Once I saw the moderators had no interest in fact-checking, I tuned out. Go get Kyle Clark, or Peter Alexander to moderate.
It just becomes a he-said, she-said thing -- constant put-downs back and forth, not worthy of anyone's time.
This was not a service to the American people.
**Presidential debates in the 60’s:**
“We can no longer afford to be second best. I want people all over the world to look to the United States again, to feel that we’re on the move, to feel that our high noon is in the future”
**Presidential debates in 2024:**
“You had sex with a pornstar”
“I did not have sex with a pornstar”
And are Trump’s lies a form of forgetting or just dissembling? Last night he said that doctors abort babies after birth, blamed Nancy Pelosi for January 6, said that he never slept with a porn star. I could go on. There’s probably an exhaustive list of his lies somewhere.
You don’t need to remember shit if you just make it all up based on the current vibes of what you are experiencing right at that moment. Trump has been word jazzing his whole life. He’s the most advanced racist LLM in existence.
What did Trump mean by “Black jobs?”
https://thehill.com/homenews/race-politics/4745183-black-americans-black-jobs-trump-biden-presidential-debate-cnn-atlanta-2024/amp/
The weirdest thing about the golf part is that it was actually fairly on-topic. IIRC they were asked if their old age/ health should be a concern and that led to trying to prove they can still play a sport.
In the past, time spent playing golf was something presidents have been criticized for. Now they think they have to prove that they can at least still do that. The bar is so low.
I would say the bar is on the floor, but I'm in the basement, and I found a hole the bar fell into, and I dropped a rock about a half hour ago and it still hasn't made a sound.
I somehow think that was worse than the porn star thing. It was so fucking childish and how long it went on from both of them was insane. These are our presidential candidates....
I forget what the topic was, but Biden said something completely incoherent, and Trumps response was, "I don't think he even knows what he's trying to say."
And I hate that Biden made me agree with Trump on something for the first time in my life.
Real talk though. Trump wins that bet if he has ever won anything. I would buy that PPV. Biden said no carts. That sealed his fate before the game has begun.
No, no. It was:
"you had sex with a porn start and sexually assaulted another woman (and like 5 other accusations because Biden suddenly realized where he was)"
"I did not have sex with a pornstar"
They lost the plot completely back when they hyped up 2012 and then nothing happened, and then tried to salvage it with the 2016 season and that thing with that weasel in the hadron particle collider causing everything to unravel.
In the years since our lord and saviour's murder at the hands of devils, I have been arrested, charged, and fully exonerated in a court of law no less than seventeen times on charges of public indecency. As soon as the judge asks me why I had my penis out at the supermarket/dog park/yoga studio/sushi restaurant/toys r us/etc. I simply answer: "Your honour... It was out for Harambe." Then I whip it out. Right in front of the judge. A tear forms in the judge's eye. "Dismissed. You magnificent bastard. Case dismissed!" Then he whips out his own massive, uncircumcised judicial dong and slaps it down in place of the gavel.
Seventeen times that's happened. Judges all over the land know the truth. They all know what that ape meant to us and what we lost with his passing.
And yes, my dick is currently out while typing this.
To be fair, none of the other people on the bus seem all that bothered by it. They're more upset that I'm typing this while driving. But I'm typing this for Harambe as well. And I think, deep down, all my passengers know that and they all appreciate it on some level.
Probably not the best comparison. I mean 62 was the election where the “hot” president won over the better debater, whom of which was involved with the OG supermodel bombshell that committed suicide under questionable circumstances.
Yeah, and 1960 also had its [election controversies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_United_States_presidential_election#Allegations_of_vote_fraud) to boot, so that was probably not the best historical presidential election to pick as an example.
I mean…sex scandals have been at the center of American politics for some time.
An early example was Thomas Jefferson’s affair with the slave woman Sally Hemings, which caused a ruckus as early as the 1790s. Political journalist James Callender made it popular enough as ridicule that it even became codified in [political cartoons.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Cock_ca1804_attrib_to_JamesAkin_AmericanAntiquarianSociety.png)
Yeah, I'm just thinking in the past 50ish years and you have JFK being a pretty well known but just not discussed philander and "I. Did not. Have sex. With that woman."
>She was 13 or 14 when he first began ~~having sex with~~ raping her
ftfy
He owned her. She could not consent because she could not deny. He raped her.
"Winning" two of his own golf tournaments.
https://eu.palmbeachpost.com/story/sports/2023/02/03/trump-and-golf-fancy-resorts-a-list-partners-cheating-at-highest-level/69857594007/
>*"Trump doesn’t just cheat at golf," Reilly wrote. "He throws it, boots it, and moves it. He lies about his lies. He fudges and foozles and fluffs. At Winged Foot, where Trump is a member, the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway they came up with a nickname for him: 'Pele.'”*
Biden: "You molested a woman and had sex with a pornstar."
Trump: "I never had sex with a pornstar!!
This is worse than Idiocracy's dystopian society.
The movie couldn't have imagined a presidential debate like this.
Yeah, I think this has wayyyy more to do with the low viewership numbers than the timing. People are generally so exhausted with how messy and stressful and scary things are, whichever way you lean, that they don’t want to engage. I’m going to vote and I’m going to encourage those I know to vote, but otherwise, I don’t have the energy to endure the drama and theatre around it all. I think the majority of people feel the same way.
I mentioned this in another thread a few days ago in response to a similar comment, but I really feel like reddit is becoming a more overall negative place lately. Not necessarily fear and contempt and hate and the kind of stuff you see on Twitter and elsewhere. Just...background static negativity. I see so many posts that are just variants of "what's something you dislike?"
Like, a sampling from /r/movies right now:
* "Sometimes the main character doesn't deserve to win the competition."
