I must:
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Due to having a restaurant supply store membership, I’ll buy a 50 lb bag of Act II kernels and just pop a cup at a time or so. Great healthy snack when you don’t have the movie-theater butter stuff. Takes me about a year or so to get through. I think I’ve been going through it faster this year. 
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Trumps debate strategy, approach to interviews, and weirdly his entire campaign approach resembles the Gish Gallop.
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Gish_Gallop
Its essentially the shot gun approach. Eat up time by throwing out as many small, disprovable or non-sequetor statements as you can. Bully and interrupt the other debaters so they get minimal chance to respond or redirect. It keeps the substance of the debate entirely on your terms. And attempting to refute any of the statements can quickly bog a person down, as now all you’re doing is questioning/debunking individual statements. And its next to impossible to do that for so many in the time allotted. And even if you do successfully point out the fallacies in the major points, the judges/audience are often left with the impression that since you didn’t disprove all of it, you haven’t undercut the central concept or done anything to bolster you’re own argument.
Its not a valid debate strategy, doesn’t make for good and effective arguments, and its a definite sign of a serious huckster. But it does give me some pause. Because even very talented, experienced debaters often have trouble working around a Gish Gallop. You need to be active about getting your allotted time, avoid the pit falls of actually fact checking each statement, and find some way to recapture control. That can be tough, particularly in the face of a manic stream of endlessly repeated statement insisting some falsehood.
IIRC the typical tactic is to ignore the steady steam of BS, stick to making your argument and attacking the other guys position. Call out interruptions, fight for your allotted time. ETC. Basically an active version of ignoring it, while trying to avoid being put on the defensive.
So while it worries me a bit. Clinton is known as an excellent debater. And a presidential debate is sort of a different beast. Its not the sort of scored collegiate or stunt debate where you can “win” on points to claim success despite coming off like an asshole and noone buying your argument. The gallop is well enough known in the debating field that rules are often put in place to prevent it. And a presidential debate is a lot higher profile, with a lot more scrutiny. The press is resolutely not having Trumps bullshit these days. And in a presidential debate even otherwise weak journalists/moderators often make a show of being a little harsher.
So its kind of a wash. If he can get away with his usual approach, and Clinton hasn’t specifically prepared for the great flood of horse patoot, he might come off well to the American public (which is the point after all). But its probably more likely that in the face of some one not insane or weak willed. With moderators and formatting that don’t allow rambling nonsense. That he either comes of as a fool or collapses/explodes. In which case he falls back to petty accusations of “rigged” debates and unfair treatment from the press. A thing that’s not working for him. Though I’m sure that’s his thinking. Its a win win in his mind. If he comes out successful he’s the best, greatest debater! HUGE debates! If he loses he thinks he can make hay by blaming the media and scary conspiracies.
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On the other side, Stephanie Miller, liberal talk radio host, fell into the orchestra pit during her stage performance of “The Sexy Liberal Comedy Tour.” Would that help?
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I want to believe that that is Julie Andrews singing. If not it’s a wonderful imitator.
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Thank the deities that Trump is nowhere near that affable.
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To be fair, any other strategy seems near impossible for the anointed one to pull off
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True for the primaries.
Otherwise, nah.
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He spells it de-bait
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Hillary… please, please just answer the questions intelligently and let him self-destruct on the other side of the stage. He’ll attack himself if you stand back and let him.
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It would be interesting to see the two of them – throw Gary Johnson in too – on Jeopardy. Still have the debates, but give us some real entertainment.
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Everything keeps pointing to Trump being that kid in school that never did any work and just threw stuff together at the last minute and bullshitted.
He is Calvin:
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Hey, I resemble that remark.
point of pride, really
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After Nixon/Kennedy where it was learned that radio listeners gave the win to Nixon and TV viewers gave it to the more attractive candidate, presidential debates became a mockery of actual debate.
There’s been an improvement in post-debate fact checking (thanks to the internets really), but in the actual moment, debate moderators do not adequately push for an answer when a question is dodged. It’d be nice if moderators had a couple of net savvy interns who could pass notes to them to return to questions that weren’t answered or do more fact checking on the fly. But for now, nothing is lost by ignoring the question, and something is gained if the answer is more interesting than the question or the other candidate’s answer.
So, Trump doesn’t have to argue the issues. He’s not there to have an exchange of educated viewpoints with HRC. He’s there to speak to voters and make her look bad. On specific policy stuff, expect a lot of “we’re looking into thats”, “believe mes.” But his real job as he sees it is to use every answer as a means to paint Hillary as crooked. And though he may be declared the loser by debate critics, “crooked Hillary” resonates because there’s some truth to that and the corruption that permeates the DNC.
If he can land enough Bernie supporters, he doesn’t even have to win over any of Hillary’s fan base. If he can somehow sound to emotional voters more like Bernie than she does, he can win the whole thing.
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Hell, so was I!
I managed to pass a history test by deliberate and controlled handwriting that gave the right impressions.
In one programming class (Basic in 1988) we were told to not copy other people as the teacher would know so I grabbed another students code to re-write it just enough prove he was wrong and got an A on that one.
…but I ain’t running for president.
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DUDE! That’s an instant subscribe!
Well, there goes my morning.
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