Despite Biden losing, debate also showcased how awful Trump is as a candidate
No real answers or policy proposals, blaming every problem on migrants (while Biden's policy on the border is largely a continuation of Trump's), just a bunch of bullshit "everything was great, now everything sucks, but I will make it great again". I honestly cringed at Trump more, Biden's ramblings at least were funny.
I can't imagine anyone who's undecided at this point listen to this and say "This guy will make things right". Trump's entire objective is to let Biden stumble and fall and then cruise to presidency, but he makes every effort imaginable to prevent himself from it. No zingers or clever retorts against a literal corpse (aside from maybe one "I don't know what he said and he isn't either"), just and abysmal performance. Honestly, even someone like Ramaswami would've dogwalked Biden.
If anyone is capable of losing to Biden at this point, it's Trump.
the masons running an experiment to see just how stupid democracy can get before we stop believing in it. so far it looks like there is no lower bound!
The worst thing that Trump said during the debate was in the brief period when they were talking about Israel. Trump says that Biden should let Israel "finish the job" in Gaza. Trump said that Biden is a Palestinian. Trump uses the label Palestinian as a derogatory word.
We knew this, right? There's a reason that Bibi has back stabbed Biden and is now begging for Trump - it's because Trump wants Palestinian children bombed more than Biden does, and he'll make more of it happen.
Also during Trump's presidency he did many things which hurt Palestinians and helped Israel, such as the Abraham Accords and moving the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He also cut funding to Palestinian aid groups, stopped funding to UNRWA. There's also speculation that his assassination of Qassem Soleimani was on behalf of Israel.
lol no Trump was doing Trump shit which is taking potshots at the competition while selling his sympathizers a fascist fantasy. During the 2016 debates all the libs thought he was losing dismally while he was effectively bodying Clinton because he was following a different playbook. This is why he avoided the questions to veer into culture war shit. His base eats that up. Trump doesn't try to meet the liberal image of a qualified candidate but that's because he's a fascist and doesn't need to.
*Fake French accent* He knows the ridiculousness of his answers but he's amusing himself for it's his adversaries who are obliged to use words responsibly.
Trump did what he needed to do to appeal to his base whereas Biden uh I don't know what the fuck Biden was doing, mostly sundowning I think, but appealing to his base wasn't part of it.
This debate wasn't about winning over voters, it was about not losing them. Biden's performance will make a lot of people stay at home while Trump was neither here nor there. Overall it's a win for Trump.
Well he's in a bind honestly, going by the people I know that profess to like Trump. They want imaginary stupid things that can't be said out loud without being obviously stupid or contradictory.
Like, he wants to run as anti-war, and also oppose a cease fire in Gaza? He wants credit for Afghanistan but not to accept that losing a war means an embarrassing retreat. He wants to support the Jan 6th people but also not get yelled at for being supportive of overthrowing the government. He's gonna end the war in Ukraine before he even comes in, but the terms Putin is asking for are unacceptable?
You have to keep banging on about immigrants because if you get concrete about anything else someone might notice that it makes no fucking sense.
The Trumpy anti-war stance basically means 'don't send US troops anywhere', they're usually fine with enabling Israel or other 'allies' to prosecute their wars/genocides. Opposition to the Ukraine wars is also more due to them liking Putin's anti-woke stuff instead of some kind of anti-imperialist principle.
The Afghanistan contradiction is also easily solved: Trump started to end that war (which he didn't begin), but 'Biden fumbled the withdrawal of troops making it a shitshow (and he was also there when the war began and intensified).
The thing about this country is that most of us are a bunch of settlers who need to be humbled on the international stage. We are the bad guys and I feel it's advantageous to the good people of the world that we have an incompetent bumbling idiot as our leader. The sooner Xi fires the nukes the sooner we are to turning the corner on this very sad point in history. As John Brown put it, "the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away, but with blood".
