. Andrew Cuomo, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, even Nancy Pelosi would take him down in a heartbeat.
 
Minoosh said:
I understand your point of view, but felt Biden’s responses were fine.Getting into some power-driven argument has its own pitfalls.
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Indeed. In an ideal world, people would just look up the answer. From what I can tell, there's nothing there, but it's hard to say how it my play to someone who is kind of lazy.

In terms of electoral strategy, I think it's really a turnout lowering gimmick. If Team Trump can convince 1% of the public that "they're all corrupt", that 1% might stay home.

In the debate tonight, I cringed when Trump called out Biden for his canned answer on "It's not about my family, it's your family." Maybe that wouldn't have seemed so contrived if I hadn't seen one of the talking heads before the debate saying that's what would happen.

Unfortunately, my analysis of the debate is that Biden didn't deliver a knockout blow tonight, and he probably slipped a little. His stutter was on display. He didn't seem as confident. None of that ought to matter, but it could.
 
rdaneel said:
Much as it pains me to defend Trump, I went back and looked at that moment and he's actually saying "Go ahead" to the moderator. He just says it so quickly that it sounds a bit like "Good".
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No Trumpeteer would ever give Biden a similar benefit of the doubt. They would be spinning this to kingdom come. The point was easy enough to grasp - kids were taken with bugger-all concern for ever reuniting those families. Trump’s lack of empathy came through loud and clear. Biden was IMO demonstrating the vast empathy gap between these candidates.

I usually avoid listening to pundits but even Rick Santorum saw this as a low point for Trump.
 
Meadmaker said:
Unfortunately, my analysis of the debate is that Biden didn't deliver a knockout blow tonight, and he probably slipped a little. His stutter was on display. He didn't seem as confident. None of that ought to matter, but it could.
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i think he came across as a human being. I don’t think he lost points at all. I found his humility refreshing.

ETA: Obviously I can’t speak to any influence on undecided voters if there is such a thing.
 
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Bob001 said:
It is disturbing that Biden isn't a more effective speaker. Andrew Cuomo, Elizabeth Warren, Bernie Sanders, Pete Buttigieg, even Nancy Pelosi would take him down in a heartbeat.
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I thought he was plenty effective. Biden seemed saddened more than outraged. I’m not sure pointed barbs would have been better.
 
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Minoosh said:
i think he came across as a human being. I don’t think he lost points at all. I found his humility refreshing.

ETA: Obviously I can’t speak to any influence on undecided voters if there is such a thing.
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Anybody who is "undecided" by now is either an unadmitted Trumper or won't vote at all.
 
What’s the purpose of a debate? To change somebody’s vote at this stage of the game? First presidential election I voted in was 1968, voted for Nixon and regretted it a few months later. Never voted for a Republican for prez since. Never voted for any Democrat at any level either.

Presidential debates are as much horseapples as the state of the union address. I don’t waste my time with clowns.

Enjoy though, you guys that get off on it.
 
lionking said:
The most disturbing thing about Trump in this debate is that he thinks every single thing comes down to money, and anyone who doesn’t share this view is a socialist. Climate change mitigation costs money, so we’re not doing this. Minimum wages cost money, so I don’t support it. Public health care is theft etc etc.
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Just about every conservative party around the Western world is motivated by exactly the same thing (elevation of property above all other consideration), to the point that there is almost a clear cadence to the countdown from when some tool in the USA says something tremendously irrational to when the same nonsense is repeated by a local party leader.

Normalizing. Perhaps the most important term in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, as we have all been privy to a real time display of what bully pulpits, droning repetition of crafted messages, and hate speech can accomplish. When the USA -- Left, Right and Center -- normalized torture under Bush II, the floodgates opened to wanton cruelty in full public view, from indiscriminate bombing (again) to children in cages.

This has in turn normalized a serious decline in discourse, as no one feels restrained by any potential negative reaction from what used to be a tarnished, yet still effective, world leader. All peas in a fascist pod now.
 
Athyrio said:
What’s the purpose of a debate? To change somebody’s vote at this stage of the game? First presidential election I voted in was 1968, voted for Nixon and regretted it a few months later. Never voted for a Republican for prez since. Never voted for any Democrat at any level either.

Presidential debates are as much horseapples as the state of the union address. I don’t waste my time with clowns.

Enjoy though, you guys that get off on it.
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In the past, poll numbers have fluctuated noticeably after debates, if anything memorable happened at them.

I think that was true after the first debate this year as well.

I doubt there will be a lot of movement after this one, though. The race is different, and I didn't think there was a clear winner.
 
I think the moderator did a fair job in keeping things on track. An interruption was always rewarded with a response. And when the inevitable counter-response came, she insisted that they had limited time and must move along, often talking over his response and shutting him down.
 
rdaneel said:
Much as it pains me to defend Trump, I went back and looked at that moment and he's actually saying "Go ahead" to the moderator. He just says it so quickly that it sounds a bit like "Good".
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Could be, I’ll have to see it again. My wife and I both heard it as “good.”

Doesn’t really change my assessment though, lol.

ETA: Seems a lot of people heard it the the same way we did but he clear did say “go ahead.”
 
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tyr_13 said:
"I'm the least racist person in this room!" - Trump, directly to the moderator who is a black woman.
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I did not know that she is black. I listened all the way through and thought she handled the situation as well as anyone could have done. I'm glad Byden spoke well, remained in control and did not rise to any of Trump's nasty little digs. At least,that's the way it sounded to me.
 
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Minoosh said:
i think he came across as a human being. I don’t think he lost points at all. I found his humility refreshing.

ETA: Obviously I can’t speak to any influence on undecided voters if there is such a thing.
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Amidst Trump's incessant lying which one can counter with facts but not very effectively, Biden's "I'm a better man than you" arguments seem to me to be the best ones.
 
What I noticed was Trump's body language. The constant scowl on Trump's face revealed that he was irritated, angry and barely able to control himself. You could tell it was all he could do not to interrupt Biden and it became more difficult the longer the debate wore on. I got the feeling he had been told in no uncertain terms by advisors not to repeat the fiasco of the last debate and he was like a horse chomping at the bit to let loose and go full Trump.
 
Stacyhs said:
What I noticed was Trump's body language. The constant scowl on Trump's face revealed that he was irritated, angry and barely able to control himself. You could tell it was all he could do not to interrupt Biden and it became more difficult the longer the debate wore on. I got the feeling he had been told in no uncertain terms by advisors not to repeat the fiasco of the last debate and he was like a horse chomping at the bit to let loose and go full Trump.
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Has he been rage-tweeting lately, or did they switch his internet off before giving him the phone back?
 
timhau said:
Has he been rage-tweeting lately, or did they switch his internet off before giving him the phone back?
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He's apparently tweeting screenshots of Twitter polls that show him winning the debate. He found them using a "Who won" Twitter search, as the bold "Who won" in the screenshots show.


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Firestone said:
He's apparently tweeting screenshots of Twitter polls that show him winning the debate. He found them using a "Who won" Twitter search, as the bold "Who won" in the screenshots show.


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Oh, bless his heart :rolleyes:

Looking for succour in false polls. By all means use these for public consumption but use the real polls to plan your campaign. I'm confident that these will be the only polls he will see.

It's like the (probably apocryphal) story about "kill" claims in the Battle of Britain. While the RAF was happy for pilots' claims to stand for their own personal scores, they carried out independent analysis to get the true (much lower) numbers of Luftwaffe planes downed. OTOH Germany took pilots' claims at face value and therefore incorrectly thought that the RAF's goose was cooked.
 
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