* Horrifying Nuclear War Movies
* Great movies with not so great titles?
There's nothing particularly bad about any of these, they're just have this vibe of like, "let's practice feeling bad about things", whether it's the thread of nuclear war or just movies with bad titles.
Negativity is much more effective in drawing in engagement.
There was a Youtube content creator that posted the same video twice, once with a very positive title and the other with a negative title and the video with the negative title had more than twice the amount of engagement.
Facebook also did a study years ago about this.
if they showed content that made people angry they would engage much more with the platform they found out.
For example a cute dog photo might get liked and maybe some comments but a photo of something you hate would get people really worked up so they left a comment, shared it to their friends so they would get angry too and just keep people going.
Yeah, I’ve perceived this too. I’ve started making a conscious effort not to engage in those types of posts. I don’t even open them. But honestly just seeing the post title is enough to point my brain in a negative direction.
Yeah, I finally quit Twitter/X because no amount of blocking or muting could quell how exhausting it was. I did it with Facebook years ago. Reddit is easier if I stick to just a few subreddits, but it still bleeds in. I really enjoy the fun, interesting things I learn about here, but I often feel like the end of the road is just deleting any and all social media. It’s unfortunate, as I’d prefer to just keep it for the things I want, but they intentionally make it harder and harder to truly eliminate the social programming from your experience.
Go into your account settings and disable "enable home feed recommendations". It won't put random recommended posts and subreddits in your feed anymore. Just subscribe to non-political subreddits related to interest, hobbies, etc and avoid the "popular" page.
I don’t know the last time I went on popular purposefully. Sometimes I’ll scroll it a bit on mobile when I accidentally switch over, but when I realize it’s not my feed a few posts in I switch back.
That and we know where these senile old fucks stand on things. Whats even the point of a debate other than to show everyone how boned we are because our government reached this point.
I think the hype of political/news media to make this more a boxing promotion than discussion of policy that concerns American citizens is a travesty.
The 2020 debate was an absolute shit show, but at least it was a calling of true colors between the two candidates and a moderator who actually checked the candidates on their bullshit.
Whatever the fuck that was last night was just a dumpster fire where two moderators gave Trump two minutes to spew bullshit unchecked and never answer a single question asked.
I'm not entirely sure Biden was even alive during the debate but giving a platform to someone who denied having an affair that was proven in a court of law to be true is fucking beyond me.
Same. I just don’t have the energy for the shitshow. There’s never anything important said at these, it’s just grandstanding.
If I felt like the debate was actually going to serve some purpose then sure, but a debate hasn’t actually swayed my leaning in my entire time alive. Usually we’re already well aware of where the candidates stand on issues, so I’m not going to tune in to watch them all beat a dead horse.
For real. I think a lot of people, moreso than in 2020, are locked in already and don't need a debate to solidify their opinion on the candidates.The old guy acted old and feeble and the slightly less old felon acted rude, hateful, and lied the whole time? We've already seen this one.
Also, personally I know who I have to vote for, it’s not like I need to see these two old fucks bitch at each other when season 3 of The Bear just dropped.
I didn't want to. but I did anyways because I wanted to see how bad is was going to be. And it was WAY worse then anything I could come up with in my head. Both Parties need to take a HARD HARD HARD look at themselves, and ask "is this the best we have? Or can we actually do BETTER?"
> If anyone out there has not made up their mind yet, I really don't know what to tell them.
There are immigrants and young people voting for the first time who maybe don't know everything they need to yet.
In addition to that, doesn't help that television as a whole has fallen in the streaming era, and it doesn't help that Biden and Trump have both been president. Like, we know what we're getting from both, know how both have been as president. Not really much reason to watch a debate because your mind is probably made up at this point. Like, either candidate could literally shit themselves on the debate stage and claim they see the angels calling them and chances are you aren't changing your mind to vote for the other.
Maybe it's because the networks/moderators don't control shock collars to force the debaters to actually answer the question asked. "Debates" aren't debates anymore, they are just two or more people rambling on about whatever they want to say in between calling the other people liars.
The most shocking thing to me about the debate was there are people who are still undecided about the whole thing. Like, who are these people who are old enough to vote but somehow born yesterday?
Don't think they're deciding between candidates, they're deciding if they should vote at all. And most of those people would be Biden votes so he's really gotta figure it out before the next debate.
Yeah but Trump is probably loving the reception to the debate last night. Especially since he's probably watching the conservative media praise him and go on about how bad Biden was. I don't think he'd be able to resist doing another one
Trump can lie 99% of the time and not answer a single question but almost no one is talking about Trump. Everyone is talking about how senile Biden is and that enough is a net win for Trump. It has nothing to do with ego stroking or listening to his yes-men.
Yeah, it's not often that we get to choose between two candidates who've both already been president. We know exactly what path their administrations will walk us down. How could anyone other than the ones with their heads *completely* buried in the sand be undecided?
I don’t want to give them a click but check out the NYtimes many many articles on “we talk with undecided voters about issue X.”
You think you have zero faith in the American electorate. I promise it can get worse.
I feel an important piece of context is that like 25% fewer people have cable then did in 2020, which accounts for 18 million fewer viewers even if the interest in the debates was identical. People are also able to do out and do things at this time, which is a change from 2020. Now having said that, there is clearly less interest in the presidential debates than there were 4 years ago.
Yeah. I think the "swing-voters" are not swinging between Trump or Biden, Trump is too polarizing for that. I think they are swinging between voting and not voting. If either side gets demoralized enough by things like this debate, they may just decide it is not worth showing up to vote.
If you have one candidate you oppose and another you don’t see as worth your time to vote for, you are essentially voting for the candidate you oppose. People are so dumb they can’t distinguish intent from impact.
