This didn’t surprise me at all. 4 years ago, Biden was jogging around the WH with Obama, and Joe’s got a Blue Collar brawler upbringing.
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Contrarian view perhaps. I say this not having watched the final 30-40 minutes:
I disagree that Trump acted like a crackhead. Yes, he does act like a crackhead all the time, But the Trump who I expected to show up did not appear last night. He was not the never sleeping, 4 a.m. twitter posting Trump pulling new medical theories out of his ass or displaying his ever-reversing decision making process.
I think if you go back to the 2016 debates, you’ll find he was technically worse in those respects than he was last night. The Trump who Trumpers wanted to show up, showed up. He seemed well rested, defended himself thoroughly and stayed on message - for Trump. He filibustered the debate. He got the key points across that he wanted to get across. Just when I thought Chris Wallace should be telling Trump they didn’t come here (Chris Wallace & Trump) to debate each other, Trump said it first.
Did he “win”, like academically? These aren’t real debates so it doesn’t matter. Go back to 2015-16: Factually speaking, he lost the debates to Clinton. But as he showed then, he’s not there to score points with judges and certainly not with TV commentators and analysts. All he may need to do is show his base that he is still fighting for them.
This is all to say, instead of debating the Trump who did show up, Biden should debate the crazy unstable Trump. To do so, Biden should frequently quote the craziest shit Trump has said and tweeted during his presidency, driving the point home that Trump is a buffoon on the world stage and a danger to the country. Biden should also publicly dissect Trump’s methodology: anything Trump is hitting hard on, is a weak point of Trump’s. His whole family is embroiled in corruption so Trump is trying to debate Hunter Biden, for example.
When they’re talking about healthcare, Biden needs to show not just an ideological disagreement but that (as he did say a bit) Trump is completely out of his depth. He should talk about how long it took just to get Obamacare and that when Trump said “nobody knew healthcare should be so complicated” - that’s one for Biden to look right into the camera and say “anyone who has had to pay or dispute their own medical bill knows just how complicated healthcare really is in our country. This is one of the things Obamacare set out to cure.”
But having said all that, Biden was awesome. He really struck a balance between standing up to the filibuster and crushing it through facial expressions. I am not a “hold your nose and vote” for Biden. The guy has been around the block. He knows the issues. He has extraordinary moral courage and the ability to reach people with whom he’s ideologically at odds. Those are special qualities especially with a growing cultural rift that may haunt our country for another century (if we make it that far). He may be the first nominee in a debate to call out rainforest destruction and anti-semitism by name. He’s no wilting petunia. When I first noticed Biden in the 1980s, my impression was that this is the guy I’d want next to me if I were ever in a bar fight.
Re the Trump-Shunt, per BB rules we are not supposed to make medical assessments, so it would be totally improper to suggest that this is that Bill Gates chip and they’re starting at the top, but People Are Saying.
Amen.
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Not fair! The animated part was pretty good! Nothing was good about the debate…
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Or fill with water when they interrupt someone.
I think overall, your assessment was good. The one point that I did not see you making was that Trump was in full meltdown mode last night. It was freewheeling, uncontrolled blathering just to saturate the stage with the sound of his voice. In other words, a meltdown. He showed no restraint whatsoever, no personal control. That, to me, was the most telling. Not even what he said, but how he said it: he could not stop to listen for even 2 minutes during the lead-ins. He could not stop arguing, even with the moderator. It was by any objective measure unhinged.
I have family members like this and the only things you can do with them are
- not be there with them in the first place.
- if they show up, you show them the door immediately.
- And if there is a 3. then I get out the can of woopass and threaten physical violence if they don’t comply, and make good on that threat if need be.
Trump needs an ass whippin like he’s never had in his life. Like seriously, he does. He needs to be shown the door, and if he won’t leave then it’s #3 time.
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I would vote for a scurry of squirrels over Trump. They’d at least care about trees.
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Well - what an absolute shit show. I wish Biden had come off a little better, but he got lost a few time in his points and flubbing lines. That is the problem when you’re trying to remember stats and facts and prepared points.
Trump is just making shit up and interrupting. Less stammering because its all just BS. You don’t have to worry about if the stat you just just quoted was right, you just say everything was great and strong, and under Biden it would be horrible and weak. Divert, ignore questions, ramble on about something else, make BS whataboutisms.