Part of this is also that the two parties have to agree to the terms of the debate, so you won't end up with anything actually rigorous or interesting. Still, you'd think if this was the end of american "democracy" that the moderators would maybe once have tried to get someone to actually answer a question.
I haven't really listened to Trump outside of short clips since 2020, so hearing him be so... Trump, was actually kinda surprising to me. Obviously it was no 2016-era Trump, but considering Biden's performance comparatively- damn.
that's exactly it, right? trump is a loser, a sick hog dying in the sun, but liberals need him to be a macho supervillain threat to democracy because they're intent on running the only candidate that could lose to him.
It’s just about selling people a fantasy. Trump has a coherent narrative about coming in and fixing stuff. Biden rambling incoherently about how everyone else would love to be American because the country has it so good already, only plays into Trumps narrative that everything is fucked because the govt. is weak, corrupt and aimless. I think Trump did reasonably well. He can’t really hit Biden too much on policy specifics because the Biden admin is so far right anyway, so it’s more of a vibes thing at this point.
Trump didn't even bother answering a lot of the questions, showing contempt for the whole process. He even at one point said how the whole debate was a waste of time lol
Trump is nowhere close to how he was in 2016, and he reminds me of a aging band just playing the same hits that made them famous 20 years ago. I think if Trump had shown restraint, Biden would've looked even more of a complete trainwreck since I've noticed Biden's senility becomes less noticeable when he's insulting Trump.
But Biden's performance was a fucking trainwreck. Dude can't even stand still without making a memeable face. Trump at least still looks like Trump.
Not gonna lie I was hoping I, personally, would be totally fucked in 3 to 5 years instead of 1 to 4 years. Biden being the oldest man alive on stage sure is making me escaping this country feel even more urgent
Trump was so civil and together, I think libs are going to eat that shit up, people dont care about policies, these debates are the literal theatre of bourgeois political theatre
Im out here in the peanut gallery, trying to get closer to the SPLASH ZONE 💦
I dunno I saw one clip which was Biden rambling about Trump calling his dead son a useless soldier or something and Trumps rebuttal is just "First off that's a lie, that's not true, I didnt do that, I have 19 witnesses saying I didn't. How crazy would it be if I did that at a cemetery?" And I burst out laughing. Peak posting behaviour.
The whole thing was so fake, like some kind of dream. It's just amazing how it's fake but about real, evil things that the ruling class is actively doing.
Yeah but who votes on the basis of policy? Buttigieg fans?
All that matters when it comes to policy can be condensed into the passions people feel towards, say, roe v wade. You don't need a good candidate there. You don't need reason or proposals. You just need to be on the podium and make sure not to demoralize your team. Biden is incapable of that. Barring some unforeseen demographic situation in the electoral college, Trump can totally cruise to election.
The United States is long overdue for a massive political realignment. The Democrats and the Republicans are indistinguishable when it comes to most policy issues, and also tend to court the same groups: suburban conservatives of various kinds. Where they differ is social policy, and the Democrats make their greatest efforts to make sure that difference is in name only. A lot of conventional wisdom on how people tend to vote is up to be challenged.
Such as the position of latin americans, who were often assumed to be too much of an other to be courted by the Republicans, but to whom the Democrats make no real offers besides a lot of patronizing assumptions that fly in the face of a group that skews more religious than average. Another is the distribution of populations - what matters most in these polarized times is the urban/rural divide. However communities across the country are being upended by the risks associated with climate change, deindustrialization, inflation and so on. People are moving. States are changing and the corruption of gerrymandering might not be able to stem the tide either way.
I'm still leaning that this election being a 50/50 by no merit of any living soul in Washington DC. But I wouldn't discount a landslide either way due to even greater amounts of people staying at home, or due to the aging milennial demographic gaining an importance that their grandparents once had, or whatever.
Trump didn't give a "Yes or No" response to the question of would he accept the results of the election. It's a very low bar, and he wouldn't answer. Sadly, that's all I needed. I would like to continue to have the illusion of terrible choices.