What were or are your thoughts on the US Pres. Debate?

This is the funniest shit I've ever seen.

I knew Harris would wipe the floor, but this is incredible.

The immigrants are eating our pets\s

It would be funnier if there wasn't a sizeable percentage of people who support the cheetoh. There is still a real chance of that demented racist pos winning come november.
- With any luck, that number just got smaller, even if by just a little bit.
  Something I noticed is that even Twitter was making fun of Trump. I never thought I'd see that happen.
  EXECUTE THE BABY was trending for at least a little bit
Maybe that was lost in translation. Maybe what they meant to say is they love cunnilingus.

ABC gave Trump a massive handicap but he still managed to shoot himself in the foot a few times. Even the moderator roasted him once or twice.

I am here for transgender alien prison surgeries

Trans immigrants are stealing our cheeseburgers!
- Has anyone seen Fido?
Throwing all the taking points into a bucket. I bet those prisoners are also learning critical race theory.
- woke Marxist liberal critical race theory.
  Any more smooth brain buzzwords we can throw in there?
https://www.cnn.com/2024/09/09/politics/kfile-harris-pledged-support-in-2019-to-cut-ice-funding-and-provide-transgender-surgery-to-detained-migrants/index.html
""Harris also wrote that she supported taxpayer funding of gender transition surgeries for detained immigrants and federal prisoners.
Harris was asked if, as president, she would use “executive authority to ensure that transgender and non-binary people who rely on the state for medical care – including those in prison and immigration detention – will have access to comprehensive treatment associated with gender transition, including all necessary surgical care.”
Harris replied, “Yes.”"
Alien and prison, taxpayer paid surgeries are on the menu, boys. Break in illegally or commit a crime, and your next surgery is free!
- If you're in prison for life, and you want to kill yourself because of gender dysphoria, providing you the medical care to avoid that is the humane thing to do. Period.
  If you are an immigrant detained for 6-12 months before deportation, the the odds of this applying to detained immigrants is near 0, but let's say 1% it does, this would be tailored at ensuring they can have the drugs they require.
  Keeping people from shooting out the back of their fucking heads or swallowing a bottle of painkillers to end it all is always the humane choice.
  Don't worry, we could fund it all by just not administering a few death penalties (those are more expensive than life imprisonment).

The moderator are giving Trump so much time. They won't control him at all.

got the feeling he is not using it for his own benefit
Absolutely bonkers they won't enforce the rules. Mute his mic and ignore him.
- I haven't verified it but I read on another post that the Harris campaign specifically asked for the mics to be left on during this debate. If that's true, it stands to reason that she wanted them to be lenient with Trump, so that now he can't pull the "They didn't let me talk!" bullshit when talking about his less than stellar (generous way of putting it) performance.
Yes, and he still lost handedly. That extra time was all rambles and nonsense. I think in the end it was better.
(Yes, I still would have preferred they muted him, ultimately).
- What does it mean to lose? I guarantee that Trump supporters disagree.

He’s a compulsive liar who’s angry at things he’s fabricated for his own benefit. How the fuck is he even being considered for the job?

Because the description you wrote pretty much describes every president since Johnson at the absolute latest.

It didn’t matter what the question was, Trump kept turning it back to immigration. He’s only got one talking point, and it’s based on fear of the other.

Exactly, if the Republicans didn't bomb the immigration reform bill not to long ago, he'd have nothing to fearmonger over.
- Democrats outflanking the Republicans on the right over immigration has been a wild one. Though it's been happening for years, they usually weren't so proud and open about it. Obama himself was infamously known as the "Deporter-in-Chief," and Biden not only didn't put a stop to the concentration camps the democrats and liberals feigned outrage over with Trump, but also deregulated them and sent people to unknown fates, as well as allowing for and advertising the private subcontracting of these concentration camps, and pretending that was progress. Very normal country, with parties that are definitely not just two hands of the same sociopathic capitalist class.
  These immigrants and refugees are people who are, I will add, fleeing from countries that the west under both parties have spent a century terrorizing, destroying, destabilizing, starving, and exploiting (same story with the European refugee crises, the refugees are blamed and demonized when they are all fleeing from the chaos and suffering and destruction caused and continuously caused by western imperialism --- a bipartisan and usually NATO-spearheaded affair --- in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, etc.)

His fans will say he won and looked powerful. He didn’t, but they won’t care.

Wish he’d been pressed more about killing the immigration bill. Every time he complained about it, remind him that he killed the immigration bill.

Wish Orban wasn’t a diplomatic conflict. Trump saying Orban endorsed him should have been a liability but you probably can’t outright call him a wannabe dictator.

