Everyone should watch this. It’s hard to sit through, but it’s important.
JonS
Despite all the trappings and the behaviour of the participants, politics is not a game.
Maybe we should make debates like a game show. The mod asks a question, the participants answer with a time limit, get a short time to rebut each other, then we go to commercial. A panel of experts score the answer on things like truthfulness, zingers, and how on topic the answer was. Scores are posted after commercial, then next question. End of the debate scores are shown and discussed.
Muting responses will only end up with donald putting on a mime show.
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Can we make it so they lose 5 points for an incorrect interuption like university challenge?
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Related, discussed at length on atheist and science blogs:
Debates are a terrible method for determining truth. A debate is a contest of rhetoric; all it tells you is who is the more effective demagogue.
At best, having the facts on your side is no more than home-field advantage. But against a practiced bullshitter, it isn’t even that; allegiance to truth becomes a disadvantage.
Debating can be a fun game. But that’s all it’s good for.
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So you’re calling it for Trump then?
Probably.
All he has to do is spout smarmy insulting bullshit for an hour and his fans will love it. His Gish Gallop will continue to neuter any fact-checking.
Meanwhile, any misstep of Clinton’s will be endlessly dissected in the media.
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Not sure they will. The media thought she’d won every Dem debate, although viewers generally seemed to disagree.
I suspect they’ll ‘call’ it for her, but instant polling won’t. But perhaps they’ll grade Trump on a curve and help him out.
I mean, she should be able to make him look like an uninformed racist, but it probably won’t make any difference.
True, but to be fair this isn’t a court of law. It could quite reasonably be argued that in this particular case being an effective demagogue is part of the job description, and therefore - facts aside - this is actually one of the more useful activities on the campaign trail.
Maybe?
Buzz Aldrin is still available, no? There’s bound to be some Moon Landing deniers For Trump kicking about. There’s your hook (followed thereafter by Aldrin’s, hopefully).
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His fans will love it. But will undecided voters?
no
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But will this election be decided by “undecided” voters?
I’ve been arguing for some time now that Trump’s plan is not based upon an appeal to the mythical American centrists.
It’s based on maximising turnout from the extreme racist right (i.e. about half of the white voters in America) and minimising turnout from everyone else.
Partly this is done by the traditional method of painting your opponent as a useless crook (a task made considerably easier by the blatant corruption on all sides of American establishment politics). But he’s also adding violence, intimidation and voter suppression to the mix.
Will it be enough? Hopefully not. But it’s not a safe bet, and the consequences will be catastrophic even if he loses.
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