Unfortunately, it seems like a decent number of Gen Z liberals are planning on abstaining or throwing away their vote because of Biden's stance on Palestine. Which is befuddling because Trump holds far more extremist views on that issue.
Trump spoke clearly but he was rambling complete nonsense. They kept having to ask him the same question over and over because he would immediately go off the rails.
Neither candidate should be running for president but hopefully there is enough voters that can see through Trump’s relentless fear mongering and blatant lies.
I was in awe of his response to climate change and what he'll do about it being how black voters love him and how Biden dislikes black people.
Glad I know what his stance on climate change is.
Also, I do note that thanks to how Trump answers (and thus controls the conversation) Biden's response to climate change was about black voters and about things being brought up like 2 prompts ago, which also weren't about the topics at hand.
The strategy does a ton for clips and sound bites, but it's absolutely ridiculous to have a debate where they can't even talk about the things being brought up.
He knows the media he needs to be friendly for him will just cut up his soundbytes, disregard the question, and create their own version of the debate out of it. He didn’t give a fuck about the questions. He just wants his snippets to be sending the message he wants.
Yeah, that's it. MAGA media is looking for sound bytes of Trump 'owning' the debate (read: yelling loudly about whatever his brain vomits in the moment) to spread around X, Truth Social, Fox, and Newsmax. If Trump shit himself during the debate they would turn it into "Trump shits on Biden!!!" headlines.
There's not a media outlet on the planet that said Biden was good in any capacity, at least being intellectually honest about it. As a Biden voter, it was a horror show of an old man who maybe a really good person and able to accomplish a lot during his term, but holy fuck... He looked fucking awful and senile as shit last night.
Don't get me wrong, I would smfor sure vote for Biden's corpse and/or ghost over Trump, but it just makes the case that Americans need to accept better representation within the parties.
A younger, better Biden would've been Mayor Pete. Half the age, better communicator, about the same policies. The contrast between Pete and fucking Trump would be a no-brainer in last night's debate.
This is why people have been saying for like 9 months that they needed to run literally any warm body other than Biden, because Trump will dogwalk his senile old ass.
And he did.
And we are all fucked because of it.
Any of the questions. When asked about Jan. 6th. His answer was that it was Pelosi's fault. When asked about Putin's terms he replied that Putin wouldnt have done it if he were president
They just need to have a big scoreboard between them. When you answer the question that was asked instead of pivoting, you get a point.
Trump wouldn't be able to resist.
>I was in awe of his response to climate change and what he'll do about it being how black voters love him and how Biden dislikes black people.
I am a faculty member at a university and I cover some politics with polls and focus groups. I was doing a focus group watch party in Michigan with about 60 undecided voters.
A lot of the undecided voters said they thought Trump seemed less unhinged but on key issues like climate change, African American topic, election he evaded some topics and talked more on a surface level just going after Biden.
For many of them...even though Biden didn't look good and sort of mumbled his way at times through answers...Trump didn't give them more confidence.
Genuinely curious but what's the demographic of these undecided voters? Are the majority old/young and had they voted for either or both candidates in the past?
I'm just surprised people are still on the fence after so long. Especially since we pretty much know what both candidates are about at this point
Yeah no problem.
>I'm just surprised people are still on the fence after so long. Especially since we pretty much know what both candidates are about at this point
Well..it's because these are two really disliked candidates. Michigan just dislikes both and doesn't approve either. This is what it is elsewhere especially swing states.
These are demographics of the 60 participants.
Male = 28
Female = 32
Age
18-34 = 10
35-48 = 23
49-60 = 22
61+ = 5
Race
White = 32
Black = 14
Latina = 8
Arab = 6
Voted for Joe Biden in 2020 = 34
Voted for Trump in 2020 = 18
Voted third party = 5
Voted for neither = 4
Voted for Trump in 2016 = 26
Voted for HIllary Clinton in 2016 = 18
Voted third party = 12
Voted for neither = 4
Independent = 26
Registered Democrat = 20
Register Republican = 12
Libertarian = 2
I am in Wisconsin today to do some more focus groups, tomorrow in Pennsylvania, and Sunday in Nevada.
Wow very interesting stuff. I’m surprised by how many people went 3rd party in 2016, that seems like a huge number. Then the drop in that number in 2020 seems to suggest quite a few of them might’ve seen it as a mistake
I’m not even American but I hate how everything is stacked against Biden and the Democrats.
Trump has so much genuinely awful shit to his name including sexual assaults, rapes, criminal convictions, and the worst Presidency in US history that it has all become _normal_ with him. Trump being an audacious, wannabe dictator piece of shit is his baseline, so it isn’t treated as anything special.
Therefore, all of that gets glossed over and the entire narrative post-debate has been Biden’s shit performance. It’s insane.
People 100% watched this to see a slow motion car crash.
There was nothing either candidate could say that was going to sway any single one of those viewers.
Yeah. I didn't bother watching but did 4 years ago.
They both have 3+ years on the job. Politicians' words are cheap. Their performance on the job matters more, and we have that record.
Was there really a reason to watch?
The two-party system in American politics SUCKS.
Republicans have become increasingly authoritative and cult-like liars pushing culture wars and fear. The Democrats have popular ideas and policies, but their leadership is elitist and not keeping up with the times. They desperately need younger leadership.
Any other Democratic candidate would have called out Trump's lies about the 2020 election and the damage he's caused in the nation's faith in our system of government, his dereliction of duty on January 6th, stealing top secret classified documents, his administration's botched pandemic response, and Trump's divisive and psychotic personality. Instead, the world and American voters saw a frail, incoherent, and unsure President Biden incapable of making the case that he's still a viable option for the highest office in the land.
The Dems must choose a youthful and energetic candidate to drive voter turnout this November. Joe Biden needs to drop out gracefully ASAP.