I doubt it changes the mind of too many people who already had a preference, but maybe a few hopefully. Somehow there are undecided people, I hope they saw it plainly. I don’t think there was much that will hurt Harris from it. She performed very well.

I don’t think there was much that will hurt Harris from it. She performed very well.
She was articulate, well-spoken, performed well unscripted, and next to Trump she looked like she had her shit very together.

Trump looked more incoherent this time than in the previous debates, what with the "immigrants are coming to eat your pets" line and other zingers like post-birth abortion nonsense. There were also some weird moments where he said stuff like "Kamala hates Israel," prompting her to go off on her undying loyalty to Israel.

Harris was overall more presentable, but had some horrible policy moments, such as repeating debunked claims about sexual assault on October 7th as she restated her undying loyalty to Israel (which could materially cost her Michigan as Muslim voters are turning to Stein and Cornel West over Harris), or stating that Climate Change is an existential threat in one breath and promising to never ban fracking in the next, along with bragging about gas production.

Overall it's a clear "win" for Harris over Trump if we are purely measuring debate performance, Harris looked far better and answered more coherently, though her environmental positions, immigration positions, and foreign policy are far to the right of where they should be, especially concerning swing state polling.

That is, of course, ignoring my personal disdain for liberalism and both candidates in general for being far-right, this is purely an analysis of the debate within the context of the election.

this pretty much sums it up. I thought trump would be incoherent, but some of the stuff out of his mouth was borderline surreal. Harris had completely tuned herself to 'beat' trump, and while it worked, it's painfully clear that she doesn't have a single original thought - nothing but platitudes, the same canned phrases about working families and small businesses, same tired defence of Israel.
- That pretty much sums them up nicely. Both represent the two sides of dying Empire.
  Trump is a bit of a wrecking ball, his far-right populist rhetoric appeals to rising material frustrations with the Petite Bourgeoisie, ie small business owners and the like, along nationalist lines. Strong aesthetic patriotism, lack of consistency or coherence, promises of restoring grander times and power. General far-right nonsense that sees dying Empire as it is, but blaming it on immigrants and minorities instead of addressing material conditions.
  Harris is plucked straight from the stock-standard Empire maintainers. Her policies are largely Biden's promises carried over, with firm Imperialist support for Israel and "the most lethal military in the world." She isn't attempting to appeal to fascists, but she is trying to appeal to those with vested interest in maintaining Imperial Hegemony. Small concessions and frequent doublespeak - claiming Climate Change is an existential threat in one breath, then boldly taking pride in record gas production and promising to never ban fracking in the next. She's more coherent, which ironically makes the double-speak stand out clearer.
  It would be funny if it wasn't tragic.
- He's at his best when he's borderline surreal. Remember when he accused Ted Cruz' dad of killing JFK? lmfaoo
  Both of these candidates deserve the Hague. But the Netherlands better arm up first! (That bill passed the Senate 75-19, with 30 democrats and 45 republicans in support. Never not a terrible country. Vote Communist and join the PSL)

Mexican here. Can confirm that we have plenty of stray dogs and cats here to eat. We have plenty of pet dogs and cats to eat too, but it's troublesome to deal with their owners/masters. Don't worry about us, we won't go there to eat your pets. I wish my fellow countrymen wouldn't have to go there and expose themselves to be treated this unfairly.

My favorite was when he accused the entire world of giving people to Harris so she could place them into the US as harmfully as possible.
- Nobody deserves that leadership. It's embarrassing.

Who woulda guessed the former prosecutor out performed the convicted felon

I thought it was funny how Trump was just nodding along while Harris was saying that people often leave his rallies due to boredom. Also, him basically outright saying that immigration has never happened in the history of the country, along with the other nonsensical things he's said.

24 comments, zero about the American/Israeli genocide. Stay classy yanks!

Gotta remember this is a .world community, Lark; we both know there's a staggering percentage of ghouls here more than happy to try and discourse with bloodied hands, bloodied jowls, and the remains of their last kill still visibly caught between their teeth.
- Yeah I wasn't paying attention to the comm. Still though, it should surely be a major topic. I don't understand the American people at large.

Pain, absolute pain. Can we please not have another debate?

We can tie that in with shorter campaign seasons too.

I'm not American so my opinion doesn't matter, but anyways..

Harris obviously better than the deranged lunatic Trump. I don't think much more needs to be said on that.

Harris is still a liberal/centrist though and I'm a leftist so I disagree with many parts of her platform.

