You know…morons!
Trump made the right play. He made his points. That gave him the chance to win the debate if Biden made some major gaffe, which was a reasonable possibility.
Biden made no significant gaffes. That gave him the chance to win if Trump was loony again, which was a reasonable possibility.
Neither lost this debate. Neither revved up their or the opposition bases more, neither won over any new voters, neither convinced any planning to vote against them to not bother after all.
“… Section 4(b) is unconstitutional because the coverage formula is based on data over 40 years old, making it no longer responsive to current needs”
" “Gov.-elect Brian Kemp disproved Stacey Abrams ’ claim that there was widespread voter suppression in the Georgia election by showing there was a historic turnout at the polls.
Kemp claimed that many of the problems that arose during the election were due to Abrams ’ own voter registration initiative.
Kemp quashed Abrams ’ assertion that he set up fewer polling locations in non-white areas by explaining that only happened in one area, which was determined by the Democrats.”
“We saw the ‘easy to vote’ part — we had 1.4 million more voters in this election than we did in the last governor’s race. A historic turnout,” Kemp explained. “We have a million more people on the rolls because I pushed for and implemented online voter registration where people could register to vote 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. If my opponent and her activist groups had used the online system, they wouldn’t have had as many problems as they did with the folks that they were registering.”
I know a few. In particular, I know some young people (late teens / early 20s) with liberal politics but that for whatever reason have come to believe some of the Qanon stuff applies to Biden (meaning they believe Biden is a pedophile). I’ve heard comments to the effect that they don’t plan to vote until AOC runs for POTUS, and then they will vote for her. No, my appeals to logic have no effect.
More likely that he managed to keep control due to no longer actively suffering the effects of COVID-19. My guess is that’s why he couldn’t keep it together during the first debate.
ETA. As far as who won, it was almost a draw. I think Biden screwed up with what he said about oil. There went his 1 in 3 chance of winning Texas.
Even though he later clarified his remarks that he would only phase out federal subsidies for oil, that immediate “Yes” to the question “Would you close down the oil industry?” could really bite him. He was never going to get many votes in the oil patch of West Texas and South Texas, but a lot of jobs in suburban Houston depend on the energy sector. More concerningly, Pennsylvania has a significant oil sector based on fracking.
John Heilemann compares Trump’s performance in the two debates:
I think Quaalude Trump is better than Crystal Meth Trump
I heard the same thing. After replaying it a couple times, my working hypothesis is that he started to say “Good”, but the vestigial non-lizard portion of his brain sounded an alarm in time for him to marble-mouth it into a plausibly-deniable “Gouhd”.
I could only stand to watch the first 40 mins or so before I got bored. Neither Trump was as bad, not Biden as good, as I’d hoped. When Trump went on and on about Biden and his family enriching themselves, I wondered why Biden didn’t flatly say, “You just keep making this stuff up/spouting this baseless QAnon garbage.” I realize he said “Not true.” more than once, but I sure thought that could have been handled a lot more effectively, pointing out how Trump’s utterances rarely rise above the unfounded internet blather.
Trump did FAR better than previously. If you were willing to simply accept his generalizations at face value, I could imagine how you might find him persuasive. Also, due to the nature of these things, much of what Biden said also fell in the realm of overgeneralizations/simplifications, and promises with no hope of being met.
I think the real test is whether these debates moved the very, very small number of voters who were a) really and truly torn between both candidates and ‘undecided’, and b) interested in following the debate to the end.
For voters who fit that description, it’s hard to see how Biden didn’t win that debate. Biden was far more factual, and whatever Trump had planned in terms of his Burisma smear jobs backfired when Biden talked about Trump’s tax returns. But facts aside, Trump never has used debates to debate; he uses them to characterize himself as the alpha male in the room, and he looked he didn’t look any stronger than Biden. Now Biden does trip over his words at times, and he has a bad habit of looking down, sometimes appearing as though he’s half asleep. But Biden was lively as ever last night. Any doubts about his acuity were erased, I felt.
Of course most voters who are ‘undecided’ are actually leaning one way or the other; they’re just deciding whether or not to vote the way they usually vote - or at all. People who felt Trump both debates and the town hall didn’t see Trump win anything; he just succeeded in not convincing these leaners to keep their minds open to voting for him. And the same is true for undecided Biden ‘leaners’. The race will come down to: a) which voters are motivated enough to vote (that probably favors Biden, but just slightly); and b) which voters are more likely to ‘come home’ if/when they vote, which I think favors Trump.
This was the only real gaff he made that will most likely bite him. He should have taken it as an opportunity to show that Trump is consistently against change and progress. Who really wants coal and oil being our major energy source forever?
Biden’s vagueness on some issues has worked out to his advantage, but he probably could and should have achieved a little more clarity. The best debaters find ways to throw attacks back at those who level them, and to Biden’s credit, he did a good job of that last night. He still could have done better.
Biden is far from ‘the best debater’. He did as well as he is capable of doing. Which was good enough given the company he was in.
Good enough yes. I think he may have gone from likely having Obama 2008 numbers to now likely having Obama 2012 numbers. Still good enough, but could have been better.
“Generalizations”?
Trump told dozens of lies and invented accusations during this debate. Indeed, CNN’s fact checker said he was even worse than the first debate in terms of number of falsehoods. Starting from, incredibly, Trump’s very first sentence (transcript).
I clearly heard “Good!” on the radio because I gasped when I heard that. I haven’t seen the exchange on video yet, though.
Biden is far from the best debater. But in fairness, these are pretty far from debates. There is not much real challenge of alternative policies. More a list of pithy phrases and talking points one is trying to get through, while grimacing or smiling as the other person talks. Sometimes even being truthful or answering the question.
Another hard hitting piece by Frum.
This may be an asinine question, but it’s sincere and I genuinely don’t know the answer:
Does Fox News fact check these debates ? A quick Google search didn’t turn up anything beyond a few affiliates’ versions.
A friend once asked his conservative Facebook friends how they respond to the WaPo tally of 20,000+ lies told by POTUS.
I asked him why he thought that his conservative friends had any reason to believe that POTUS had told any lies. The echo chamber.
I wonder what % of conservatives vs. liberals actively seek out fact-checking after these televised POTUS events ?
Quoth Obama:
“Look if I watched Fox News, I wouldn’t vote for me either.”
Were it not for my native intellect (think: the higher end of Labrador Retriever), my general predilection for watching all the major, and most of the minor, news outlets, and my facility with logic and rational thought … I could have found Trump quite persuasive last night.
I’m surprised Biden didn’t don his mask part-way through, citing a recent hypothesis that COVID can be transmitted through excrement.
538 has posted the results of their post-debate poll. Net: Trump was seen as performing better than in their first debate, but so was Biden, and the debate did nothing to change voting preferences.
Republicans are already jumping on the “Biden will close down the oil industry” bandwagon, with Mike Pence playing it up at campaign appearance in Ohio where fracking is a significant industry.
This was a self-own by Biden. I get what Biden was saying – transitioning off of oil is the only way to address climate change. But if you’re asked, “Would you close down the oil industry?” and you answer “Yes. I would transition,” guess where the opposing camp is going to stop the video when they replay it in campaign commercials.