God help us.
Yeah he got his mic cut off after that one, but what made it kinda funnier is he said “by the way” like 3 times in that response, and the last one got cut off lol
Probably because all the dems turned it off and started crying and calling their loved ones after the president zoned out for the third time in the first ten minutes…Biden needs to go relax and enjoy the last months of his life, this man’s legacy is going to be remembered as what we witnessed on the podium last night. And that’s fucked up I don’t care who you are…
I'm guessing that doesn't factor in the people without cable. The CNN stream was free on YouTube and had over 8 million viewers. Plus other networks had the same stream on their channels as well.
I got to about 40 minutes in before I realized neither candidate is fit to run a local Dollar General, let alone the entire country.
Didn't see the full debate.
This was elder abuse. Biden’s team should be prosecuted. That man should be with his grandkids enjoying his later years of life, not being paraded around like a Weekend At Bernie’s skit.
I think the reason why ratings are so much lower is because everybody has made up their minds. These are the same candidates that ran 4 years ago and both have been President, if you’re undecided that’s on you.
pretty simple. The vast majority of people wouldnt change their vote regardless of almost anything. Combined with the fact we already know where these two stand on everything. Only reason to watch was pure entertainment. And thats what twitter clips are for.
I bet my friend the ratings were going to be terrible for this. Everyone knows who they're voting for. They both say things that make absolutely no sense. Unless they're removed from the ballot, I'm going to vote for the people the next president will surround himself with and hope to god this is the last election we have with two candidates born in the 40s.
Once I learned CNN was going to put commercials in the middle of their “exclusive debate”
I realized what this was all about ( and why the election cycle has been pushed to 4 years non stop)
The narrative CNN pushed was to get as many viewers across the whole political spectrum to watch this thing. It was not about presenting people with uncomfortable truths.
Wonder what the percentage of people was that turned in for five minutes, said “I can’t watch this shit”, and turned it off
Guilty
Me too
Same
Yuuup, same here. Disgraceful that a presidential debate is just completely unwatchable.
DNC trying to save their job by forcing Biden to continue.
The RNC *isn’t* doing that??
I watched the middle 30 minutes. Painful. Either hear the hoarse old man or the lively lies. Couldn’t take it
Once I saw the moderators had no interest in fact-checking, I tuned out. Go get Kyle Clark, or Peter Alexander to moderate. It just becomes a he-said, she-said thing -- constant put-downs back and forth, not worthy of anyone's time. This was not a service to the American people.
I kept walking out of the room, it was rough
**Presidential debates in the 60’s:** “We can no longer afford to be second best. I want people all over the world to look to the United States again, to feel that we’re on the move, to feel that our high noon is in the future” **Presidential debates in 2024:** “You had sex with a pornstar” “I did not have sex with a pornstar”
You forgot comparing their golf game
I forgot many things
I trauma blocked that debate
I avoided it all together to protect my mental health.
You were the only winner of that debate.
I did the same! It was the only smart move.
I didn’t avoid it at first, my brain broke and I turned it off after 20min, went to the grocery store to buy Cheez-Its and cheap beer. I felt better.
Yeah drinking didn't help...
Same. Watched Orioles/Rangers, then YouTube videos.
I want to forget more.
So did Joe, sadly.
And are Trump’s lies a form of forgetting or just dissembling? Last night he said that doctors abort babies after birth, blamed Nancy Pelosi for January 6, said that he never slept with a porn star. I could go on. There’s probably an exhaustive list of his lies somewhere.
You don’t need to remember shit if you just make it all up based on the current vibes of what you are experiencing right at that moment. Trump has been word jazzing his whole life. He’s the most advanced racist LLM in existence.
What did Trump mean by “Black jobs?” https://thehill.com/homenews/race-politics/4745183-black-americans-black-jobs-trump-biden-presidential-debate-cnn-atlanta-2024/amp/
Without reading that, trump didn’t mean shit, “job” was just the highest probability score word to follow “black” within the context of the moment.
calling someone an LLM is nasty work lol
>And are Trump’s lies a form of forgetting or just dissembling? It's fanfic from his own brain
Compulsive liars don't usually care enough to bother remembering their lies. It's just word vomit.
The weirdest thing about the golf part is that it was actually fairly on-topic. IIRC they were asked if their old age/ health should be a concern and that led to trying to prove they can still play a sport. In the past, time spent playing golf was something presidents have been criticized for. Now they think they have to prove that they can at least still do that. The bar is so low.
I would say the bar is on the floor, but I'm in the basement, and I found a hole the bar fell into, and I dropped a rock about a half hour ago and it still hasn't made a sound.
The debate somehow was held in the Kola Superdeep Borehole.
Wasn't the golf part a retort to the question about rising childcare costs though, and they were just stuck on the previous question?
The entire debate seemed to be one topic behind because they wanted to last one on them.
In 2048, they’ll be comparing their Fortnite game
I somehow think that was worse than the porn star thing. It was so fucking childish and how long it went on from both of them was insane. These are our presidential candidates....
And they were dead serious too
It was the only part they seemingly cared about. Like they both dropped their 'political front' when their golf game came into question.
Trump of all people had to say lets stop being childish
I forget what the topic was, but Biden said something completely incoherent, and Trumps response was, "I don't think he even knows what he's trying to say." And I hate that Biden made me agree with Trump on something for the first time in my life.
When biden says “we beat medicaid” trump said yeah you did beat it into the ground.
I tuned in, trump claimed dems were promoting post-birth abortions and Biden said he beat Medicade and I turned it right back off. Wtf!
And then Biden responded with the ol' "you're a child" lol
The golf argument was the single best 45 seconds of live tv I have ever watched. I was soooooooo high and just howling
1v1 me 18 holes, 9 irons only, no caddies
Real talk though. Trump wins that bet if he has ever won anything. I would buy that PPV. Biden said no carts. That sealed his fate before the game has begun.
