Oh, you'd like a prediction about Thursday's debate? Happy to oblige. I predict that it will go normally. Trump will blather and lie while Biden will answer questions coherently with occasional enunciation problems. It will not swing voting intent by more than 1% or so.
Also, the moderators will ask at least one question about whatever the Supreme Court did that morning. I'm hoping it's about Chevron so we can find out if Trump has any idea what Chevron deference even is.
Any other questions?
That would basically be a win for Trump, given how low expectations are for his behavior. He's been a bit more incoherent than usual at his rallies - my hope is that he's massively unhinged on the debate stage.
Still probably wouldn't sway things more than 1-2%, but Biden needs any boost he can get.
What do you mean, "find out"? We already know he doesn't know/care.
Yes. And when Trump can't respond, the Trumpenproletariat will simply bleat that it was a gotcha question.
"The Chevron case folks, we looooove Chevron, don't we folks? But the deference, the deference, folks--we've been seeing the deference at levels you wouldn't believe, like people have never seen before, under [Jacked Up/Sleepy] Joe. It's very sad--so sad for our Country--and the Supreme Court is bigly strong, because I made it strong, with Judges Gork, and Kavanaugh, and . . . and they treated Kavanaugh very badly. So badly, like you've never seen so badly. It's very sad how bad Obama treated him in the hearing. But I think it's getting better, and it's getting better because the people want Trump. They love Trump and they want Trump, ladies and gentlement, and that's the Exxon case."
"Mr. Biden your response?"
[laughs heartily for ten seconds] "Sorry, 'scuse me folks. Gork, Exxon -- it's Chevron by the way, different company -- oh lord! Look, folks, is that what you want in the Situation Room in a crisis? I mean, he couldn't even remember the question! And he sure doesn't know anything about it. Come on man ..."
Nytimes reporting on the debate:
"The candidates sketched out starkly different views on the Supreme Court and the power of federal agencies, once again underscoring how close this race is. Trump appeared in favor of checks on the federal bureacracy, consistent with his declared intent to 'drain the swamp'; conversely, Biden seemed hesitant to place limits on government power. Also: Biden was on the defensive--he needed to come out swinging, and it's unclear if he did enough to dispell fears among swing voters that he's old-old-old."
Lol true.
Biden Shows Trump To Be
Ignorant And Unprepared
Why That May Hurt Dems
Time travel is real?
You're doing it now!
Don't know whether to laugh or cry...
Astonishing prophetic powers.
He still hasn't figured out what the nuclear triad is.
"Nobody knows more about nucular than I do folks--they say 'Oh Mister Trump, sir, but the generals' but folks the military was very weak, very weak after what Obama did to it with magnet catapults (can you believe it folks? Magnets, on a boat!) electric instead of steam, and to the border also but on the nuclear, on the nuclear folks, I brought us back and Kim John was so scared--big man, strong man, and very strong with his people you have to admit--he backed right down and sent a beautiful letter to Trump. Such a beautiful letter, and then Sleepy Joe (and nobody ever sent a letter to him) Sleepy Joe sent a special prosecutor to Florida saying 'that's not your letter, it's a Document' even though I can declassify, with the brain I can declassify, and then he looks like an angel but he's a, y'know, a devil and suddenly Biden-fascists and Antifa raid my perfect, my beautiful bathroom. And the raiders, they felt so bad, they came up to me, tears in their eyes, and they said 'Sir, sir, we are so sorry, we know it was a perfect phone call,' but the other side are nasty and they use their lawfare because they are crooked and so maybe I'll do it to them on day one but maybe not and so they call that the 'nuclear option' which is my right."
Being this good at imitating Trump is an indication that you need psychological help.
after four years of Trump, with the prospect of four more, don't we all?
You, my friend, are a true master of the art.
it's because of my bigly brain, and also my connection with MIT.
