I like that Kasich talks about himself in the third person.
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Should I have something better to be doing on a Saturday night?
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some people are playing Fallout 4.
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Jesus this debate is post 9/11 fight-war-with-mo4r-war hysteria all over again.
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UFC’s on as well. 
How about a debate where the candidates play Dota 2 while they’re debating?
Or D&D?
Get Wil Wheaton to moderate.
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Clinton’s claim that she gets donations from Goldman Sachs because they liked how she helped after 9/11 is so much bullshit.
Other than that, I don’t think there’s much between them, except Clinton is worse on minimum salaries.
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Well, that’s what happens when rational perceptions converge on reality.
Christ, what an asshole.
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Here’s hoping the damn evangelicals are a spent force these days, to be crushed by an actual moral majority.
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Geography - it’s not brain surgery!
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Scalzi picks a GOP candidate.
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You know in a normal democratic country, you’d have all your debates done in a week and the election would be long over by now.
This is political torture. Just delcare an election. Then have an election.
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Wouldn’t that kind of short timeframe hinder underdogs?
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Does that matter?
It would hinder fat cats. If there wasn’t a year-and-a-half cycle of advertising, campaigning, etc. to pay for, how could they be sure only the best underwritten candidate would win?
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Admittedly in most countries the deal is “Here’s two guys. Pick one.”
The whole game of picking the candidate for the party is done behind closed doors. Perhaps that’s in effect what happens in the US anyway, but the illusion is comforting I suppose.
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I can take no comfort in the freak show on display for one of the parties. Read @daneel’s Scalzi link. It doesn’t matter which one of those candidates makes it through the primaries, they’re all deplorable.
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I see your point. However, I think a short campaign period could also work in favor of those who have records and agendas to obfuscate.
In my opinion, we need time to vet candidates and we (critically) need the time to spread information on politicians via grassy word-of-mouth. Otherwise, the corporate mass media and their 24-hour news cycle will be the only source of vetting for most of the voting public.
It may not have meant much back in 2000, however, in 2015 we have vastly more pervasive hybrid offline/online vehicles for the public to disseminate information to each other with. We finally have a force that can contend with mass media’s manufacturing of consent, but it needs time to work.
Perhaps in the future our grassroots movements will be more agile and capable of countering corporate media narratives promoted via their far-reaching, rapid-fire punditry machines - I really hope so. However, I’ve observed in today’s reality that grassroots word-of-mouth is a powerful but relatively slow process.
tl;dr - I think short times will benefit the establishment who is protected by a dynamic, fast-moving corporate media. Grassroots vetting, funding and word-of-mouth takes longer to compete in 2015.
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