The first debate in 2020 was terrible but Biden didn’t let Trump overshout him if that counts for anything. We need to be honest these debates aren’t about policy it’s about what clip goes viral on social media
Romney was the one who really showcased that in the first debate of 2012. He was tactful but much of what he said in that debate was simple bullshit. He knew the media wasn't going to fact check him to the extent where it mattered and went with it.
Obama's problem is that he somehow didn't expect Romney to do that and was completely unprepared to counter the claims.
I think it's even less sophisticated than that. IIRC correctly, the immediate reaction was that Obama looked bored while Romney was fired up. It had less to do with their talking points or being fact checked than Obama not matching Romney's energy.
Biden had me with those six words. If one of the GOP candidates in 2016 had done that, we might have had a totally different trajectory from then to now.
Eh, I don’t know. I had Trump supporters in my feed say that the debate was terrible and Biden was just as bad because of the “shut up” comment. They hold different standards for Dems, so I don’t know if playing by those rules helps Biden.
I think we are maybe overestimating the value of debates in general and particularly this one. If I want to see two 80 year old men yell at each other without listening or addressing the topic I can just wait until thanksgiving or go to Dennys. There will be no meaningful “owns” here by anyone unless you are already favoring one side or the other.
Back when Palin was running for VP someone who previously ran against her for governor wrote an article explaining why it's so hard to debate her. The article could have been summarized with this Mark Twain quote:
*“Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”*
It's actually quite difficult to debate someone that spews incoherent nonsense and lies. It's really easy to get caught up in trying to counter every point and correct them, which can appear to be a struggle. You have to know how to call out their claims as BS without engaging them enough to give them credibility. Viewers can easily interpret a terse response as not having an adequate comeback, but also interpret a substantive response as acknowledging some truth the BS.
My political awakening was pretty much watching Biden debate Palin. I wasn't just watching a debate, I was being geopolitically educated by Biden. Ie., I expected an argument and got an education.
As someone who competed on a debate team while in college, I recognize the gish gallop to be unbeatable when the judges are the public. Too much of the public just doesn’t have the background to understand rhetorical arguments in a really deep way nor should they be expected to.
In formal debate, if a gish gallop happens, you can always just appeal to the judge(s) on rebuttal of what has just happened and argue that their contentions be dropped and not considered. Sadly, presidential debates have no judges to declare a winner, and moderators are neither willing nor able to intervene in a way to stop blatant lies often due to network fears that it will come across as them being “biased.”
I really think that modern presidential debates have lost almost all real use besides being a chance for the very disengaged to tune in for once because of how hyped up these debates always are.
The best undercut to Trumps rambling in all of the debates was Rand Paul during the primary when he just calmly and rationally countered Trump's TPP rant how China was screwing us by saying that China was upset because it WASN'T a part of the deal. They literally stopped playing music and cutting to a commercial to let him continue [https://www.vox.com/2015/11/10/9710284/rand-paul-donald-trump-republican-debate](https://www.vox.com/2015/11/10/9710284/rand-paul-donald-trump-republican-debate)
Sadly the clip doesn't play the full in depth dialog, but it was one of the only good moments of that entire debate series.
Holy shit the “it’s worth pointing out that China isn’t in the TPP” or whatever he said was such a knockout debate moment that somehow people barely ever talk about. The other debaters hopping on and going “that’s right!” Was so lame as well.
I think this is one of the major shortcomings of "debate" as a concept. Debate requires that people share a reality, and it assumes that observers will be able to distinguish between claims and opinions, facts and lies, arguments and bullshit. We're so far removed from debate as the focal point of "arguments competing in the marketplace of ideas" that I really doubt whether debate has any role left in modern discourse.
Agreed.
Debate requires a critical mass of good faith from participants, and critical thinking from audience.
That is long-gone is US national politics.
I frankly think the "marketplace of ideas" in general is broken, to the extent that it ever existed at all. People just don't evaluate ideas like that. It's kind of a problem for Liberalism, which foundationally requires the marketplace of ideas to exist. That's been one of my major disillusionments with Liberalism that's pushed me into more properly leftist ideas - the conceptual underpinnings of Liberalism are built on assumptions about people that just don't line up with reality.
I don’t see how you can say that and then adopt leftist ideas. They don’t accept the flaws of people in any model.
The marketplace of ideals is alive and well in the educated world. It just doesn’t work in a short term populist space like a televised debate
It's still the least broken model of politics, unfortunately.
The only alternative model, the "throw the weight of your interest group around" model, is just primed to result in institutionalized graft like we saw in Argentina and Greece. When you cop the attitude that consensus isn't real and there's nothing to be gained by debate because it's just people throwing their subjective realities at each other, you've got a triple edged sword.
Sure when you successfully bully your opponents out of power, you govern with more impunity because the Professional Wrong Opinion Havers have no platform to stop you.
But you become more beholden to parochial and inane demands of your base.
And you have no check against just being wrong. And you will be wrong. Read my lips. You. Will. Be. Wrong.
And in more terrifying ways lack of belief in consensus politics leads to Vanguardism which always fails. Even Social Democratic Vanguardism fails, just ask Turkey.
Unfortunately it has matured him. He now knows what to expect and who will stand in his way. We’re not going to have another Kasich “the vice president will be in charge of foreign and domestic policy” situation.
it was always bullshit, but you're right
now he knows a lot more about how the levers of government works and how important it is to have competent, loyal people around him
the only reason our trade agreement with South Korea endures was disloyal staffers hiding the order to end the agreement
there won't be that good fortunate to have people loyal to the interests of the united states instead of trump this time around
hence project 2025, it's all about Rex Trump
God, the way fucking Van Jones tried to claim Trump "became president" after not butchering a speech to Congress was a level of secondhand embarrassment I hope to never reach again.
I had a coworker back in 2016 who was a huge Trump supporter despite the fact her son was trans (and they were close). We got to talking about his tweets and she said she didn't like them but that he promised he'd stop tweeting when elected and she believed him. To her, it was all an act and he'd be totally different as president.
I'm pretty sure she's still a supporter, though. I think they all made excuses for him out of necessity but ultimately like that he's not mature.
It’s amazing how only now, after almost a decade on the campaign trail the narrative that Trump is incoherent is finally catching serious steam. His speaking style has long been defined by not being able to read off a teleprompter and just doing nonsensical stream of consciousness rambling.
In a debate where he only has 90 seconds before his mic turns off, and isn’t allowed to just talk over the moderator or his opponent like a little kid would, he’s going to be forced to make concise and coherent points. The likelihood of him doing that is extremely small, and he’s going to look like an imbecile up there. I bet multiple times he’ll be mid ramble without making any tangible point, and his mic will just go silent.
The only thing that could favor Trump in this format is two things:
1. Even with the muted mics, he could still use his 90 seconds to spout of a bunch of stuff that Biden wouldn't let slide. False or incendiary statements as such. Cutting off is one of his strategies, but it's not the only one. Biden might just end up stump speaking having to ignore Trump entirely.
2. I do fear that without an audience, Trump might actually go more cruel to fluster Biden. He does tend to play to the audience for his bits, but without them he doesn't have to worry about groans. If he goes dirty, there's no audience to chastise him.
We will see. There will likely not be much back and forth between the candidates in this “debate”. Trump will probably ramble insults against Biden, and then Biden will have a chance to respond, but it won’t be the shit slinging contest we’ve grown accustomed to in the Trump era (whether he’s on stage or not). I think it will be more about the moderator asking questions, and the candidates having 90 seconds to answer those questions. Almost like two separate interviews happening at the same time. How the candidates answer the questions will really determine who wins. Trump will of course say ridiculous things, and make personal insults of Biden, whether Biden is able to counter them successfully who knows. While I think it’s a guarantee that Trump looks like a fool up there, I don’t have much confidence in Biden’s ability to actually counter or defend against specific points or insults made by Trump, partly because the points themselves will be so preposterous and insulting. And that could somehow play well for Biden. Why give legitimacy to stupid statements by responding to them directly. Then you’re letting Trump run the conversation, which the entire structure of this debate seems to be based around not letting Trump run the show. I’m very excited to see what happens.
I hope Trump is cruel. I hope he's mean. I hope he brings up Joe's dead wife or something sick. I trust Joe won't take the bait in a way that will actually hurt him. But I could see Trump being so cruel that he really hurts himself.
Maybe one of the best moments in the 2020 debate was when Trump went after Hunter and Biden defended him. He didn't get nasty with Trump. He didn't go after Trump's sorry excuse for children, he used the opportunity to talk about Hunter's addiction and his love for him.
Let Trump go really low. That will backfire.
There is this tenacious idea, even in the left, that Trump is some kind of political genius that knows how politics and the media work.