I wonder. Were I the Biden people, I would opt for a much more aggressive strategy, (1) so Biden can show some energy (eg the SOTU, and look at what that did for him!), (2) to contrast his character and accomplishments with Trump's without reciting laundry-lists or sounding defensive, and (3) to try to rattle Trump and and get him to do/say something unusually incoherent or stupid.
I agree, I think Biden will be a little more forward than people seem to be looking for. In particular I expect to see him do a lot of needling. Well, dignified needling. His people seem to want to get under trump's thin skin as much as they can.
What I wonder about is this business of cutting the mics. Supposedly even when one of them is off, the person will still be audible to the others in the room. So I'd expect trump to do a lot of muttering halfway under his breath to try to upset Biden. Hell, maybe even mock-stutter or something equally classy. I hope CNN will have other mics to pick up any byplay like that.
He knows he'll be on a split screen the whole time so he might not be mugging and grimacing as much as before, especially with no audience to play to. But his capacity to be outrageous is the major dramatic focus of the event so that's where most people will be looking, and he might not be able to resist the urge.
"He knows he'll be on a split screen the whole time so he might not be mugging and grimacing as much as before, especially with no audience to play to."
Oh but there is an audience, all of us out in teeveeland. He might be making even more faces than usual, definitely lots of shaking his head and maybe some eyerolling as Biden recites some facts.
It would be interesting of tDrumpf did a 30 second "Mitch McDonald pause".
An experiment to try: Don't watch it live, but just listen to it. Decide what you think. Then, if you can stand to, watch it on Youtube or CNN's site (assuming they post it) and see what you think then. And don't listen to any pundit reactions until after you've done both.
Not a sure thing, obvi, but my bet would be that listening first will leave you with a much higher opinion of Biden. And there's a good chance it'll make you wonder, when you catch pundit reactions, whether they and you were even in the same quadrant of the universe while this thing was going on.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^THIS^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
listening w/o seeing is a very good thing to do. FDR would have NEVER been elected in today's video-centric world
Yet, FDR is one of our greatest Presidents!
I want Biden to be himself. He was never a showboat nor does he "attack" very well. He relies on the twist of a word or a phrase, instead.
I listened to, but did not watch, a Reagan-Mondale debate. From just listening, I concluded that Reagan was weak and confused and that Mondale won. The next day, I was told by the MSM that Reagan won, hands down. I learned from that that I wasn't representative for the debate audience. Style, not content, is what matters. Since then, I only read live-blogs of debates.
another "trick" is to read a transcript that has no identifiers in it just candidate 1 and 2.
Cf also Bush 2.0 v. Gore. People who watched it, as it happened, thought Gore mopped the floor with Bush. People who only had post-debate media accounts of the debate to go on, thought Bush won decisively
Maybe I'm old, but the modern visuals vs sound for debates was first noted with the original one, Nixon vs Kennedy. Reportedly people listening on the radio thought Nixon won and those watching thought Kennedy creamed him.
True. Nixon was visibly perspiring and had a 5 o'clock shadow, neither of which could be seen on radio.
👍👍👍👍👍
Given MAGA world's coordinated assault on Biden's cognitive capabilities, as long as he doesn't stare into space for too long, fall over, or shit his pants, and as long he shows there is still some fight is left in him by aggressively attacking that Orange shit stain, he will have accomplished what he needed to do.
But they have already prepared the soil for that possibility. If Biden does well it is because he was jacked up on all kinds of drugs, both legal and illegal.
Aw that's just standard hedging with a dash of Rovian attack-on-your-weakest-point politics. Trump is a known Adderall user, and Ronny "Johnson" Jackson's WH dispensary was an open-air drug stall. Accuse Biden of that first, and any attack on Trump (which likely would be true) is dismissed as tit-for-tat.
They tried this after SOTU and it fell flat. Won't work any better this time, except of course for the cultists, who will gobble cat sh!t and pronounce it delicious caviar if they are told to do so.
American politics are a disaster. I live in Michigan and the republican primary for US senate features candidate sandy pensler accusing Mike Rogers of covering for Hillary Clinton over the Benghazi attack many years ago. That’s all they’ve got to offer.