I streamed it while I was working on other things but I thought it was pretty hilarious. Kamala seemed to be intentionally pushing Trumps buttons to derail him and he just could not accept that he is not universally loved.

Honestly though, given how Trump lies and Kamala was putting on a show the whole thing seemed so cynical and pointless. I've watched every presidential and vice presidential debate since Bush Jr.'s second term even in the "good ol' days" when it wasn't just a sound bite circus very rarely was a president even able to achieve the lofty goals they pitched the American people on.

The whole thing is farcical in 2024. The lack of shared reality the Trump era has ushered in makes it next to impossible to trust anything a politician says. Kamala had spunk and moxy and was very down to earth and likeable, but policy wise she made a lot of statements the presidency doesn't have the power to deliver on. Even with the insane power the supreme court gave the executive branch a few months ago.

Trump was Trump. It's pretty clear how much his brain has rotted when you compare this debate with the one he had with Clinton. But otherwise you can't trust a single word he says. His position on any matter is irrelevant because he'll retcon it later if it's inconvenient. Meanwhile Kamala vowed to continue helping our frenemies do some ethnic cleansing and spent most of the debate posturing for the idiots to stupid to already have an opinion.

trumps only vision is division

The LWV (League of Woman Voters) sponsored the United States presidential debates in 1976, 1980 and 1984.[60][61] On October 2, 1988, the LWV's 14 trustees voted unanimously to pull out of the debates, and on October 3 they issued a press release condemning the demands of the major candidates' campaigns. LWV President Nancy Neuman said that the debate format would "perpetrate a fraud on the American voter" and that the organization did not intend to "become an accessory to the hoodwinking of the American public."[62][63] All presidential debates since 1988 have been sponsored by the Commission on Presidential Debates,[64] a bipartisan organization run by the two major parties that some argue has established rules with the intent to exclude airing candidates associated with other parties.[65]

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/League_of_Women_Voters

History - 1970-2000

They should do another debate next week between two people who are not running and can actually answer questions and talk about policy. Just to show us what we could have. Elizabeth Warren vs Mitt Romney.

Then a Bill Clinton vs George W Bush rematch.

The Heritage Foundation released one that includes several former Trump staff and the current VP nominee; it is Project 2025. You aren't going to get anything more precise out of Trump or his campaign.
Harris released her full platform and it is ok. I'm sure people want her to do more, but I don't know if she has the votes for it.
I don't think you are going to get a full policy update because the policies in Project 2025 are so bad and the Trump campaign doesn't want to run on it. That's why Trump is running on the idea he will stop immigrants from eating your pets.
Bill Clinton never debated George W Bush
- Only George HW Bush.

Was working during the debate, but caught a few seconds of it here and there while delivering.

Trump looked really tired, like he missed his afternoon bump.

Kamala looked like a fighter in her prime.

Just a shallow perspective from someone who tried to avoid the debate as much as possible.

He dodged every question successfully and neither Kamala nor the moderators did a decent job pinpointing it.

That he comes out with a statement of having a concept of a plan just shows me how much freedom were granted for his weird and insane mind.

Imagine beeing in any relationship with him. I have no sympathy for people who are willingly.

Didn't watch it, but the headlines, posts and memes are prime choice so far!

But one thing I haven't seen mentiones yet is something I only stumbled upon when a browser was showing headline snippets. Harris outright said that both she and Walz are gun owners, they're not "taking anyone's guns" and outright told that orange turd to stop with his blatant lies. As a blue gun owner...then fills me with joy.

I can't believe that these are the best two people that the US can produce right now.

I can. Empire is in decline thanks to its incessant fixation on the Offense industry and refusal to tend to infrastructure, education, or social works, now mix in the steady erosion of critical thinking and literacy skill in this country, coupled with the crippling of any kind of recognizable civics curriculum to allow for principle-less, tribalist "vote my color no matter who no matter the policy platform" philosophies to grip the populace by the throat.
That's exactly how we get here.

Trump brought nothing but fear

I couldn't be bothered to figure out how to watch it, did anything happen?

It's on YouTube, on abc's news live video. It's still going on, but is probably almost over
- Appreciate the recommendation. I'll watch when I finally finish my last shift of the day.

I know you're joking, but if the U.S. does actually collapse, very few people on the planet will have the fortune of being unaware.
collapse is less of an event, and more of a protracted decay and crumbling away of its structural integrity, out of which the existing contradictions which had been always simmering below the surface become increasingly sharp at points and times and ruptures along the fault lines begin to appear at increasing rates

Kamala is the best version of a normal politician fighting against Trump. It remains to be seen if that's enough, because he's just so goddamn weird that it's difficult to even compare Tool A to Problem B.