It is absolutely not obvious to everyone that he is the dumbest moron who ever lived and is somehow falling upwards because of a series of unfortunate circumstances. The US is living a Emperor’s New Clothes situation of gargantuan proportions, and it is VERY important that some people like Clinton voice the truth.
His political "brilliance" is his ability to perfectly channel populist sentiments. That's not a rare skill, it's just something most American politicians up until now haven't been so morally bankrupt as to consider doing. But he got lucky with the timing (post-Obama presidency when white conservatives were freaking out about group status threat)
Also his speaking style of nonsensical blathering somehow hypnotizes his audience. They fall into some sort of enamored trance and don’t notice he’s not actually finishing a point or saying anything coherent or meaningful. I don’t think this way of speaking is a sign of intelligence or genius, but his ability to hypnotize audiences for hours without any sort of preparation or pre-written speech is certainly a skill
I’m pretty much surrounded by trump supporters every single day.
Friends, family, and co workers
They all think about the world and politics on the most simple levels and refuse to think any more deeply about it. Anytime I engage with someone deeper on an issue than the “headline” of issues, they just disengage completely.
I really don’t know what to make of it or how to deal with it. Even people who I feel are very intelligent in their field and thoughtful about a lot of things still just fall into the most shallow political thought.
Unfortunately I experience this as well with the Trump supporters and conservatives I know in my personal life. To be fair though, I have plenty of liberals in my sphere who essentially do the same thing, so I think it’s a broader sign of just the general civic illiteracy of our population. Trump was able to take advantage of that, as has the right wing media sphere in the years leading up to Trump. I too know very intelligent and very successful people, who when it comes to politics, have the most shallow and ignorant understandings of things, and it’s especially a problem with those who consume right wing media. The only time they ever think of the big picture is when they’re believing some ridiculous conspiracy theory. It’s all just parroting of simple bullshit talking points, and then moving on to the next flavor of the week and forgetting everything from before that they previously claimed to be so passionate about.
Exactly. It's because his political discourse is extremely stupid that it works. You often hear the clichés like "all politicians are liars and crooks". What it actually means is "they say complicated things that I don't understand". Trump speaks in memes, and memes seem to be the crux of politics nowadays (always have been tbh). Classic politicians thought that talking points and soundbites were the height of political PR, but nobody expected someone who can only speak like a hallucinating AI.
No, they don't. There is an article by the atlantic, I won't link it due to laziness, but the author went to Trump rallies and interviewed people. They all recognized that he'll go on rants and tangents and lose the crowd. His nonsense isn't appealing, his populism is. They aren't braindead racists, they're people caught up in a cult of personality.
This is a myth. We shouldn't consider them racist, because they aren't. That's one thing that helped Trump in 2016. They see us city dwellers as out-of-touch. If you ever meet these people, you'll know they are not racist. Racism is not really a "family value". They hold opinions that are suboptimal, and they can be stupid, but they are rarely racist.
It is not racism that compelled them to dislike good presidents like Obama, it is just partisan politics. It's been here since Clinton at least.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/activating-animus-the-uniquely-social-roots-of-trump-support/D96C71C353D065F62A3F19B504FA7577
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1368430216677304
Obama's election led directly to the Tea Party movement which became MAGA. It caused the radicalization of the GOP. All because there was a black man in the White House
> If you ever meet these people, you'll know they are not racist.
There are plenty of kind, loving, racist people.
Why are you citing political science journals? It is not a real science. You state it as if it was fact. For the first one, I won't read it, because saying trump's support is uniquely social lacks nuance and is blatantly anti-intellectual, and we don't need to resort to insults or lies or made up shit to make Trump look bad. On the second one, it is ethnic whites high in racial identification that, when reminded of the declining status of whites, liked Trump. But of course? They are not going to like Hillary or Biden if they care about the status of the white race. This does not mean that Trump draws his popularity from racism. It's because he's funny and irreverent, and has an established cult of personality.
Really I'm disgusted that you think political science journals are at all an acceptable source. They cannot prove what they seek to prove. We can reason about correlation and all that, but those journal articles miss so much nuance and try to paint Trump's success as a function of racism. This is exactly why 2016 happened. Don't you realize quoting the Ivory Tower will make people hate us?
The radicalization of the GOP was not caused by Obama. He himself admits this (I think?). Look at what they did to Bill Clinton. This radicalization is nothing new.
Please do not think liberals are an enlightened few destined to govern over the racist peasants. Conservatism, and even populism, is not necessarily racist. You should take their opinions seriously.
>It is absolutely not obvious to everyone that he is the dumbest moron who ever lived and is somehow falling upwards
Seems like that "somehow" is a pretty important hole in your model of US politics over the last decade, and the scoreboard says he did something right
Well yeah obviously it is a placeholder because who has the fucking time to write a thesis on the polarization of ideas, erasure of good faith discourse, rise of identity politics, betrayal of political traditions, meddling of foreign ennemies, hysterization by social media…
I don't think the point is to carry out any new info. It's just an op-ed trying to set the narrative ahead of the debate.
Another lesson we can take from the Clinton / Trump debates though, is that at the end of the day, the debates didn't shift the polls at all. The debates didn't matter.
I don't think they matter this year, either.
If Trump shows up and does horribly, Fox News just won't cover it. Their viewers will effectively have no idea it happened.
C'mon now are we really praising what is essentially a 2017 era tweet line as some kind of genius take?
If she had brought this kind of elucidations back in 2016 then she might not have missed her shot in the election instead.
Anno domini 2024, 8 years later, praise of that insight seems kind of faint, don't you think.
> If she had brought this kind of elucidations back in 2016 then she might not have missed her shot in the election instead.
Clinton handily won all three debates against trump. The failure in 2016 was reflexively contrarian leftists gorging on berniebro circlejerks and literal right wing propaganda. Even on super left of the average voter reddit people made easily debunked conspiracies into some of the highest upvoted posts of the year.
They sat in r/pol and had actual con artists feed them lies about their "inside information" about Clinton's upcoming conviction, while the next thread would talk about her "spirit cooking" children locked up in the basement of a pizza parlor... with no basement.
All of these came from the right but were gorged on by the online left that had made it their life's purpose to sink Clinton and damn everyone in their way. Clinton can only offer the alternative. It's on the voters to vote. Considering the crap that online politicos post here as "analysis", I think I'll take Clinton's insights over the contributions of most anyone else every time.
Yeah, I've always found her to be a perfectly good candidate. She's smart and focuses on the right issues and has done the work. Her position and writings are always worth a read, the same way most Presidents or Secretaries of State would be.
The best candidate for President may not have Obama-level charisma, and the more charismatic of the two candidates might very well be the worse one.
Unfortunately for her, in her time the bar was set at *Obama* by her immediate predecessor. Hope and Change was a tough act to follow.
This has always been my worry with the debate
You are inherently at a disadvantage debating someone who holds no true positions and has no integrity
They can cause you to run rhetorical miles as they just shit talk the entire time
And trump is, above all, a media man. Shit talking on TV is his brand
I’m genuinely worried and it’s even more frustrating that anyone could even be undecided at this point in time
I still wonder what would have changed if she straight-up told him off after the "nasty woman" comment. I mean really laid it into him for being a vile human, unfit to run a knockoff phone case stand at a dying mall, much less the country. You beat bullies by standing up to them.
“She was so shrill, I can’t stand her. She shouldn’t let her womanly emotions / hormones control her like that. We need civility in the White House.”
Unfortunately women are held to a double standard when it comes to standing up to bullies. She’s still, 8 years later getting shit for saying some Trump supporters are deplorable. She doesn’t get a “will you shut up man” moment.
The problem with "cling to guns and religion" is the same as "basket of deplorables." It's attacking the *voters*, which comes across as condescending. People on the fence (even if they weren't the ones the message was aimed at) will shift against you.
Attacking Trump as an individual person is different.
> This election is between a convicted criminal out for revenge and a president who delivers results for the American people. No matter what happens in the debate, that’s an easy choice.
Let's see what 100k residents in 7 states say in 4 months time
> Let's see what 100k residents in 7 states say in 4 months time.
It’s scare as F that that’s actually the way it works. Biden will get the majority of votes overall, but it really will be like 100-150k voters spread across as little as 5 states even that will determine this entire thing.
Biden should mostly avoid Trump's bullshit except for a few minor jabs to show he still has fight in him ("happy warrior"). The data and policy are on Biden's side, and he just needs to get it out there in the right way.
Really, there are massive problems that can't be overcome:
1. People hate both of them (equally? somehow)
2. Biden is fighting against a fake reality in which the economy is awful, Biden was president in 2020, and Trump is such a terrible piece of shit that people have forgot just how shitty he is
3. Biden will stutter and during his sentences, I will be clenching my ass cheeks wondering if he is going to land it correctly
Regarding number 2, that's a losing gambit. The issue is the economy is terrible wrt housing. That's not something that's directly Bidens' fault but he can talk about the issue and how he would incentivize states to solve it.