I still wanna know if Biden really is a 6 handicap.
It would mean being in the top 9% of golfers or just below pro level, so absolutely not
Apparently it’s true https://athlonsports.com/golf/joe-biden-official-handicap-shocks-golf-world-after-us-presidential-debate
His last registered handicap I believe was a 6.7. So yeah, he was telling the truth.
Does it even count from the senior tees?
No, no. It was: "you had sex with a porn start and sexually assaulted another woman (and like 5 other accusations because Biden suddenly realized where he was)" "I did not have sex with a pornstar"
“You have the morals of an alley cat…” Trump cannot deny that! 🤣
"Why you didn't denied the second part?"
The simple answer to that is he's trying not to get sued again and lose even more money.
He's never worried about that before.
I hate this timeline.
The writers are just terrible. Trump and Biden have been Flandernized so much in the recent season. What happened to subtlelty in writing?
This show jumped the shark when Trump got Covid
They just don't know when to kill off their characters
someone call George RR Martin, he knows how to trim down characters.
I think it jumped the shark with Trump’s election. It stopped making any sense.
They lost the plot completely back when they hyped up 2012 and then nothing happened, and then tried to salvage it with the 2016 season and that thing with that weasel in the hadron particle collider causing everything to unravel.
They shouldn't have killed that damn gorilla, Harambe was the linchpin of stability in this universe.
Nah, it was that damn weasel that shorted out the large hadron collider in 2012.
Could be either, could be both.
In the years since our lord and saviour's murder at the hands of devils, I have been arrested, charged, and fully exonerated in a court of law no less than seventeen times on charges of public indecency. As soon as the judge asks me why I had my penis out at the supermarket/dog park/yoga studio/sushi restaurant/toys r us/etc. I simply answer: "Your honour... It was out for Harambe." Then I whip it out. Right in front of the judge. A tear forms in the judge's eye. "Dismissed. You magnificent bastard. Case dismissed!" Then he whips out his own massive, uncircumcised judicial dong and slaps it down in place of the gavel. Seventeen times that's happened. Judges all over the land know the truth. They all know what that ape meant to us and what we lost with his passing. And yes, my dick is currently out while typing this. To be fair, none of the other people on the bus seem all that bothered by it. They're more upset that I'm typing this while driving. But I'm typing this for Harambe as well. And I think, deep down, all my passengers know that and they all appreciate it on some level.
That's definitely some copypasta I'm going to need to keep on tap, just in case. 10/10
Put on a goatee and shut up.
You have the morals of an Alley Cat Alley Cats everywhere are insulted.
Probably not the best comparison. I mean 62 was the election where the “hot” president won over the better debater, whom of which was involved with the OG supermodel bombshell that committed suicide under questionable circumstances.
>whom of which If you were going for articulate, near miss.
Ergo, quid pro quo thusly.
Not to be mean cause it’s obviously well meaning, but man does this sentence hurt to read
Yeah, and 1960 also had its [election controversies](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1960_United_States_presidential_election#Allegations_of_vote_fraud) to boot, so that was probably not the best historical presidential election to pick as an example.
I think you mean 1960; 1962 was the mid-terms. At the time, a lot of people didn't have TVs and listened to that on the radio - Nixon won among them.
I mean…sex scandals have been at the center of American politics for some time. An early example was Thomas Jefferson’s affair with the slave woman Sally Hemings, which caused a ruckus as early as the 1790s. Political journalist James Callender made it popular enough as ridicule that it even became codified in [political cartoons.](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Cock_ca1804_attrib_to_JamesAkin_AmericanAntiquarianSociety.png)
Yeah, I'm just thinking in the past 50ish years and you have JFK being a pretty well known but just not discussed philander and "I. Did not. Have sex. With that woman."
Jefferson's rape of a slave girl*** She was 13 or 14 when he first began having sex with her.
Even if she was of age I don't see how a slave owner having sex with a slave could be anything else but rape.
>She was 13 or 14 when he first began ~~having sex with~~ raping her ftfy He owned her. She could not consent because she could not deny. He raped her.
Paid off the porn star and didn't even have sex with her. Stable genius. Don't forget bragging about cognitive exams
"Winning" two of his own golf tournaments. https://eu.palmbeachpost.com/story/sports/2023/02/03/trump-and-golf-fancy-resorts-a-list-partners-cheating-at-highest-level/69857594007/ >*"Trump doesn’t just cheat at golf," Reilly wrote. "He throws it, boots it, and moves it. He lies about his lies. He fudges and foozles and fluffs. At Winged Foot, where Trump is a member, the caddies got so used to seeing him kick his ball back onto the fairway they came up with a nickname for him: 'Pele.'”*
Biden: "You molested a woman and had sex with a pornstar." Trump: "I never had sex with a pornstar!! This is worse than Idiocracy's dystopian society. The movie couldn't have imagined a presidential debate like this.
I bet the timing is a big part of it. This debate was so early, neither of them are even officially nominated yet.
People are also sick of this shit and sick of how much this country/society has fallen. Like, who wants to actually sit and watch this?
Yeah, I think this has wayyyy more to do with the low viewership numbers than the timing. People are generally so exhausted with how messy and stressful and scary things are, whichever way you lean, that they don’t want to engage. I’m going to vote and I’m going to encourage those I know to vote, but otherwise, I don’t have the energy to endure the drama and theatre around it all. I think the majority of people feel the same way.