And then the most terrifying part was the fucking shout out to the Proud Boys. Holy fucking shit. Even old school racists politicians who had political ties to the KKK etc knew to keep it on the down low. Condemn with a wink. Not “stand back and stand by”.
When was the last time a Presidential candidate said something in support of a white supremacist group openly like this? Wilson? Maybe Nixon? I dunno. It has been awhile.
All it would take for another thing like the Tulsa Massacre, or hell, even just some lynchings - is a group of people willing to get hurt for their cause, and able to whip enough people up into a frenzy. And the president is on their side.
The president is on their side.
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i read a piece in slate that counted 128 separate different interruptions by trump. that compares to 51 interruptions during a debate with clinton in 2016.
i, too, am fine with biden.
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Yeah, I was shouting at the radio. Same same.
Oh and btw:
I am really impressed and so grateful to reporter / fact-checker Daniel Dale’s dogged debunking of every lie to the extent feasible that has been served us for the past four horrible years.
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[quote=“Sludge, post:187, topic:181418, full:false”] He was not the never sleeping, 4 a.m. twitter posting ADHD Trump
[/quote]
As a ADHD sufferer I take great umbrage with this association. Trump shows signs of a textbook
narcissistic psychopath which is pretty much the opposite. If he appears more and more distracted in his press conferences it is because he has to sort through all his lies (with little cognitive capacity to start with) and not ADHD or also often heard dementia.
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Because he showed up to use the medium, not to follow the rules. I am betting he and his team have zero regrets about what appeared to you as a meltdown. As you mention dealing with it with family (and sorry to hear that BTW, it is scarring), you can bet that he’s done this all his life and (at least unless/until his debts are successfully called in) it has until now “worked” for him.
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As a ADHD sufferer I take great umbrage with this association. Trump shows signs of a textbook
narcissistic psychopath which is pretty much the opposite. If he appears more and more distracted in his press conferences it is because he has to sort through all his lies (with little cognitive capacity to start with) and not ADHD or also often heard dementia.
Hi Sarah, quite right! I was wrong even while pointing out in the same post that this goes against forum rules (as does incidentally discussing the other possibilities for Trump). I will edit and ask your forgiveness. But I will say the lack of coherence or continuity in those morning missives is what I’m driving at (and ADHD exhibits itself in many different ways for many different people).
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No, he crashed and burned. It’s only a core of sycophants who think last night was a success.
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That’s not the bit that matters, though. They’re trying to mobile their bases and win over undecided voters - but if the undecided voters were swayed by reasonable things like debate performance, they wouldn’t be undecided to begin with. Trump being an irrational, incoherent bully is actually appealing to some people. To them, that’s a “win.”
Given their positions in the polls/Americans’ hearts, Trump really had nothing to lose. What he gained was the opportunity to exhort his followers to engage in election interference (also the Proud Boys got a big boost), smear Biden and lie about his positions, and Biden was in the position of having to try to explain his policies while Trump was screaming over him. I saw people on Twitter claiming to be undecided and complaining that Biden didn’t articulate his policies but presented himself as the not-Trump, and although those complaints may have been disingenuous, coming from Trump supporters, it’s true that little information was conveyed. And what Trump conveyed was apparently 100% lies. Watching Trump’s debates with Hillary, it comes as no surprise - his willingness to stand there and say nothing but lies gives him an advantage because he’s not called out on it. The lack of real-time fact checking is a weakness - the inability to stop Trump from simply screaming over Biden to keep him from talking was an avoidable disaster.
The media response is not so much “Trump was a disaster” (which is a given), but “the debate was a disaster.” There’s some truly weird both-siding going on - the worse Trump does, the more the press feels the need to blame Biden… for what Trump did.
This seems to be the consensus among viewers. That really doesn’t seem to be helpful to anyone.
Trump does need to “change the narrative” - and the debates offer the opportunity to do so. Biden can only lose - even if he only “loses less badly.” I don’t think Trump has the cognitive ability to change the narrative (at least, not on purpose), but voters are weird and it’s hard to know what they’ll respond to. Even if Trump is simply slightly more coherent/less shouty at the next debate, he’ll look “good” in comparison to this one, and it’ll be seen as “a win,” for example.
And Biden was sassy a couple of times. And kept his cool. And he did not get visibly exhausted by the end. Standing there for 90 minutes and debating till the last minute. I respect him more than ever.
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The next moderator should have one of these on hand:
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A lot can change in the coming weeks, but odds are on Biden and he’s pulling away:
and from fivethirtyeight.com:
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Oh yes.
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