What is going on here? Hill Dawg, the quintessential neoliberal shill is being relentless shat on by the comments here for some reason? How far has this sub fallen?
To remind people, we didn't like Hilldawg because she was going to win. We liked her because of her policies, her grit, and her intelligence. We liked Biden because he was going to win, and while I am incredibly grateful that he did win, that doesn't stop the fact that I think Hill Dawg was a politician who would have been far better for America than Biden is.
This place was one of the few subreddit in 2016 that wasn't completely infested with conspiracy theories and election deniers, but that's been changing. I remember when Election Deniers were shat on regardless of whether they were glazing Trump or Bernie.
> I remember when Election Deniers were shat on regardless of whether they were glazing Trump or Bernie.
FWIW, this is still a proud tradition in E_S_S
Let me clarify — the OG E\_S\_S got flooded with zoomers during Covid and I admit, the balance has definitely changed.
Additionally, that sub has kind of unique dynamic where core sub activity is contained to the DT. Most of us rarely venture outside the DT — when it happens, we return with horrifying reports to the others about the Wild West that has overtaken outside the DT. So just to be completely clear, when I even mentioned E\_S\_S at all (both pre covid and now) I was only ever referring to the DT.
So: within the DT—/ id disagree with that characterization. As far as anything outside the DT….
(GODDAMMIT WHY CANT I GIF?!??!! 😭😭)\[MariahCarey.Idontknowher.gif\]
https://preview.redd.it/pqr3k47err8d1.jpeg?width=686&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=99b3955ac52ed113b5ce9f78f641e49afdce5ce3
You very well may be right. I’m in no position to take a position either way.
I don’t think people are attacking Hillary, they’re just rightfully pointing out that politicking was never her greatest skill. I’m sure an article from her on, say, diplomacy would be very well received.
I thought the same thing. This is the same woman who said she envisioned a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders. This goddamn Clinton toxicity has no place here.
Honestly, losing to Trump is a really big deal. She could have been so much worse but if she beat him, her sins are washed away, she would have protected the country against a great evil. She didn't.
Hillary wouldn’t have been better for America because, fair or unfair, she would have been blocked at every step of the way in her administration. Biden has been effective in his own way because he was able to side step many of those road blocks. Hillary on paper, fine. Hillary with an obstructionist Congress, ineffective.
Its interesting to see that Clinton has learned nothing. Too much policy in this advice to Biden. She never really outlines how Biden can counter the outright lies Trump will throw out.
There's no advice to Biden in here. That's not the point of what she wrote. It's a piece endorsing Biden and advising Democrats on how to control the narrative *coming out of* the debate. Basically pre-empting all the inevitable dooming or knee-jerk reactions that will come from the media and pundits in the immediate aftermath.
Her main point is directed to Democrats thinking about staying home in November or centrists who are on the fence: "Biden vs Trump is a clear and easy decision, and it will still be an easy decision regardless of what happens in the debate".
The yapping was great.
I think it came as Chris Wallace was wrapping up the segment and Biden quipped, "real productive...keep yapping, man" or something like that lmao
That's the thing. Trump relies on lying and essentially "flooding the zone with shit" as Steve Bannon puts it. If anyone had come up with a counter to this that worked on the masses Trump would not even be the nominee and would not be on the stage.
We’re getting a live reaction from /politics:
“Why is she speaking?!?!! Why didn’t she just hide in her home and never speak again?!??! Reeeeeeeee!!!! WOMAN!!!!!!! BAD!!!!!”
Update:
"Hillary Clinton should stay out of this election."
"What makes Hillary think she could help things at all?"
"You’re literally the last person on planet earth I would want advice from in an election."
There's a saying that you learn more from failure than you do from success. I think it's way too broad of a generalization, but maybe it's applicable here?
Always been a bit of a silly statement to me. There was also a research paper came out that people vastly overstates their resiliency to failure.
Failure is a good predictor of future failure.
https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-xge0001610.pdf
I hate it when people respond to a statistics paper with "Okay but did you account for (confounding variable that's impossible to measure but would negate the hypothesis)?". But unfortunately I'm gonna do it anyways:
Maybe I missed it because I skimmed it, but it seems like this doesn't separate the people who try to learn from their failures from people who make no changes to their habits and try the same things over and over. It just looks at whether failure is a good predictor of subsequent failure for a list of different failure types.
Repeat exam failures are one example: In undergrad, I very much saw people who changed their habits and improved, people who changed their habits but continued to fail, and people who could not figure out how to change their habits.
I'm curious about the accuracy rate of "I failed because I did X, so you should do Y instead".
The paper itself brings up your valid critique. I will bring up 3 points:
The paper's primary finding is that people generally overestimate how often failure leads to success. This overestimation exists regardless of whether some individuals do learn from failure.
Even if some people learn effectively from failure, the overall trend of overestimation can still be valid.
The study is largely about perception - how people view the likelihood of success after failure. This perception can be inaccurate even if some individuals do improve after failure.
It’s a fair assessment I don’t think it invalidates the findings in the paper though on a population level.
I would read more than the abstract.
Your last point is kinda ridiculous look at how many people in politics fail and never do anything. You are simply using confirmation bias.
>Listening to the only person who lost to Donald Trump is a bad way to defeat Donald Trump
Why are people still in denial that Trump actually has political talent? He's not an easy candidate to beat for anyone, other than Obama who was an otherworldly politician. In the span of a few years, he literally completely took over one of the major US political parties. All his major opponents within the Party have been forced into retirement or successfully primaried. The policymakers have completely thrown the traditional Republican playbook out the window just for him. Major Republican donors have bent the knee and throw money into the Trump slush machine that pumps money into the family business. Rank and file Republican voters have become complete Trump loyalists
I'm not saying he's an intelligent man, but he's clearly a political force of nature that's not unlike a Stalin. A small but significant core of devout followers can get a politician very far in a country like the US and its Electoral College.
Yeah. He shot up to first place from practically his first public appearance and has remained popular almost ten years later, after practically every major media outlet in the US has been publicizing every last one of his mistakes, shortcomings, and scandals.
Being a buffoon in the right place at the right time could win you one election, but you can't just stumble into the repeated, sustained success he's had.
I'm still on the fence about whether (a.) he's got actual political talent or (b.) he's got an unbelievably-potent *brand name* and showed up right when the Republican Party was completely ripe for a free-fall into fascism, thanks to the Gen X and Boomers (two of the shittiest generations to ever exist) both being around at the same time. It feels like so little of the MAGA movement is about him as an actual person and that, instead, he's just a complete 'choose your own adventure' candidate that idiots everywhere can attach all sorts of fantasies/grievances to.
That was an extremely competitive Primary that he won, plus he kind of stumbled upon an extremely efficient electoral strategy with doubling down non-college educated white people aka the most powerful electorate in America, and he had the ability to reach out to them in ways that prior Republicans have not been.
Can't be worse than listening to reflexively contrarian leftists online squeal about her. Like, you've had nearly a decade to have outgrown that tantrum.
Yes, yes, don’t listen to one of the most accomplished and intelligent women in not just American History, but History in general, because the deck was stacked against her.
So, are we all going to relentlessly dunk on President Biden if/when he loses come November to an even more unhinged and scandal plagued opponent than he was in 2016?
I mean, we either dunk on the losers or we admit that the American electorate is so stupid and shortsighted that ending Democracy was always as easy as promising lower grocery prices. So.....
I certainly hope people here would be critical of a man who ran for a second term despite being historically unpopular and 82 years of age, and then lost to someone he(rightly) believes to be a threat to American democracy.
No one thinks that lmao
But we've all seen the polls where other Democrats do much worse head-to-head vs Trump than Biden. Even Newsom did worse in California vs Trump than Biden in polls.
Risking Trump's reelection on the thought that the polling would improve enough for these candidates to drop the advantages that comes with incumbency was the issue.
The reality is that if Biden loses in November, it's unlikely any Democrat would have won. But if Biden wins, I think there are plenty of Democrats who probably wouldn't.
The truth is, there's some here who have spent two years bitching about Biden's age to the point that I've got to wonder if they'd rather lose with another Democrat than win with Biden.
But Bernie lost to actual politicians, not a caricature of the worst aspects of conservatism. It's much less embarrassing to lose to people who are actually qualified/competent.
Mate you don't live inside Plato's republic, wake up and realise that Trump very much is an "actual politician", and the proportion of his kind of politician is consistently growing within the republican party.
>because the deck was stacked against her.
How was it stacked against her? She was facing a scandal-plagued opponent. She led in most of the opinion polls and her campaign raised and spent way more money than Trump's.