[удалено]
I mentioned this in another thread a few days ago in response to a similar comment, but I really feel like reddit is becoming a more overall negative place lately. Not necessarily fear and contempt and hate and the kind of stuff you see on Twitter and elsewhere. Just...background static negativity. I see so many posts that are just variants of "what's something you dislike?" Like, a sampling from /r/movies right now: * "Sometimes the main character doesn't deserve to win the competition." * Horrifying Nuclear War Movies * Great movies with not so great titles? There's nothing particularly bad about any of these, they're just have this vibe of like, "let's practice feeling bad about things", whether it's the thread of nuclear war or just movies with bad titles.
Negativity is much more effective in drawing in engagement. There was a Youtube content creator that posted the same video twice, once with a very positive title and the other with a negative title and the video with the negative title had more than twice the amount of engagement.
Facebook also did a study years ago about this. if they showed content that made people angry they would engage much more with the platform they found out. For example a cute dog photo might get liked and maybe some comments but a photo of something you hate would get people really worked up so they left a comment, shared it to their friends so they would get angry too and just keep people going.
Yeah, I’ve perceived this too. I’ve started making a conscious effort not to engage in those types of posts. I don’t even open them. But honestly just seeing the post title is enough to point my brain in a negative direction.
Unsubscribe to news/politics subreddits and you will feel way better. I did the same.
Yeah, I finally quit Twitter/X because no amount of blocking or muting could quell how exhausting it was. I did it with Facebook years ago. Reddit is easier if I stick to just a few subreddits, but it still bleeds in. I really enjoy the fun, interesting things I learn about here, but I often feel like the end of the road is just deleting any and all social media. It’s unfortunate, as I’d prefer to just keep it for the things I want, but they intentionally make it harder and harder to truly eliminate the social programming from your experience.
Go into your account settings and disable "enable home feed recommendations". It won't put random recommended posts and subreddits in your feed anymore. Just subscribe to non-political subreddits related to interest, hobbies, etc and avoid the "popular" page.
I don’t know the last time I went on popular purposefully. Sometimes I’ll scroll it a bit on mobile when I accidentally switch over, but when I realize it’s not my feed a few posts in I switch back.
Join r/lego. Everything there is awesome.
That and we know where these senile old fucks stand on things. Whats even the point of a debate other than to show everyone how boned we are because our government reached this point.
I think the hype of political/news media to make this more a boxing promotion than discussion of policy that concerns American citizens is a travesty. The 2020 debate was an absolute shit show, but at least it was a calling of true colors between the two candidates and a moderator who actually checked the candidates on their bullshit. Whatever the fuck that was last night was just a dumpster fire where two moderators gave Trump two minutes to spew bullshit unchecked and never answer a single question asked. I'm not entirely sure Biden was even alive during the debate but giving a platform to someone who denied having an affair that was proven in a court of law to be true is fucking beyond me.
Same. I just don’t have the energy for the shitshow. There’s never anything important said at these, it’s just grandstanding. If I felt like the debate was actually going to serve some purpose then sure, but a debate hasn’t actually swayed my leaning in my entire time alive. Usually we’re already well aware of where the candidates stand on issues, so I’m not going to tune in to watch them all beat a dead horse.
For real. I think a lot of people, moreso than in 2020, are locked in already and don't need a debate to solidify their opinion on the candidates.The old guy acted old and feeble and the slightly less old felon acted rude, hateful, and lied the whole time? We've already seen this one.
Yeah, it's like "oh great, these two again, fucking hell I thought we were done with this shit last time"
Also, personally I know who I have to vote for, it’s not like I need to see these two old fucks bitch at each other when season 3 of The Bear just dropped.
Oh shit good call out, friend.
Jay Sherman... what do you think about the future of our country given the two options? "it Stinks"
Yes, Mr. Sherman, everything stinks.
I didn't want to. but I did anyways because I wanted to see how bad is was going to be. And it was WAY worse then anything I could come up with in my head. Both Parties need to take a HARD HARD HARD look at themselves, and ask "is this the best we have? Or can we actually do BETTER?"
I didn't watch it because it's the sequel nobody wanted. If anyone out there has not made up their mind yet, I really don't know what to tell them.
> If anyone out there has not made up their mind yet, I really don't know what to tell them. There are immigrants and young people voting for the first time who maybe don't know everything they need to yet.
Also probably because 99% of the country already made up their mind who they’ll be voting for
In addition to that, doesn't help that television as a whole has fallen in the streaming era, and it doesn't help that Biden and Trump have both been president. Like, we know what we're getting from both, know how both have been as president. Not really much reason to watch a debate because your mind is probably made up at this point. Like, either candidate could literally shit themselves on the debate stage and claim they see the angels calling them and chances are you aren't changing your mind to vote for the other.
Everyone was also locked at home during covid.
2020 was down from 2016.
Oh ok. Then idk.
Probably less live TV viewership because more people will watch online, watch highlights or use social media for a breakdown instead.
Maybe it's because the networks/moderators don't control shock collars to force the debaters to actually answer the question asked. "Debates" aren't debates anymore, they are just two or more people rambling on about whatever they want to say in between calling the other people liars.
The most shocking thing to me about the debate was there are people who are still undecided about the whole thing. Like, who are these people who are old enough to vote but somehow born yesterday?
Ken Bones
BONE ZONE
Beautiful human submarines
Im friends w him on Nintendo switch lol
Don't think they're deciding between candidates, they're deciding if they should vote at all. And most of those people would be Biden votes so he's really gotta figure it out before the next debate.
There probably won’t be a next debate
There kinda has to be now. I doubt Biden wants to have this one be the one remembered.
and its in Trumps best interest to not have another. Likely they will just have a Biden Town Hall after T bails.
Yeah but Trump is probably loving the reception to the debate last night. Especially since he's probably watching the conservative media praise him and go on about how bad Biden was. I don't think he'd be able to resist doing another one
Trump can lie 99% of the time and not answer a single question but almost no one is talking about Trump. Everyone is talking about how senile Biden is and that enough is a net win for Trump. It has nothing to do with ego stroking or listening to his yes-men.
