You did say “poll.” I’m not sure it matters how many people were involved, really, unless it’s 330 million.
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Then we should stop calling them “debates.” They aren’t, and haven’t been for decades.
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Yeah, and of course, Dukat goes to the office and finds it at the very end of the episode, with Weyoun and Damar with him…
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Politics is theater. It doesn’t matter if you win. You make a statement. You say, "I’m here, pay attention to me.”
― Harvey Milk
Human cultures are notoriously slow to accept changes [barring cataclysms and catastrophes, and as COVID has taught me, maybe not even then!] and my guess is that those of us who cling to the notion that presidential debates are good or necessary or desirable are unlikely to abandon their convictions any time soon. I also see that [news and other] media are like steam locomotives, requiring endless amounts of material to fuel them and make them “go.” We are swimming in their addiction to the most salacious, the most egregious, the stickiest-meme-able stuff that a given news cycle is capable of generating.
Getting human consciousness to evolve has never been easy. I do still think it happens and can happen. In the culture that many of us find ourselves, we see the hypocrisy and rewarded-liars so often that we become numb.
I am not there yet.
But damn if the payoff for being self-aware and fully present is more hard work.
ETA: grammar, clarity, lack of sufficient coffee
ETA2: grammar again
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Right, a very intentional “Douglas MacArthur escaping the Philippines” moment for the show.
It probably wouldn’t have worked as well if Sisko had made his point by smuggling a bunch of Federation–branded cigarettes into the station.
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So we would have missed out on Biden’s whole term? Why? He’s kicked ass! This is just pure agism.
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Maybe identify source? I saw that graph too, and iirc, those are all (fucking) NY Times columnists. 
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To get nitpicky - you need around a thousand people or so for a highly trustworthy opinion poll, as long as those people are a representative sample or deviate in a known way that can be compensated for. The results of that will predict those 330 million people quite well.
(Of course, it seems like polling is working really poorly in the US right now, for whatever reasons.)
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We know the reasons. Pollsters have been slow to adapt to shifts in how people use technology. There is also an extremely difficult problem of trust. Lack of Federal regulation of voice phone and text scammers and spammers means many people just don’t answer calls or texts from unknown numbers, so polling organizations that depend on those channels are only reaching the very few people who still do answer unknown senders - which means the raw data collected skews heavily to responders who are credulous. That means they skew heavily to T**** cultists.
So let’s put it this way - don’t trust polls; trust votes. And if you look at actual voting results from the primaries, T**** is looking weak while Biden is looking strong. That should be encouraging.
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yeah it’s from the new york times.
0: Lydia Polgreen Jamelle Bouie
1: Jean Guerrero
2: Matt Labash
3 Michelle Goldberg
4 David French Carlos Lozada
5 Bret Stephens, Bret Stephens, Josh Barro, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Kristen Soltis Anderson
Of those I only really pay attention to Bouie and Goldberg.
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No, because he was already President before the law was passed. He would have finished up his term, and then both parties would have had a primary for someone else in 2024.
I think there needs to be both term and age limits in politics. I don’t think people should be career politicians (or if they are, they have to move around to different offices), it breeds corruption and consolidation of political power. Look at McConnell as an example.
The age limits are because I don’t think younger people and their views are being represented by our elected officials. The older people are generally elected to the more powerful positions because they have built up all of that political capital over the years.
Biden is ok, but how much more ass could be kicked with an even more progressive president who is more than just a slightly left of neo-liberal.
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This was a hypothetical, though. Under such a law, we would have missed out on that.
Right. Why not make sure brain surgeons and commercial pilots also leave their field right when they’ve built up the experience to be really good at it, too?
Politics requires expertise. Some people are good at it right away and others get better the longer they practice it. Term limits sound great superficially, but what you really get from them are bad politicians.
No, thanks. 
But seriously, eliminating voter suppression and expanding voter participation is a more effective way of getting rid of shitty politicians like McConnell and Cruz.
Increase voter participation and you’ll see more young people vote, and probably get better representation as well.
I keep having to remind people: Biden’s personal politics might fit that description, but his administration’s actual policies are some of the most progressive since Johnson or FDR. Meanwhile, younger, more charismatic presidents like Obama and Kennedy have been disappointing in the conservatism.
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I hope with all my heart Biden wins and recognize he’s done a surprising amount of progressive things, but he’s also still the president who basically declared to the world that international law is dead for the sake of a fascist genocidaire, and I really hate that’s apparently so trivial it doesn’t stop him from being awesome. 
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They went to the Waffle House after the debate, apparently…
I wonder how he had his hashbrowns?
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Going to Waffle House was probably the smartest decision he made all evening. Waffle House is freaking delicious.
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Especially late at night, after a thing. That’s the only correct time to go to awful waffle… It helps to be drunk/high/trippin’, but is not necessary.
But I will go to waffle house anytime, mind you. But there is a correct time to go, and then there are other times to go.
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Imagine Kamala or Pete B. up there last night. ■■■■■ would’ve been humiliated.
There was this Radio Lab episode (https://radiolab.org/podcast/debatable) about some high school debater and the clips of debates they showed was ultrafast talking of incomprehensible statements that you didn’t even know if it related to the subject that was to be debated about (or if it even had to). That’s what last night felt like except executed by 80 year-olds instead of teenagers.
The candidates records and actions speak for themselves, even if one can’t enunciate them or the other can’t do so without lying his ass off. “Won the debate” != deserves your vote.
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