She was also supposed to have an advantage in the electoral college. No democratic candidate has lost the 'blue wall' in 30 years before she ran for office.
She wasn't the underdog in the 2016 race. Saying the deck was stacked against her is ridiculous
She would have lost the primary that year if it was competitive because she had decades of baggage. The baggage was unfair, but it existed and was real. We wouldn’t have had a Trump presidency if Biden’s son hadn’t died and he ran that year.
Some small things along the way that came with her formal titles…you know, little things like paving a path forward for women in American Politics to follow.
What are you talking about? Trump decisively lost all three according to public polling of the time.
https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/29/politics/2020-debate-trump-biden-2016/index.html
I love the queen's sassy snark here.
It's a shame she didn't use some of that on the trail in 2016. Hindsight is 20/20. But given we live in a reality show, to my chagrin, you almost have to make voters laugh to establish rapport.
The opening paragraph is crazyyyy
>Last week, I had the time of my life at the Tony Awards introducing a song from “Suffs,” the Broadway musical I co-produced about the suffragists who won women the right to vote. I was thrilled when the show took home the awards for best original score and best book.
Nothing wrong with theater and culture. Youre missing the point.
The paragraph is crazy bc it might be the most stereotypical NYT paragraph I've ever read, as the other commenter correctly pointed out
I mean, I kind of rolled my eyes at that opening paragraph. Oh, you hosted at the Tony Awards where a musical that you produced took home two awards. Cool, Hillary. Thanks for the update. Maybe we can leave the contrived ways for you to brag until after you impart your wisdom on the political landscape.
i mean [burke had reactionary and sentimentalist instincts](https://archive.is/M9yWn) and so while he may be repulsed by some of Trump’s vulgarity and strong man bullshit, he also would probably struggle to stomach the left liberal egalitarianism / progressivism and bureaucratic managerialism of HRC.
while it’s impossible to truly map his contextualized beliefs onto modern day politics, many people with similar instincts and backgrounds as him (christianity as basis for moral society, conservatism, status quo justifier) tend to fold into trump support as an acceptable, albeit distasteful means to superior ends (stopping liberalism, secularism, progressivism, etc).
maybe he would be a third party never trumper, though, idk.
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Here are three things to watch for in Thursday's debate.
***First, pay attention to how the candidates talk about people, not just policies.***
In his third debate against Hillary Clinton in 2016, Mr. Trump promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. That became true. On Thursday, Mr. Trump will most likely say he wants to leave abortion to the states. He hopes that sounds moderate. But it really means he’s endorsing the most extreme abortion bans already imposed by many states and other extreme restrictions to come.
Mr. Biden is one of the most empathetic leaders we’ve ever had. Listen to how sincerely he talks about women’s rights, the struggles of working families, opportunities for people of color and the courage of Ukrainian men and women risking their lives for democracy. Mr. Trump doesn't express empathy because he cares only about himself.
***Second, try to see through the bluster and focus on the fundamentals at stake.***
In the 2016 debates, Mr. Trump refused to say whether he would accept the results of the election. “I’ll keep you in suspense,” he said. “That is not the way our democracy works,” Mrs. Clinton responded. “Let’s be clear about what he’s saying and what that means.” You can draw a straight line from that exchange to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
This time, expect Mr. Trump to blame Mr. Biden for inflation but avoid answering questions about his own economic plans. He has to deflect or lie because his proposals would exacerbate inflation, raise costs for American households and cause a recession. That’s not my prediction; it’s from Wall Street’s [Moody's Analytics](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/06/20/biden-vs-trump-economy/74077301007/). Experts at the nonpartisan [Peterson Institute](https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/2024-05/pb24-1.pdf) for International Economics estimated that ***Mr. Trump’s tariffs alone would mean, in effect, a $1,700 tax increase each year for the average American family*** — or more.
For his part, Mr. Biden is clearly eager to talk about his plans to lower costs, and ***his success at taming inflation without a rise in unemployment.*** He has stood up to powerful pharmaceutical companies by capping the cost of insulin and signing a law to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices for the first time. These policies are good for working families. On Thursday, listen for plans to take on corporate price gouging and make gas, groceries and housing more affordable, and how to help young people get a strong start and afford a middle-class life. Trump, by contrast, will offer very little substance about policy.
***Third, when you see these two men side by side, think about the real choice in this election.***
Mr. Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault and financial fraud, and is awaiting trial on even more serious allegations. He’s spent a lifetime putting himself first. If he gets back to the White House, we’ll have more inflation and less freedom. It won’t just be a rerun of his first term. Since losing in 2020, Mr. Trump has become angrier and more unhinged. His former secretary of defense says he is “a threat to democracy.” His former chief of staff says he “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.” Remember that on Thursday when you hear Mr. Trump ***recite his grievances and vow retribution.***
By contrast, Mr. Biden is a wise and decent man who, by the account of nearly everyone who works with him, is ***fighting hard for working families.*** Yes, he’s 81. That’s just three years older than Mr. Trump. And his lifetime of service and experience helps him get things done that make our country stronger and all of our lives better, from bringing Democrats and Republicans together to fixing crumbling roads and bridges to standing up to Russian aggression.
[Source, slightly edited. Please copy-paste.](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/opinion/hillary-clinton-trump-biden-debate.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U0.P7HA.eM9Ge8R9tPSh&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb)
The first debate in 2020 was terrible but Biden didn’t let Trump overshout him if that counts for anything. We need to be honest these debates aren’t about policy it’s about what clip goes viral on social media
That’s why you need to ignore your opponent and ignore the questions, and stick to your talking points and prepared zingers.
That advice can swing too far in the other direction where you sound robotic. It's a fine line
He knows exactly what he's doing
Exactly what I had in mind.
Let's dispell this fiction
Romney was the one who really showcased that in the first debate of 2012. He was tactful but much of what he said in that debate was simple bullshit. He knew the media wasn't going to fact check him to the extent where it mattered and went with it. Obama's problem is that he somehow didn't expect Romney to do that and was completely unprepared to counter the claims.
I think it's even less sophisticated than that. IIRC correctly, the immediate reaction was that Obama looked bored while Romney was fired up. It had less to do with their talking points or being fact checked than Obama not matching Romney's energy.
“Will you just shut up man” is the exact tone Biden needs to set. That connects with people. People are TIRED of hearing about Donald Trump.
Biden had me with those six words. If one of the GOP candidates in 2016 had done that, we might have had a totally different trajectory from then to now.
I think Christie tried that
One of those GOP candidates in 2016 should have just punched him in the face and we'd have barely heard about him again.
Eh, I don’t know. I had Trump supporters in my feed say that the debate was terrible and Biden was just as bad because of the “shut up” comment. They hold different standards for Dems, so I don’t know if playing by those rules helps Biden.
I think we are maybe overestimating the value of debates in general and particularly this one. If I want to see two 80 year old men yell at each other without listening or addressing the topic I can just wait until thanksgiving or go to Dennys. There will be no meaningful “owns” here by anyone unless you are already favoring one side or the other.
Back when Palin was running for VP someone who previously ran against her for governor wrote an article explaining why it's so hard to debate her. The article could have been summarized with this Mark Twain quote: *“Never argue with a fool, onlookers may not be able to tell the difference.”* It's actually quite difficult to debate someone that spews incoherent nonsense and lies. It's really easy to get caught up in trying to counter every point and correct them, which can appear to be a struggle. You have to know how to call out their claims as BS without engaging them enough to give them credibility. Viewers can easily interpret a terse response as not having an adequate comeback, but also interpret a substantive response as acknowledging some truth the BS.
My political awakening was pretty much watching Biden debate Palin. I wasn't just watching a debate, I was being geopolitically educated by Biden. Ie., I expected an argument and got an education.
Gish Galloping is a tough debate strategy to beat
As someone who competed on a debate team while in college, I recognize the gish gallop to be unbeatable when the judges are the public. Too much of the public just doesn’t have the background to understand rhetorical arguments in a really deep way nor should they be expected to. In formal debate, if a gish gallop happens, you can always just appeal to the judge(s) on rebuttal of what has just happened and argue that their contentions be dropped and not considered. Sadly, presidential debates have no judges to declare a winner, and moderators are neither willing nor able to intervene in a way to stop blatant lies often due to network fears that it will come across as them being “biased.” I really think that modern presidential debates have lost almost all real use besides being a chance for the very disengaged to tune in for once because of how hyped up these debates always are.