Apparently it’s working too! I hope pensler wins.
i think the open questions are by how much biden will outperform expectations and how far he can goad trump into acting like a maniacal a-hole. if either of those things happen to a sufficient degree i think it could swing the entire media narrative and the race by a lot more than 1% and enough to give biden a convincing win. that said, i expect neither will happen. biden will have a fine but not game changing performance and trump will act like a fool but within the boundaries that the mainstream media and voters have decided is ok for him. so in short, kevin's 1% swing i the most likely outcome.
Caps, people. Caps.
No not those red ones.
The debates are not debates; they're shows produced by people who think these things provide substantive information. No one's watching them for substance; they're watching it for style, the gotcha moments, and for candidates to get flustered and/or lose their cool.
Remove the audience, separate the candidates by remote feeds, a la Zoom conference calls, and give moderators the ability to hit the mute button.
the debate rules have removed the audience and enabled a mute button for moderators.
Huh. Didn't know about the audience being removed. A mute button for moderators isn't as effective as the mute button in a Zoom call, though. He can still yell and have his voice picked up by other mics.
i'm hoping they have the sound setup to preclude that, so he'll just look like a petulant fool yelling into a dead mic.
Sigh….If Biden doesn’t do extremely well Democrats will panic and demand he withdraw and a new candidate to be selected at the convention. If Trump rips off his clothes and rolls on the ground screaming Republicans will rally around him and claim Trump was surreptitiously drugged by the Libs and demand an investigation. And Trump will raise lots of money and his poll numbers will go up.
The moderators will take the intended audience into account, and none of the intended audience has ever heard of Chevron. Chevron won't be mentioned.
I expect the questions will be about inflation and immigration: soft ball lobs for Trump. I expect "woke", especially anything related to lgtbq...+ won't be mentioned. Nor abortion. Climate change has a slightly better than 50/50 chance of being mentioned. China. Probably not Israel nor Palestine. Ukraine? doubtful.
Doesn't matter. Whatever occurs, the NYT and other liberal press will tell us why it is bad for BIden.
Biden Wins Debate-- Yet Trump is, Again, the Real Winner
by NYT
t-Rump will have one of Elons implants in his brain, if they can find it, and all he has to do is move his lips. The words will all come spewing out like AI.
I can't tell how much self-control Trump has. My hope is that Biden goads him into flipping out, but Kevin's prediction would get the smart money.
Obama , in the stage wings, will rush over to grab a wandering Biden by the arm and bring him back to his podium only one time.
^^^^ Roboto watched a slow motion clip on Hannity of Biden eating ice cream and believes that Fox would never lie to him.
Roboto, I urge you to take very seriously everything that Fox tells you--please rush out immediately and buy both gold and reverse mortgages.
Perfect Fox News combo. The reverse mortgage will pay for the overpriced gold coins.
The panel on Washington Week this past Friday sagely agreed that anybody can shout while reading a teleprompter, as Biden did in his State of the Union, but Joe is gonna have to "think on his feet" and respond to questions in real time at this upcoming debate and we shall see if he's able to do that.
PBS, folks! They should be cheerleading for Biden, but they're giving the benefit of the doubt to the guy who wants to shut them down.
The parts of the SOTU speech that impressed everyone were the unscripted ones.
Sounds about right mr drum. The question is whether the decision is issued soon enough for trumps staff to explain to him what it is about.
I expect Trump to be fast and Biden to be slow. I also expect pundits to not see the importance thereof and to talk only about content and coherency and such.
To put it cruelly, Biden... will... um... hit... the ball... um... out... of... the... um... park. While Trump-will-try-to-cheat-by-going-straight-from-first-base-to-third.
JOE # 1 !!! KITTIES KNOW...
"Any other questions?"
Why, yes!
I'm curious: Will there be any meaningful questions about climate change?
Voters swayed by the debate will be the same as voters "undecided"- 0
With the difference between these two- Really ???