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.
I will argue that the presstitute media is pretty much restricted to the left wing. There is enough right wing media to counter.
First of all, there are more of them than us. That is easily shown by the fact Hillary won the popular vote. Those voters are the leftwing media audience. They pay for the supporting ads. Some rationalize that is not true but they are self deluded
Fox News has severely eroded the power of the leftists. Although there are many here who whine and bitch and moan about Fox News, the fact is that they are a strong supporter of President Trump. He is allowed on and given his head to pretty much unfiltered or unimpeded. Every morning at least one of his messengers delivers the message of the day in the pure form.
The mainstream is in fact literally dying as viewers and readers die. The young, say those under 50 or 45 get their news elsewhere.
[The end justifies the means.
Got it.]
[Fox News has severely eroded the power of the leftists.]
The low IQ voter hears about Coronavirus, right? Do you think that matters to them? Trump has been continually hammered on that.
The low IQ’s DON’T all know about Trump closing off flights from China or Biden and Democrats objecting. The Democrats do a very good job of saying things in a way that low IQ voters understand. They’re good at that. Even Biden did a reasonably good job of that last night.
Why is this so mysterious to you?
Another fixture from the left NOT crowing about a Biden victory.Mika Brzezinski Says Trump ‘Firebombed’ The Debate, Says She Would Nix Future Debates If She Were ‘Team Biden’ https://t.co/Yn61hOJDkZ— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) September 30, 2020
>>What I said in real time:
>>I don’t like to say this, I’m distressed to have to say this, but candor requires me to say that Trump entered the debate with the overwhelming advantage of incumbency As President of the United States Of America and left the debate a brawler who was behind in the Real Clear Average of polls. Biden entered the debate as a demented septuagenarian ahead in the polls and left the debate a viable candidate for president of the United States in possession of his faculties ahead in the Real Clear average of polls.
>>Trump’s objective was to turn the polls around, I believe he failed to do that tonight. Biden’s objective was to appear presidential rather than demented and to safeguard his lead in the polls, I believe he did that.
I’m with General Forrest’s analysis. It is understandable that Trump brings the anger of 3 years of unrelenting pitched warfare by the Dems and their crypto-neocon oligarch think tank overseers. But, dude, yer on TV and you need to understand how the TV cameras destroyed Sen. McCarthy and Richard Nixon. Be careful.
>>Thank you.
>>For the record I will tell you because you post in good faith that I live in Bavaria and often visit my children in the states.
If I were living in Bavaria it would be within walking distance to the Andechs Monastery.
Your choice.
If you have to ask that, there is no hope for you.
Until this week, I had never heard of Proud Boys. And I’m probably more informed than 98% of people. Where did these guys come from all of a sudden?
—
Proud Boys‘ values center on the following tenets:
Minimal Government
Maximum Freedom
Anti-Political Correctness
Anti-Drug War
Closed Borders
Anti-Racial Guilt
Anti-Racism
Pro-Free Speech (1st Amendment)
Pro-Gun Rights (2nd Amendment)
Glorifying the Entrepreneur
Venerating the Housewife
Reinstating a Spirit of Western Chauvinism
Disproved, or debunked, really means embargoed by the media.
If you have to write that, then you are a Chicken.
I would have liked to see President Trump call out Biden on his first lie: “That’s lie number one!” From then on, as Biden keeps up his lies, just call out “Two”, “Three”, “Four”. People will know what he’s talking about - and - it would probably rattle Biden.
Where do you live?
Trump has talked about Coronavirus and shutting down travel THOUSANDS of times. Your contention is there are thousands and thousands of LOW IQ voters who NEVER heard this AND, after avoiding/ignoring this news for 6 months, are going to tune into a debate and hear it for the first time?
I just don’t buy that or the idea there is a significant number of folks yet to be convinced who to vote for at this point.
Germany
Nathan Forrest Gump and I are neighbors.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.