The best undercut to Trumps rambling in all of the debates was Rand Paul during the primary when he just calmly and rationally countered Trump's TPP rant how China was screwing us by saying that China was upset because it WASN'T a part of the deal. They literally stopped playing music and cutting to a commercial to let him continue [https://www.vox.com/2015/11/10/9710284/rand-paul-donald-trump-republican-debate](https://www.vox.com/2015/11/10/9710284/rand-paul-donald-trump-republican-debate) Sadly the clip doesn't play the full in depth dialog, but it was one of the only good moments of that entire debate series.
Holy shit the “it’s worth pointing out that China isn’t in the TPP” or whatever he said was such a knockout debate moment that somehow people barely ever talk about. The other debaters hopping on and going “that’s right!” Was so lame as well.
The issue is that it was Rand Paul
I think this is one of the major shortcomings of "debate" as a concept. Debate requires that people share a reality, and it assumes that observers will be able to distinguish between claims and opinions, facts and lies, arguments and bullshit. We're so far removed from debate as the focal point of "arguments competing in the marketplace of ideas" that I really doubt whether debate has any role left in modern discourse.
Agreed. Debate requires a critical mass of good faith from participants, and critical thinking from audience. That is long-gone is US national politics.
I frankly think the "marketplace of ideas" in general is broken, to the extent that it ever existed at all. People just don't evaluate ideas like that. It's kind of a problem for Liberalism, which foundationally requires the marketplace of ideas to exist. That's been one of my major disillusionments with Liberalism that's pushed me into more properly leftist ideas - the conceptual underpinnings of Liberalism are built on assumptions about people that just don't line up with reality.
I don’t see how you can say that and then adopt leftist ideas. They don’t accept the flaws of people in any model. The marketplace of ideals is alive and well in the educated world. It just doesn’t work in a short term populist space like a televised debate
If you think the market place of ideas is broken, you're really going to love everything about socialism. Which is broken in literally every aspect.
It's still the least broken model of politics, unfortunately. The only alternative model, the "throw the weight of your interest group around" model, is just primed to result in institutionalized graft like we saw in Argentina and Greece. When you cop the attitude that consensus isn't real and there's nothing to be gained by debate because it's just people throwing their subjective realities at each other, you've got a triple edged sword. Sure when you successfully bully your opponents out of power, you govern with more impunity because the Professional Wrong Opinion Havers have no platform to stop you. But you become more beholden to parochial and inane demands of your base. And you have no check against just being wrong. And you will be wrong. Read my lips. You. Will. Be. Wrong. And in more terrifying ways lack of belief in consensus politics leads to Vanguardism which always fails. Even Social Democratic Vanguardism fails, just ask Turkey.
Ok, but what comes after the soapbox?
I love Shane Gillis's bits about Trump's debate prowess. https://youtu.be/YE_nxN8RzRY?si=Ulr94cTfxUS4__GU
Yeah, that's what im worried about, Trump spewing nonsense, Biden stuttering a bit and people saying biden lost
You just flippantly mock them and pitch yourself.
>It’s nearly impossible to identify what \[Trump's\] arguments even are. He starts with nonsense and then digresses into blather. 👑
2020 gave us "Will you shut up man?!" 2024 should give us "What the FUCK are you talking about?!"
“Show me your ass, I want to see the jab”
[удалено]
Tbf, dumb fucks thought the presidency would mature him.
Well, he has "matured" in a way The way milk "matures" when left in the sun for weeks
Unfortunately it has matured him. He now knows what to expect and who will stand in his way. We’re not going to have another Kasich “the vice president will be in charge of foreign and domestic policy” situation.
it was always bullshit, but you're right now he knows a lot more about how the levers of government works and how important it is to have competent, loyal people around him the only reason our trade agreement with South Korea endures was disloyal staffers hiding the order to end the agreement there won't be that good fortunate to have people loyal to the interests of the united states instead of trump this time around hence project 2025, it's all about Rex Trump
> disloyal staffers Common bureaucrat W
well yes but also no, I'm sure you can see how this will spiral out of control very quickly
God, the way fucking Van Jones tried to claim Trump "became president" after not butchering a speech to Congress was a level of secondhand embarrassment I hope to never reach again.
Van Jones can be extremely cringe in his Trump views. Gives him so much leeway.
I had a coworker back in 2016 who was a huge Trump supporter despite the fact her son was trans (and they were close). We got to talking about his tweets and she said she didn't like them but that he promised he'd stop tweeting when elected and she believed him. To her, it was all an act and he'd be totally different as president. I'm pretty sure she's still a supporter, though. I think they all made excuses for him out of necessity but ultimately like that he's not mature.
It’s amazing how only now, after almost a decade on the campaign trail the narrative that Trump is incoherent is finally catching serious steam. His speaking style has long been defined by not being able to read off a teleprompter and just doing nonsensical stream of consciousness rambling. In a debate where he only has 90 seconds before his mic turns off, and isn’t allowed to just talk over the moderator or his opponent like a little kid would, he’s going to be forced to make concise and coherent points. The likelihood of him doing that is extremely small, and he’s going to look like an imbecile up there. I bet multiple times he’ll be mid ramble without making any tangible point, and his mic will just go silent.
The only thing that could favor Trump in this format is two things: 1. Even with the muted mics, he could still use his 90 seconds to spout of a bunch of stuff that Biden wouldn't let slide. False or incendiary statements as such. Cutting off is one of his strategies, but it's not the only one. Biden might just end up stump speaking having to ignore Trump entirely. 2. I do fear that without an audience, Trump might actually go more cruel to fluster Biden. He does tend to play to the audience for his bits, but without them he doesn't have to worry about groans. If he goes dirty, there's no audience to chastise him.
We will see. There will likely not be much back and forth between the candidates in this “debate”. Trump will probably ramble insults against Biden, and then Biden will have a chance to respond, but it won’t be the shit slinging contest we’ve grown accustomed to in the Trump era (whether he’s on stage or not). I think it will be more about the moderator asking questions, and the candidates having 90 seconds to answer those questions. Almost like two separate interviews happening at the same time. How the candidates answer the questions will really determine who wins. Trump will of course say ridiculous things, and make personal insults of Biden, whether Biden is able to counter them successfully who knows. While I think it’s a guarantee that Trump looks like a fool up there, I don’t have much confidence in Biden’s ability to actually counter or defend against specific points or insults made by Trump, partly because the points themselves will be so preposterous and insulting. And that could somehow play well for Biden. Why give legitimacy to stupid statements by responding to them directly. Then you’re letting Trump run the conversation, which the entire structure of this debate seems to be based around not letting Trump run the show. I’m very excited to see what happens.
I hope Trump is cruel. I hope he's mean. I hope he brings up Joe's dead wife or something sick. I trust Joe won't take the bait in a way that will actually hurt him. But I could see Trump being so cruel that he really hurts himself. Maybe one of the best moments in the 2020 debate was when Trump went after Hunter and Biden defended him. He didn't get nasty with Trump. He didn't go after Trump's sorry excuse for children, he used the opportunity to talk about Hunter's addiction and his love for him. Let Trump go really low. That will backfire.
queen doesn't miss
Ok, but what is she saying we didn't already know from the last 12 years of Trump's political relevance?
There is this tenacious idea, even in the left, that Trump is some kind of political genius that knows how politics and the media work. It is absolutely not obvious to everyone that he is the dumbest moron who ever lived and is somehow falling upwards because of a series of unfortunate circumstances. The US is living a Emperor’s New Clothes situation of gargantuan proportions, and it is VERY important that some people like Clinton voice the truth.
His political "brilliance" is his ability to perfectly channel populist sentiments. That's not a rare skill, it's just something most American politicians up until now haven't been so morally bankrupt as to consider doing. But he got lucky with the timing (post-Obama presidency when white conservatives were freaking out about group status threat)
Also his speaking style of nonsensical blathering somehow hypnotizes his audience. They fall into some sort of enamored trance and don’t notice he’s not actually finishing a point or saying anything coherent or meaningful. I don’t think this way of speaking is a sign of intelligence or genius, but his ability to hypnotize audiences for hours without any sort of preparation or pre-written speech is certainly a skill
I’m pretty much surrounded by trump supporters every single day. Friends, family, and co workers They all think about the world and politics on the most simple levels and refuse to think any more deeply about it. Anytime I engage with someone deeper on an issue than the “headline” of issues, they just disengage completely. I really don’t know what to make of it or how to deal with it. Even people who I feel are very intelligent in their field and thoughtful about a lot of things still just fall into the most shallow political thought.
Unfortunately I experience this as well with the Trump supporters and conservatives I know in my personal life. To be fair though, I have plenty of liberals in my sphere who essentially do the same thing, so I think it’s a broader sign of just the general civic illiteracy of our population. Trump was able to take advantage of that, as has the right wing media sphere in the years leading up to Trump. I too know very intelligent and very successful people, who when it comes to politics, have the most shallow and ignorant understandings of things, and it’s especially a problem with those who consume right wing media. The only time they ever think of the big picture is when they’re believing some ridiculous conspiracy theory. It’s all just parroting of simple bullshit talking points, and then moving on to the next flavor of the week and forgetting everything from before that they previously claimed to be so passionate about.
