Posted on 09/30/2020 6:21:08 AM PDT by lasereye
President Trump came into Tuesday night’s debate trailing both nationally and in key battleground states. The debate gave him the largest audience of the campaign and provided him the first real opportunity to press his case against Joe Biden and shake up the race. Instead, it ended up as a blown opportunity.
Right out of the gate, Trump pursued an aggressive strategy of interrupting Biden, speaking over moderator Chris Wallace, and launching a flurry of attacks.
At first, one could perhaps see a method to his madness, as Biden seemed frustrated and rattled. At one point, an exasperated Biden snapped, “Shut up, man!”
As the debate wore on, however, the constant cross-talk and interruptions and arguments with Wallace overshadowed the debate. Nobody will remember any of the actual details of the debate. They will just remember it being a chaotic mess.
In all of his interruptions, Trump, despite his reputation for being a master at messaging over the TV medium, lost chances to damage Biden. He often set up attacks only to fall back into repeating phrases that didn’t communicate to outsiders what he was talking about.
Trump, if he had one goal, was to establish that Biden, despite his centrist image, would ultimately be beholden to the radical Left. However, he never clearly explained this point.
For example, when he said that Biden would usher in socialized medicine and lead 180 million people to lose health coverage, he didn’t offer details. Had he taken a breath, he may have been able to point out that Biden’s running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, explicitly said during the primary that she wanted to eliminate private coverage. Or, Trump could have explained how the purpose of Biden’s plan to add a government-run “public option” to Obamacare is to migrate to a socialized health insurance system over time. Instead, Trump just started shouting about socialism.
Biden, explaining his plan, falsely claimed that his public option was only limited to those poor enough to qualify for Medicaid. “Anyone who qualifies for Medicaid would automatically be enrolled in the public option,” Biden said. “The vast majority of the American people would still not be in that option.”
Yet Biden’s actual healthcare plan says the public option would be made available “whether you’re covered through your employer, buying your insurance on your own, or going without coverage altogether.” Rather than apply to a small number of people, in other words, the option could eventually replace every form of private insurance that exists.
Instead of explaining this to voters, Trump interrupted Biden with statements such as, “Joe, you agree with Bernie Sanders, who's far Left, on the manifesto we call it, that gives you socialized medicine.” But what sort of voter who is learning about Biden’s healthcare position knows what Trump was referring to?
Trump then interjected multiple times during Biden’s same answer with pointless political analysis. When Biden denied supporting socialized medicine, Trump replied with, “You just lost the Left” — a silly comment given that the whole point of this line of attack is to convey that Biden would be beholden to the Left if elected. Trump then said Biden got lucky in the primaries because “if Pocahontas would have left two days earlier, you would have lost every primary.” What does that sort of punditry, and potshot at the increasingly irrelevant Elizabeth Warren, do to advance the ball for Trump? And why was it so important to make this comment that it was worth interrupting Biden for?
There were other examples, such as on the Green New Deal and tax policy, on which Trump failed to land obvious blows because he was too busy interrupting with pointless cracks.
Another problem was that Trump’s constant barrage of interruptions threw a lifeline to Biden when it would have been better to step back and let Biden stumble over the answer.
Toward the end of the debate, Trump went down the rabbit hole of discussing mail voter fraud, Michael Flynn, the Logan Act, spying on his campaign, and so forth. While such issues may receive a “Thatta boy!” from the talk radio crowd, Trump already has the vote of those this will impress. The point of the debate was to win over undecided voters, or to convince those leaning toward Biden to give him a second look.
One could argue that the mess of the debate essentially made it a draw. Biden failed to land his planned blows on Trump on tax returns, the coronavirus, or the Atlantic story claiming based on anonymous sources that Trump referred to service members as “suckers” and “losers.”
But debates cannot be viewed in a vacuum. They must be viewed in the context of the broader campaign. And given that Trump is losing, he needed to show that Biden was too far left and too mentally unfit to be president. But Trump did not accomplish that. After months of attacks claiming Biden doesn’t even know that he’s alive, Biden exceeded that low standard by showing he could stand and debate for 90 minutes, remaining more or less composed in the face of Trump’s relentless attacks. The tie, thus, went to Biden.
If there are two more debates, something that has to be seen as uncertain after Tuesday’s debacle, Trump is going to have to change his strategy to make focused and substantive attacks on Biden. Because the status quo means that Trump likely loses the election.
“You’ve never heard of low information voters? Obama rode them to reelection in 2012. They were at the center of his campaign strategy.”
Sorry they are not “low information”. They are LOW IQ. If Trump winning is dependent on winning the LOW IQ voter we are lost already.
There's no such thing as a "great lie", unless you're talking about golf.
Anyway, the endorsement claim is one. I knew you would cite that, though it might have been a case of Trump thinking of another sheriff when he said it in the heat of battle.
On the other hand, Maddow claims Trump spewed "a monstrous cavalcade of obscene lies". I hope you're not an agreement with her.
Seems to me, the cavalcade of lies came out of Biden's mouth, not Trump's.
[We in the base understand and share the frustration over moderators’ thumbs on the scale. But we should also be wary that we don’t be seen to be whining about it.]
Whatever evidentiary value it *does* possess, goes against your fears that Trump blew the debate and lost precious time and votes.
Note that the CNN Poll which favored Biden, had its thumb on the scales as much as Chris Wallace did. (Oversampling Spanish speakers (likely non-citizens therefore ineligible to vote lawfully), and oversampling Dems.)
Trump should concede all the low IQ voters to Biden? Do their votes not count?
You are totally wrong about Fox News. The FRee Republic accepted dogme is wrong. The antiFox bigots obviously don’t watch and are ignorant of the present reality
Please explain HOW you appeal to LOW IQ voters?
What does he say? What is important to the LOW IQ voter?
Do you know?
Low IQ voters did not watch the debates, will not watch the debates and do not understand any of whet transpired.
I question the fact there re actually or at least many low IQ voters. Half of eligible Americans don’t vote at all
If the low IQ voters cast a vote it is more than likely accomplished by someone taking advantage of them
[On the other hand, Maddow claims Trump spewed “a monstrous cavalcade of obscene lies”. I hope you’re not an agreement with her.
Seems to me, the cavalcade of lies came out of Biden’s mouth, not Trump’s. ]
By explaining things better. He didn’t explain things very well.
He didn’t have time to espotulate to the point you could understand
If you click on nathan’s name, you get to his personal home page, then you click on the flag, and you find out. It takes only a few seconds.
It’s not like it’s some deep, dark secret.
Explain WHAT? WHAT matters to the LOW IQ voter?
If they aren’t interested enough to know what is going on in the country WHAT can you talk about?
They need to stop using media pundits as moderators as I see it, get people who are accustomed to moderating debates so that neither candidate has to be compelled to say...” I guess I'm debating you too, not surprising” as Trump did.
Trump got a raw deal from the get go. Though I think he believed Wallace might be fair.....he wasn't.
[They need to stop using media pundits as moderators as I see it]
Thank you for describing my state of mind as you did.
Nathan
The end justifies the means.
Got it.
[The end justifies the means.
Got it.]
The Washington Times was once the conservative alternative to the Washington Post.
Now, like Fox News, it is gradually but most certainly drifting leftward.
Its lead “reporters”, like Steven Dinan who is pro-illegal immigration, and Seth McLaughlin, who is never-Trump, and others on the reportorial and editorial staff seem to be in a race with Fox News to become the Post and CNN.
What flag is that, Fresh?
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