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That's a good point. There's a LONG ways to go.
I voted Kamala for the same reasons as your first sentence. She is more progressive than Klobuchar, but more moderate than some of the other Dem candidates.
I would vote for Klobucher over the dem candidates as we need more of a centrist dem at this point in time. I really don`t care if the "progressive dems" struggle with her.
Trump doesn't engage on in depth policy discussions. Did you watch the debates between him and Hillary?
I sometimes think a debate would actually be a winner for Trump, and wonder if it's the Democrats who would rather not have a debate. As adonis and zftcg said, Trump didn't do anything of substance in the debates with Hillary. He just blusters and bullies. Why get up on the same stage with him and give him the opportunity to make stuff up and call you names? What do you have to gain? Sure, you'll look smarter than him, but does that really convince anybody to vote for you who wasn't already going to vote for you? I wonder if the better strategy is to skip one on one encounters with Trump, and just do your own thing.
Pete may be the only one I see winning a debate with Trump. And it won't be based on policy, it'll be based on tone, based on the different in terms of image (old, angry white guy vs young, charismatic white guy). It will be a display of differences, one guy who served his country, the other who dodged. One who is measured and respectful, and the other who is belligerent and disrespectful.
This is just ridiculous. Debates don't matter?
Yes, but my point is that wouldn't help him win the election. At most, it would help at the margins.
I agree, and I've been saying this for years. People put way, way too much hope/stock in presidential debates.
OK, in order:
You guys may be correct. It might be best to simply bombard the airwaves with Trump's record. Any of the candidates could do that. There needs to be someone who is able to clearly articulate their positions and show how Trump is simply trying to scare them into voting for him. It should be easy enough to put out soundbytes of their proposals and show the start contract to Trump's actual actions too.
It's almost surreal reading this type of post. All I hear in this Forum is bluster from the Democrats about how much Donald Trump sucks.
I think the point is it's how you "respond" to Trump over the course of a campaign, not in the three debates. Hillary did well against Trump in the debates, but throughout the campaign she let him dominate the conversation (admittedly, that was really hard to counter with a candidate like him). Also, her constant efforts to portray him as a bully were effective with some demos (college-educated women), but overall played into the "strength" message that he wanted to convey. In retrospect, it would have been better if she had put more emphasis on him as a fraud rather than a bully.
One thing the debates are very useful for: raising the profile of a challenger, especially if he's facing an incumbent. The quintessential example was Clinton vs. George Bush. Overall, he performed better (especially in the town hall debate where Bush was checking his watch), but the more important thing that Clinton did was clear the "plausible president" bar. I think that's very important; whatever people may think of the incumbent, they're used to the idea of him being president. There's a mental leap challengers need to get voters to make to imagine someone new in that role.
Nice post. IMO Trump is hugely vulnerable with the right approach. All bullies are. Agree that debates shouldn't be in the primary category of criteria for determining a candidate but they can be difference makers in a close race. Trump showed he can be exposed when Rubio did it during the 2016 GOP primaries before overplaying his hand.
My initial reaction to that was, 'What? Rubio was terrible!" But then I remembered you were right; he had some effective mockery of him in one of the debates before completely screwing it up (including responding to "Liddle Marco" with "Big Donald"
) and then trying to get down into the gutter with Trump by joking about his #### size.
I'm not old enough to remember the Nixon sweat debate. But does all the emphasis on debate go back to that? Or is it something else?
Actually that was a lot about how to appear on TV. Nixon wore a bad color as it tended to blend into the background given black and white TV. And of course the sweating. People who listened to it on radio thought Nixon won. People who watched thought Kennedy did. At the end of the day though it wasnt that big a deal given Nixon lost the popular vote by 2/10s of a percent. He got killed in the EC though.
I suspect even people trying to answer this question directly end up defaulting to the candidate they prefer (since they believe that person is the strongest candidate, wouldn't s/he also be the one Trump fears the most?)
I did, and suspect others did as well.