Exactly. It's because his political discourse is extremely stupid that it works. You often hear the clichés like "all politicians are liars and crooks". What it actually means is "they say complicated things that I don't understand". Trump speaks in memes, and memes seem to be the crux of politics nowadays (always have been tbh). Classic politicians thought that talking points and soundbites were the height of political PR, but nobody expected someone who can only speak like a hallucinating AI.
No, they don't. There is an article by the atlantic, I won't link it due to laziness, but the author went to Trump rallies and interviewed people. They all recognized that he'll go on rants and tangents and lose the crowd. His nonsense isn't appealing, his populism is. They aren't braindead racists, they're people caught up in a cult of personality.
This is a myth. We shouldn't consider them racist, because they aren't. That's one thing that helped Trump in 2016. They see us city dwellers as out-of-touch. If you ever meet these people, you'll know they are not racist. Racism is not really a "family value". They hold opinions that are suboptimal, and they can be stupid, but they are rarely racist. It is not racism that compelled them to dislike good presidents like Obama, it is just partisan politics. It's been here since Clinton at least.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/american-political-science-review/article/abs/activating-animus-the-uniquely-social-roots-of-trump-support/D96C71C353D065F62A3F19B504FA7577 https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1368430216677304 Obama's election led directly to the Tea Party movement which became MAGA. It caused the radicalization of the GOP. All because there was a black man in the White House > If you ever meet these people, you'll know they are not racist. There are plenty of kind, loving, racist people.
Why are you citing political science journals? It is not a real science. You state it as if it was fact. For the first one, I won't read it, because saying trump's support is uniquely social lacks nuance and is blatantly anti-intellectual, and we don't need to resort to insults or lies or made up shit to make Trump look bad. On the second one, it is ethnic whites high in racial identification that, when reminded of the declining status of whites, liked Trump. But of course? They are not going to like Hillary or Biden if they care about the status of the white race. This does not mean that Trump draws his popularity from racism. It's because he's funny and irreverent, and has an established cult of personality. Really I'm disgusted that you think political science journals are at all an acceptable source. They cannot prove what they seek to prove. We can reason about correlation and all that, but those journal articles miss so much nuance and try to paint Trump's success as a function of racism. This is exactly why 2016 happened. Don't you realize quoting the Ivory Tower will make people hate us?
The radicalization of the GOP was not caused by Obama. He himself admits this (I think?). Look at what they did to Bill Clinton. This radicalization is nothing new. Please do not think liberals are an enlightened few destined to govern over the racist peasants. Conservatism, and even populism, is not necessarily racist. You should take their opinions seriously.
>It is absolutely not obvious to everyone that he is the dumbest moron who ever lived and is somehow falling upwards Seems like that "somehow" is a pretty important hole in your model of US politics over the last decade, and the scoreboard says he did something right
Well yeah obviously it is a placeholder because who has the fucking time to write a thesis on the polarization of ideas, erasure of good faith discourse, rise of identity politics, betrayal of political traditions, meddling of foreign ennemies, hysterization by social media…
The people who need to hear it are the ones who will never listen to Hillary
I don't think the point is to carry out any new info. It's just an op-ed trying to set the narrative ahead of the debate. Another lesson we can take from the Clinton / Trump debates though, is that at the end of the day, the debates didn't shift the polls at all. The debates didn't matter. I don't think they matter this year, either. If Trump shows up and does horribly, Fox News just won't cover it. Their viewers will effectively have no idea it happened.
It's not about shifting voter opinions. It's about turnout. Specifically, Dem turnout in Pennsylvania.
Does everything she says need to be novel?
C'mon now are we really praising what is essentially a 2017 era tweet line as some kind of genius take? If she had brought this kind of elucidations back in 2016 then she might not have missed her shot in the election instead. Anno domini 2024, 8 years later, praise of that insight seems kind of faint, don't you think.
You're overthinking this. If she says something, I will praise it
> If she had brought this kind of elucidations back in 2016 then she might not have missed her shot in the election instead. Clinton handily won all three debates against trump. The failure in 2016 was reflexively contrarian leftists gorging on berniebro circlejerks and literal right wing propaganda. Even on super left of the average voter reddit people made easily debunked conspiracies into some of the highest upvoted posts of the year. They sat in r/pol and had actual con artists feed them lies about their "inside information" about Clinton's upcoming conviction, while the next thread would talk about her "spirit cooking" children locked up in the basement of a pizza parlor... with no basement. All of these came from the right but were gorged on by the online left that had made it their life's purpose to sink Clinton and damn everyone in their way. Clinton can only offer the alternative. It's on the voters to vote. Considering the crap that online politicos post here as "analysis", I think I'll take Clinton's insights over the contributions of most anyone else every time.
Yeah, I've always found her to be a perfectly good candidate. She's smart and focuses on the right issues and has done the work. Her position and writings are always worth a read, the same way most Presidents or Secretaries of State would be. The best candidate for President may not have Obama-level charisma, and the more charismatic of the two candidates might very well be the worse one. Unfortunately for her, in her time the bar was set at *Obama* by her immediate predecessor. Hope and Change was a tough act to follow.
> It's on the voters to vote. It's on a politician to convince people to vote for them.
Didn’t your “queen” get her ass handed to her by Trump?
The ole Gish gallop.
This has always been my worry with the debate You are inherently at a disadvantage debating someone who holds no true positions and has no integrity They can cause you to run rhetorical miles as they just shit talk the entire time And trump is, above all, a media man. Shit talking on TV is his brand I’m genuinely worried and it’s even more frustrating that anyone could even be undecided at this point in time
I still wonder what would have changed if she straight-up told him off after the "nasty woman" comment. I mean really laid it into him for being a vile human, unfit to run a knockoff phone case stand at a dying mall, much less the country. You beat bullies by standing up to them.
“She was so shrill, I can’t stand her. She shouldn’t let her womanly emotions / hormones control her like that. We need civility in the White House.” Unfortunately women are held to a double standard when it comes to standing up to bullies. She’s still, 8 years later getting shit for saying some Trump supporters are deplorable. She doesn’t get a “will you shut up man” moment.
FWIW Obama got similar shit for his clinging to guns and god comment.
The problem with "cling to guns and religion" is the same as "basket of deplorables." It's attacking the *voters*, which comes across as condescending. People on the fence (even if they weren't the ones the message was aimed at) will shift against you. Attacking Trump as an individual person is different.
Agree, my point was it wasn't about being a woman but about making a dumb statement, just like Obama.
Your point was clearly proven by the way the nation turned on Trump after she appropriately called out MAGAs as a basket of deplorables.
Not that it probably matters, but it should have been more specific. “Horrible people devoid of the slightest shred of empathy” is more like it.
> This election is between a convicted criminal out for revenge and a president who delivers results for the American people. No matter what happens in the debate, that’s an easy choice. Let's see what 100k residents in 7 states say in 4 months time
> Let's see what 100k residents in 7 states say in 4 months time. It’s scare as F that that’s actually the way it works. Biden will get the majority of votes overall, but it really will be like 100-150k voters spread across as little as 5 states even that will determine this entire thing.
I think not having audiences is a really really good decision. Removes the theatricality.
Biden should mostly avoid Trump's bullshit except for a few minor jabs to show he still has fight in him ("happy warrior"). The data and policy are on Biden's side, and he just needs to get it out there in the right way. Really, there are massive problems that can't be overcome: 1. People hate both of them (equally? somehow) 2. Biden is fighting against a fake reality in which the economy is awful, Biden was president in 2020, and Trump is such a terrible piece of shit that people have forgot just how shitty he is 3. Biden will stutter and during his sentences, I will be clenching my ass cheeks wondering if he is going to land it correctly
Regarding number 2, that's a losing gambit. The issue is the economy is terrible wrt housing. That's not something that's directly Bidens' fault but he can talk about the issue and how he would incentivize states to solve it.
What is going on here? Hill Dawg, the quintessential neoliberal shill is being relentless shat on by the comments here for some reason? How far has this sub fallen? To remind people, we didn't like Hilldawg because she was going to win. We liked her because of her policies, her grit, and her intelligence. We liked Biden because he was going to win, and while I am incredibly grateful that he did win, that doesn't stop the fact that I think Hill Dawg was a politician who would have been far better for America than Biden is.
This place was one of the few subreddit in 2016 that wasn't completely infested with conspiracy theories and election deniers, but that's been changing. I remember when Election Deniers were shat on regardless of whether they were glazing Trump or Bernie.