Biden has likely already forgotten it
Yeah, it's not often that we get to choose between two candidates who've both already been president. We know exactly what path their administrations will walk us down. How could anyone other than the ones with their heads *completely* buried in the sand be undecided?
I don’t want to give them a click but check out the NYtimes many many articles on “we talk with undecided voters about issue X.” You think you have zero faith in the American electorate. I promise it can get worse.
Oh I lost faith in the American electorate 20 years ago when they gave Dubya another term.
I feel an important piece of context is that like 25% fewer people have cable then did in 2020, which accounts for 18 million fewer viewers even if the interest in the debates was identical. People are also able to do out and do things at this time, which is a change from 2020. Now having said that, there is clearly less interest in the presidential debates than there were 4 years ago.
Also even the people who didn’t cut cable can still watch it on streaming instead of
But it was free over the air on all the major networks. Gen Z doesn't seem to know there's free tv over the air with a cheap antenna.
Yes!! I live in the middle of nowhere and get 87 channels with a cheap ass antenna. I want to say half of those are crystal clear HD, too.
It was live streamed on YouTube and to like 2 million people of CNN's broadcast, and then I seen some streamers do watchalongs.
That’s not why people didn’t watch it. It’s because it makes them sick to their stomach
Everyone decided back in 2020 who to vote for.
Yeah. I think the "swing-voters" are not swinging between Trump or Biden, Trump is too polarizing for that. I think they are swinging between voting and not voting. If either side gets demoralized enough by things like this debate, they may just decide it is not worth showing up to vote.
If you have one candidate you oppose and another you don’t see as worth your time to vote for, you are essentially voting for the candidate you oppose. People are so dumb they can’t distinguish intent from impact.
Hopefully that doesn't change and the turn out is the same but I'm worried it's not.
Unfortunately, it seems like a decent number of Gen Z liberals are planning on abstaining or throwing away their vote because of Biden's stance on Palestine. Which is befuddling because Trump holds far more extremist views on that issue.
Trump spoke clearly but he was rambling complete nonsense. They kept having to ask him the same question over and over because he would immediately go off the rails. Neither candidate should be running for president but hopefully there is enough voters that can see through Trump’s relentless fear mongering and blatant lies.
What, you weren't happy with his fix to social security being "Biden should fire more people"?
I was in awe of his response to climate change and what he'll do about it being how black voters love him and how Biden dislikes black people. Glad I know what his stance on climate change is. Also, I do note that thanks to how Trump answers (and thus controls the conversation) Biden's response to climate change was about black voters and about things being brought up like 2 prompts ago, which also weren't about the topics at hand. The strategy does a ton for clips and sound bites, but it's absolutely ridiculous to have a debate where they can't even talk about the things being brought up.
Trump didn’t answer many of the questions posed to him.
He knows the media he needs to be friendly for him will just cut up his soundbytes, disregard the question, and create their own version of the debate out of it. He didn’t give a fuck about the questions. He just wants his snippets to be sending the message he wants.
Yeah, that's it. MAGA media is looking for sound bytes of Trump 'owning' the debate (read: yelling loudly about whatever his brain vomits in the moment) to spread around X, Truth Social, Fox, and Newsmax. If Trump shit himself during the debate they would turn it into "Trump shits on Biden!!!" headlines. There's not a media outlet on the planet that said Biden was good in any capacity, at least being intellectually honest about it. As a Biden voter, it was a horror show of an old man who maybe a really good person and able to accomplish a lot during his term, but holy fuck... He looked fucking awful and senile as shit last night. Don't get me wrong, I would smfor sure vote for Biden's corpse and/or ghost over Trump, but it just makes the case that Americans need to accept better representation within the parties. A younger, better Biden would've been Mayor Pete. Half the age, better communicator, about the same policies. The contrast between Pete and fucking Trump would be a no-brainer in last night's debate.
This is why people have been saying for like 9 months that they needed to run literally any warm body other than Biden, because Trump will dogwalk his senile old ass. And he did. And we are all fucked because of it.
Any of the questions. When asked about Jan. 6th. His answer was that it was Pelosi's fault. When asked about Putin's terms he replied that Putin wouldnt have done it if he were president
But he did single handedly save the entire state of Minnesota from complete disaster!
They just need to have a big scoreboard between them. When you answer the question that was asked instead of pivoting, you get a point. Trump wouldn't be able to resist.
>I was in awe of his response to climate change and what he'll do about it being how black voters love him and how Biden dislikes black people. I am a faculty member at a university and I cover some politics with polls and focus groups. I was doing a focus group watch party in Michigan with about 60 undecided voters. A lot of the undecided voters said they thought Trump seemed less unhinged but on key issues like climate change, African American topic, election he evaded some topics and talked more on a surface level just going after Biden. For many of them...even though Biden didn't look good and sort of mumbled his way at times through answers...Trump didn't give them more confidence.
Genuinely curious but what's the demographic of these undecided voters? Are the majority old/young and had they voted for either or both candidates in the past? I'm just surprised people are still on the fence after so long. Especially since we pretty much know what both candidates are about at this point
Yeah no problem. >I'm just surprised people are still on the fence after so long. Especially since we pretty much know what both candidates are about at this point Well..it's because these are two really disliked candidates. Michigan just dislikes both and doesn't approve either. This is what it is elsewhere especially swing states. These are demographics of the 60 participants. Male = 28 Female = 32 Age 18-34 = 10 35-48 = 23 49-60 = 22 61+ = 5 Race White = 32 Black = 14 Latina = 8 Arab = 6 Voted for Joe Biden in 2020 = 34 Voted for Trump in 2020 = 18 Voted third party = 5 Voted for neither = 4 Voted for Trump in 2016 = 26 Voted for HIllary Clinton in 2016 = 18 Voted third party = 12 Voted for neither = 4 Independent = 26 Registered Democrat = 20 Register Republican = 12 Libertarian = 2 I am in Wisconsin today to do some more focus groups, tomorrow in Pennsylvania, and Sunday in Nevada.