> I remember when Election Deniers were shat on regardless of whether they were glazing Trump or Bernie. FWIW, this is still a proud tradition in E_S_S
It's kind of become a one-issue pro-Israel sub in the last period though.
Let me clarify — the OG E\_S\_S got flooded with zoomers during Covid and I admit, the balance has definitely changed. Additionally, that sub has kind of unique dynamic where core sub activity is contained to the DT. Most of us rarely venture outside the DT — when it happens, we return with horrifying reports to the others about the Wild West that has overtaken outside the DT. So just to be completely clear, when I even mentioned E\_S\_S at all (both pre covid and now) I was only ever referring to the DT. So: within the DT—/ id disagree with that characterization. As far as anything outside the DT…. (GODDAMMIT WHY CANT I GIF?!??!! 😭😭)\[MariahCarey.Idontknowher.gif\] https://preview.redd.it/pqr3k47err8d1.jpeg?width=686&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=99b3955ac52ed113b5ce9f78f641e49afdce5ce3 You very well may be right. I’m in no position to take a position either way.
I don’t think people are attacking Hillary, they’re just rightfully pointing out that politicking was never her greatest skill. I’m sure an article from her on, say, diplomacy would be very well received.
I thought the same thing. This is the same woman who said she envisioned a hemispheric common market with open trade and open borders. This goddamn Clinton toxicity has no place here.
Honestly, losing to Trump is a really big deal. She could have been so much worse but if she beat him, her sins are washed away, she would have protected the country against a great evil. She didn't.
Hillary wouldn’t have been better for America because, fair or unfair, she would have been blocked at every step of the way in her administration. Biden has been effective in his own way because he was able to side step many of those road blocks. Hillary on paper, fine. Hillary with an obstructionist Congress, ineffective.
>Being president isn’t just a day job; it’s an everything-everywhere-all-at-once job Meme queen of 2016 is back
Deep state shibboleth
Its interesting to see that Clinton has learned nothing. Too much policy in this advice to Biden. She never really outlines how Biden can counter the outright lies Trump will throw out.
There's no advice to Biden in here. That's not the point of what she wrote. It's a piece endorsing Biden and advising Democrats on how to control the narrative *coming out of* the debate. Basically pre-empting all the inevitable dooming or knee-jerk reactions that will come from the media and pundits in the immediate aftermath. Her main point is directed to Democrats thinking about staying home in November or centrists who are on the fence: "Biden vs Trump is a clear and easy decision, and it will still be an easy decision regardless of what happens in the debate".
"Will you shut up man?" still good in my book.
"Keep yapping" was another touch of brilliance. He said what 60% of Americans were thinking.
The yapping was great. I think it came as Chris Wallace was wrapping up the segment and Biden quipped, "real productive...keep yapping, man" or something like that lmao
"Will you shutup" conveys force, the "man" conveys that Biden hasn't lost his cool or been affected by Trump's blathering
Can you counter his nonsense? I think it might be better to let him ramble about sharks than try and get into too much back and forth with him
That's the thing. Trump relies on lying and essentially "flooding the zone with shit" as Steve Bannon puts it. If anyone had come up with a counter to this that worked on the masses Trump would not even be the nominee and would not be on the stage.
The counter is to constantly belittle him so the public associates his claims with being a loser. Dems just don't have the gene for this.
obama did
Look at him, laugh, and just respond each time with, "anyway...".
We’re getting a live reaction from /politics: “Why is she speaking?!?!! Why didn’t she just hide in her home and never speak again?!??! Reeeeeeeee!!!! WOMAN!!!!!!! BAD!!!!!” Update: "Hillary Clinton should stay out of this election." "What makes Hillary think she could help things at all?" "You’re literally the last person on planet earth I would want advice from in an election."
Listening to the only person who lost to Donald Trump is a bad way to defeat Donald Trump
There's a saying that you learn more from failure than you do from success. I think it's way too broad of a generalization, but maybe it's applicable here?
Always been a bit of a silly statement to me. There was also a research paper came out that people vastly overstates their resiliency to failure. Failure is a good predictor of future failure. https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-xge0001610.pdf
Do you happen to remember the name of that paper?
Here ya go: https://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/releases/xge-xge0001610.pdf
What an incredibly depressing thing to read while studying for my qualification exam lol
The fear of failure is a powerful motivator.
Thanks 🙏
I hate it when people respond to a statistics paper with "Okay but did you account for (confounding variable that's impossible to measure but would negate the hypothesis)?". But unfortunately I'm gonna do it anyways: Maybe I missed it because I skimmed it, but it seems like this doesn't separate the people who try to learn from their failures from people who make no changes to their habits and try the same things over and over. It just looks at whether failure is a good predictor of subsequent failure for a list of different failure types. Repeat exam failures are one example: In undergrad, I very much saw people who changed their habits and improved, people who changed their habits but continued to fail, and people who could not figure out how to change their habits. I'm curious about the accuracy rate of "I failed because I did X, so you should do Y instead".
The paper itself brings up your valid critique. I will bring up 3 points: The paper's primary finding is that people generally overestimate how often failure leads to success. This overestimation exists regardless of whether some individuals do learn from failure. Even if some people learn effectively from failure, the overall trend of overestimation can still be valid. The study is largely about perception - how people view the likelihood of success after failure. This perception can be inaccurate even if some individuals do improve after failure. It’s a fair assessment I don’t think it invalidates the findings in the paper though on a population level.
Oops, I'm an idiot, you're right about the paper. The section on the "attention gap" appears to cover exactly what I was asking about.
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I would read more than the abstract. Your last point is kinda ridiculous look at how many people in politics fail and never do anything. You are simply using confirmation bias.
Biden learned from Obama’s failures 100%
>Listening to the only person who lost to Donald Trump is a bad way to defeat Donald Trump Why are people still in denial that Trump actually has political talent? He's not an easy candidate to beat for anyone, other than Obama who was an otherworldly politician. In the span of a few years, he literally completely took over one of the major US political parties. All his major opponents within the Party have been forced into retirement or successfully primaried. The policymakers have completely thrown the traditional Republican playbook out the window just for him. Major Republican donors have bent the knee and throw money into the Trump slush machine that pumps money into the family business. Rank and file Republican voters have become complete Trump loyalists I'm not saying he's an intelligent man, but he's clearly a political force of nature that's not unlike a Stalin. A small but significant core of devout followers can get a politician very far in a country like the US and its Electoral College.
Yeah. He shot up to first place from practically his first public appearance and has remained popular almost ten years later, after practically every major media outlet in the US has been publicizing every last one of his mistakes, shortcomings, and scandals. Being a buffoon in the right place at the right time could win you one election, but you can't just stumble into the repeated, sustained success he's had.
He's literally won only one general election, tho lol If he loses in November, I think it's safe to say he did luck into the presidency.
I'm still on the fence about whether (a.) he's got actual political talent or (b.) he's got an unbelievably-potent *brand name* and showed up right when the Republican Party was completely ripe for a free-fall into fascism, thanks to the Gen X and Boomers (two of the shittiest generations to ever exist) both being around at the same time. It feels like so little of the MAGA movement is about him as an actual person and that, instead, he's just a complete 'choose your own adventure' candidate that idiots everywhere can attach all sorts of fantasies/grievances to.
Aren't a bunch of young people moving towards Trump?
He’s not easy now, but beating Trump in 2016 should have been a cakewalk.
That was an extremely competitive Primary that he won, plus he kind of stumbled upon an extremely efficient electoral strategy with doubling down non-college educated white people aka the most powerful electorate in America, and he had the ability to reach out to them in ways that prior Republicans have not been.
Nah, I think historians will look back at the 2010s as an era of shifting political norms.
Can't be worse than listening to reflexively contrarian leftists online squeal about her. Like, you've had nearly a decade to have outgrown that tantrum.
Yes, yes, don’t listen to one of the most accomplished and intelligent women in not just American History, but History in general, because the deck was stacked against her.
ok but she lost lmao
So, are we all going to relentlessly dunk on President Biden if/when he loses come November to an even more unhinged and scandal plagued opponent than he was in 2016?
Gotta pass time in camps and I doubt they will let us keep our gaming rigs.
I mean, we either dunk on the losers or we admit that the American electorate is so stupid and shortsighted that ending Democracy was always as easy as promising lower grocery prices. So.....
Yeah probably
I laughed out loud.
https://preview.redd.it/vjzzo986kq8d1.png?width=546&format=png&auto=webp&s=5edc3a437df4f5848710010f838ceec3dfb112d5
I certainly hope people here would be critical of a man who ran for a second term despite being historically unpopular and 82 years of age, and then lost to someone he(rightly) believes to be a threat to American democracy.
Many people here refuse to even entertain the possibility that Biden may not be the second coming
No one thinks that lmao But we've all seen the polls where other Democrats do much worse head-to-head vs Trump than Biden. Even Newsom did worse in California vs Trump than Biden in polls. Risking Trump's reelection on the thought that the polling would improve enough for these candidates to drop the advantages that comes with incumbency was the issue. The reality is that if Biden loses in November, it's unlikely any Democrat would have won. But if Biden wins, I think there are plenty of Democrats who probably wouldn't. The truth is, there's some here who have spent two years bitching about Biden's age to the point that I've got to wonder if they'd rather lose with another Democrat than win with Biden.
Yes, absolutely. Anybody who lights a billion dollars on fire losing to Donald Trump deserves maximum dunking.
I can respect that sentiment then.
Eh, people don't dunk on Bernie after losing to both Hillary and Biden. I don't really respect the sentiment.
To be fair, losing to Hillary and Biden is a bit more respectable than losing to Trump
But Bernie lost to actual politicians, not a caricature of the worst aspects of conservatism. It's much less embarrassing to lose to people who are actually qualified/competent.
Mate you don't live inside Plato's republic, wake up and realise that Trump very much is an "actual politician", and the proportion of his kind of politician is consistently growing within the republican party.
I dunk on him already, so I can guarantee I’ll be dunking on him ruthlessly if he fumbles this election
>because the deck was stacked against her. How was it stacked against her? She was facing a scandal-plagued opponent. She led in most of the opinion polls and her campaign raised and spent way more money than Trump's. She was also supposed to have an advantage in the electoral college. No democratic candidate has lost the 'blue wall' in 30 years before she ran for office. She wasn't the underdog in the 2016 race. Saying the deck was stacked against her is ridiculous
The anti-Clinton cottage industry, misogyny, Russian election interference, and James Comey all come to mind.
She would have lost the primary that year if it was competitive because she had decades of baggage. The baggage was unfair, but it existed and was real. We wouldn’t have had a Trump presidency if Biden’s son hadn’t died and he ran that year.
She was a senator for a little over one term and SecState for 4 years. While impressive, it's *far* from "most accomplished in history."
that's hardly all her career has been, but I suppose I shouldn't expect better from a Friedman flair
It’s not everything but it’s definitely her most important positions/accomplishments.
Would you *really* say her resume has enough to make her one of the most accomplished women *in history*? I mean come on.
Bro. . . Is this serious? Perhaps you are unfamiliar with her resume if it is.
Some small things along the way that came with her formal titles…you know, little things like paving a path forward for women in American Politics to follow.
A path that starts with gaining political relevance by marrying a far better politician and ends with losing to Donald Trump
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What are you talking about? Trump decisively lost all three according to public polling of the time. https://www.cnn.com/2020/09/29/politics/2020-debate-trump-biden-2016/index.html
I mean, there’s also like 25 Republican primary candidates.
The greatest president we never had. The president we needed but didn't deserve
I love the queen's sassy snark here. It's a shame she didn't use some of that on the trail in 2016. Hindsight is 20/20. But given we live in a reality show, to my chagrin, you almost have to make voters laugh to establish rapport.
I'm trying to imagine an article that is more stereotypically NYT, and I'm having trouble.
Sooooo…do we not like HRC now?
I didn't say it was a negative stereotype. NYT is just living their truth.
The opening paragraph is crazyyyy >Last week, I had the time of my life at the Tony Awards introducing a song from “Suffs,” the Broadway musical I co-produced about the suffragists who won women the right to vote. I was thrilled when the show took home the awards for best original score and best book.
A New Yorker writing in a New York-based publication about a Broadway musical in New York? How out of touch!
Nobody claimed "out of touch", we claimed "stereotypically NYTimes", which you have now validated, thank you
What is your point? Why is it crazy that there'd be "stereotyically NYC things" in the NY Times?
because just when ya think they can't lean into the stereotypes any harder, they do
Your jealousy is showing 💅🙄
Yea, imagine enjoying culture, let alone the theatre…insane. I’d much rather hang out with MTG and the boys by the creek.
Nothing wrong with theater and culture. Youre missing the point. The paragraph is crazy bc it might be the most stereotypical NYT paragraph I've ever read, as the other commenter correctly pointed out
I mean, I kind of rolled my eyes at that opening paragraph. Oh, you hosted at the Tony Awards where a musical that you produced took home two awards. Cool, Hillary. Thanks for the update. Maybe we can leave the contrived ways for you to brag until after you impart your wisdom on the political landscape.
Hillary is still the queen
She was too good for this world, we didn't deserve her.
wait, would edmund burke like HRC..?
When compared to the alternatives? I think so.
i mean [burke had reactionary and sentimentalist instincts](https://archive.is/M9yWn) and so while he may be repulsed by some of Trump’s vulgarity and strong man bullshit, he also would probably struggle to stomach the left liberal egalitarianism / progressivism and bureaucratic managerialism of HRC. while it’s impossible to truly map his contextualized beliefs onto modern day politics, many people with similar instincts and backgrounds as him (christianity as basis for moral society, conservatism, status quo justifier) tend to fold into trump support as an acceptable, albeit distasteful means to superior ends (stopping liberalism, secularism, progressivism, etc). maybe he would be a third party never trumper, though, idk.
> Sooooo…do we not like HRC now? 🌎 👨🚀🔫👨🚀
#👉🚪
🧢
#SHE’S RUNNING!!!!!
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Here are three things to watch for in Thursday's debate. ***First, pay attention to how the candidates talk about people, not just policies.*** In his third debate against Hillary Clinton in 2016, Mr. Trump promised to appoint Supreme Court justices who would overturn Roe v. Wade. That became true. On Thursday, Mr. Trump will most likely say he wants to leave abortion to the states. He hopes that sounds moderate. But it really means he’s endorsing the most extreme abortion bans already imposed by many states and other extreme restrictions to come. Mr. Biden is one of the most empathetic leaders we’ve ever had. Listen to how sincerely he talks about women’s rights, the struggles of working families, opportunities for people of color and the courage of Ukrainian men and women risking their lives for democracy. Mr. Trump doesn't express empathy because he cares only about himself. ***Second, try to see through the bluster and focus on the fundamentals at stake.*** In the 2016 debates, Mr. Trump refused to say whether he would accept the results of the election. “I’ll keep you in suspense,” he said. “That is not the way our democracy works,” Mrs. Clinton responded. “Let’s be clear about what he’s saying and what that means.” You can draw a straight line from that exchange to the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. This time, expect Mr. Trump to blame Mr. Biden for inflation but avoid answering questions about his own economic plans. He has to deflect or lie because his proposals would exacerbate inflation, raise costs for American households and cause a recession. That’s not my prediction; it’s from Wall Street’s [Moody's Analytics](https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2024/06/20/biden-vs-trump-economy/74077301007/). Experts at the nonpartisan [Peterson Institute](https://www.piie.com/sites/default/files/2024-05/pb24-1.pdf) for International Economics estimated that ***Mr. Trump’s tariffs alone would mean, in effect, a $1,700 tax increase each year for the average American family*** — or more. For his part, Mr. Biden is clearly eager to talk about his plans to lower costs, and ***his success at taming inflation without a rise in unemployment.*** He has stood up to powerful pharmaceutical companies by capping the cost of insulin and signing a law to allow Medicare to negotiate prescription drug prices for the first time. These policies are good for working families. On Thursday, listen for plans to take on corporate price gouging and make gas, groceries and housing more affordable, and how to help young people get a strong start and afford a middle-class life. Trump, by contrast, will offer very little substance about policy. ***Third, when you see these two men side by side, think about the real choice in this election.*** Mr. Trump has been convicted of 34 felonies, found liable for sexual assault and financial fraud, and is awaiting trial on even more serious allegations. He’s spent a lifetime putting himself first. If he gets back to the White House, we’ll have more inflation and less freedom. It won’t just be a rerun of his first term. Since losing in 2020, Mr. Trump has become angrier and more unhinged. His former secretary of defense says he is “a threat to democracy.” His former chief of staff says he “has nothing but contempt for our democratic institutions, our Constitution and the rule of law.” Remember that on Thursday when you hear Mr. Trump ***recite his grievances and vow retribution.*** By contrast, Mr. Biden is a wise and decent man who, by the account of nearly everyone who works with him, is ***fighting hard for working families.*** Yes, he’s 81. That’s just three years older than Mr. Trump. And his lifetime of service and experience helps him get things done that make our country stronger and all of our lives better, from bringing Democrats and Republicans together to fixing crumbling roads and bridges to standing up to Russian aggression. [Source, slightly edited. Please copy-paste.](https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/25/opinion/hillary-clinton-trump-biden-debate.html?unlocked_article_code=1.2U0.P7HA.eM9Ge8R9tPSh&smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare&sgrp=c-cb)