Wow very interesting stuff. I’m surprised by how many people went 3rd party in 2016, that seems like a huge number. Then the drop in that number in 2020 seems to suggest quite a few of them might’ve seen it as a mistake
Almost every question he was asked got an immigration rant as an answer, no matter how irrelevant.
I’m not even American but I hate how everything is stacked against Biden and the Democrats. Trump has so much genuinely awful shit to his name including sexual assaults, rapes, criminal convictions, and the worst Presidency in US history that it has all become _normal_ with him. Trump being an audacious, wannabe dictator piece of shit is his baseline, so it isn’t treated as anything special. Therefore, all of that gets glossed over and the entire narrative post-debate has been Biden’s shit performance. It’s insane.
Volunteer at your local nursing home, if you want to see the same thing in-person.
Can’t believe there are 48M people who felt they needed to see this
I started watching it out of morbid curiosity and had to stop. Felt sick.
gotta update their meme library
People 100% watched this to see a slow motion car crash. There was nothing either candidate could say that was going to sway any single one of those viewers.
Yeah. I didn't bother watching but did 4 years ago. They both have 3+ years on the job. Politicians' words are cheap. Their performance on the job matters more, and we have that record. Was there really a reason to watch?
To watch a train wreck in motion
The two-party system in American politics SUCKS. Republicans have become increasingly authoritative and cult-like liars pushing culture wars and fear. The Democrats have popular ideas and policies, but their leadership is elitist and not keeping up with the times. They desperately need younger leadership. Any other Democratic candidate would have called out Trump's lies about the 2020 election and the damage he's caused in the nation's faith in our system of government, his dereliction of duty on January 6th, stealing top secret classified documents, his administration's botched pandemic response, and Trump's divisive and psychotic personality. Instead, the world and American voters saw a frail, incoherent, and unsure President Biden incapable of making the case that he's still a viable option for the highest office in the land. The Dems must choose a youthful and energetic candidate to drive voter turnout this November. Joe Biden needs to drop out gracefully ASAP. God help us.
Shouldn’t this be about the time where we have viable Gen X candidates running? Is that entire generation so checked out that *no one* wants the job?
I dont know how people were able to sit through that whole thing. Two expired old farts rambling and barely making sense
It was best watched as a comedy. Not lying we were laughing like we were watching SNL or some shit
SNL can't write anything this funny. In fact, they will parody the debate tomorrow night, and it won't be half as funny.
Tbf they are almost never funny in general.
I lost it when Biden said, “and by the way…” then nothing.
Yeah he got his mic cut off after that one, but what made it kinda funnier is he said “by the way” like 3 times in that response, and the last one got cut off lol
Probably because all the dems turned it off and started crying and calling their loved ones after the president zoned out for the third time in the first ten minutes…Biden needs to go relax and enjoy the last months of his life, this man’s legacy is going to be remembered as what we witnessed on the podium last night. And that’s fucked up I don’t care who you are…
I think if you watched part of it but turned it off, it still counts as a watch
If by some miracle he wins, he is 100% going to die in office.
I've had people tell me that a vote for Biden is a vote for Harris, and I used to always push back - but now I'm starting to believe them.
I'm guessing that doesn't factor in the people without cable. The CNN stream was free on YouTube and had over 8 million viewers. Plus other networks had the same stream on their channels as well.
I got to about 40 minutes in before I realized neither candidate is fit to run a local Dollar General, let alone the entire country. Didn't see the full debate.
This was elder abuse. Biden’s team should be prosecuted. That man should be with his grandkids enjoying his later years of life, not being paraded around like a Weekend At Bernie’s skit.
People don't like repeats.
Sequel fatigue is real.
15M of those views were TVs at gyms that nobody was paying attention to
I think the reason why ratings are so much lower is because everybody has made up their minds. These are the same candidates that ran 4 years ago and both have been President, if you’re undecided that’s on you.
I avoided it like the plague. Even just thinking about these two pudding-brained troglodytes yelling at each other makes me die of embarrassment.
Biden please just drop out and let somebody else run.
4 months before the election? Don’t get me wrong, I totally agree.. But god damn. The DNC really fucked up..
I think most people have been saying that for months, maybe even a year.
pretty simple. The vast majority of people wouldnt change their vote regardless of almost anything. Combined with the fact we already know where these two stand on everything. Only reason to watch was pure entertainment. And thats what twitter clips are for.
I bet my friend the ratings were going to be terrible for this. Everyone knows who they're voting for. They both say things that make absolutely no sense. Unless they're removed from the ballot, I'm going to vote for the people the next president will surround himself with and hope to god this is the last election we have with two candidates born in the 40s.
How are you not decided by now. For the SCOTUS picks alone.
Well this is the best news I’ve heard about the debate since the debate.
That’s probably for the best
Well I certainly feel that low viewership was a good thing on this one
I saw two old people at the bus stop yelling at each other. I felt I got the gist of the debate last night
Hopefully the 73M don't pay for cable.
At this point, I think most people have already made there decisions. Its not like we don't know anything about either candidate.
Once I learned CNN was going to put commercials in the middle of their “exclusive debate” I realized what this was all about ( and why the election cycle has been pushed to 4 years non stop) The narrative CNN pushed was to get as many viewers across the whole political spectrum to watch this thing. It was not about presenting people with uncomfortable truths.