I think she's incorporated virtually all of the strengths of any of her comparable peers, and almost none of their weaknesses. I think that, given the nature of the opponent and his total lack of seriousness, she said everything I would reasonably hope she would have said during this debate.

I also think that I don't properly understand the collective psyche of the American electorate. I don't understand how the election could be this close, when it is a choice between a serious, competent, passionate, talented professional, and a man who is literally a collection of all of the worst possible traits a person could have. That it could come down to such a narrow choice is a mystery for the ages.

I also think that I don’t properly understand the collective psyche of the American electorate. I don’t understand how the election could be this close, when it is a choice between a serious, competent, passionate, talented professional, and a man who is literally a collection of all of the worst possible traits a person could have.
Because they're both genocidal, slave-driving sentient trashpiles that only deserve the second coming of John Brown each, maybe?

Trump started off coherent, but ~30% in he went of the rails.

Kamala on the other hand looks like she has no strong values, she doesn't seem like a Dem candidate. What kind of Dem candidate is pro fracking? Kamala honestly seems disingenuous.

Trump on the other hand didn't form more than 20 complete sentences, so I can't really call him disingenuous because he doesn't seem to stand for anything

What kind of Dem candidate is pro fracking?
One who exists in a fucked up electoral system where the entire fate of our country rests upon a few thousand votes in western PA.
"I don't stand by anything."
Yup here we go with the they're equally bad fallacy
- They're both going to make us all part, parcel, and accomplice to genocide, so... Yeah. That's kind of my entire angle right now, is "who is going to make this aberration against history end faster, and who is going to end the cycle of genocidal settlerdom this country perpetuates faster". By any means necessary at this point.
  Genuinely, I won't even consider social, domestic issues until it becomes clear to me that genocide has finally become a non-starter for the average Amerikan liberal; I no longer care. Either the genocide can end, or "grill-pilled" brunch-goer Amerikans can start getting uncomfy.
  I think it's time to watch the party die.
- fallacy is when real thing I don't like

Not American but Bernie is the president we deserve

That's a good split mate, if we have Bernie they can have Trump as many times as they want.
- shoutout bernie he keeps that same energy no matter what. blud been pushing for social justice and all that for decades
Who is we if you're not American?
- Blud thinks hes on the team 😭 🙏🏻
Nah. He's a sheepdog for the genociders too.

Predictably, it was a shit show. Trump was doing his normal routine of batshit crazy stupidity. Harris was level headed and sensible, minus the bit about the "most lethal army" and pro fracking stuff. It's mind boggling to me that to think that it will sway votes. How could you possible look at these options and change your mind only after the debate? But at the same time I know it doesn't matter, I know that there are still people who will somehow be swayed.

Got Liz and Dick Cheney
- Yeah, I checked that off my bingo/drinking game as well

Bread and circuses for the twoo believuhs, mostly. Excelsior ig

Completely and utterly masturbatory. The reality is that the US is extremely polarized politically because the living standards are collapsing. There are basically two competing narratives for why that's happening, and people subscribe to one or the other. The democrats and republicans have fundamentally different world views, so nobody is going to be swayed by the debate. People subscribing to each respective view will hear what they want to hear.

People who will vote for Harris are the ones who think that the dems have been doing a good job for the past three and a half years, meanwhile people who aren't happy with the way things are going will vote against them or stay home. It's that simple.

The democrats and republicans have fundamentally different world views
Correction: the democrats and republicans have fundamentally different standards of decorum and of how close they can be to the stench of the consequences of their highly similar world views without turning away.
- Fair, it's more that each one sees themselves as being an antithesis of the other.

Watched it for the lolz. Lots of rhetoric aimed at their bases, with very little in the name of actual policy, outside short slogans that got repeated 3 or 4 times over with next to no detail. Each trying to 'gotcha' the other and each tried to miscategorize the other a few times. Each echo chamber will claim their person won, yet as an outsider and non-American with no skin in the game, I would say they both did pretty poorly with both stating a couple of valid comments, but few and far between. A couple of ABC commentators later said the same.

Looking forward to the headlines cheerleading their pre-selected person on Wednesday. Each camp trying to out meme the other. Lastly, weren't the microphones at the debate supposed to be muted when the other was talking? 'Cause they weren't at times. This made the thing funnier. Would have been better with an actual audience. Otherwise, it looked so fake and performative.

The mute thing was something Biden wanted but when Harris stepped in she said unmute them. Ironically when Harris said unmute them trump wanted them muted

The interesting thing is how people find ways around my politics filter all the time by using abbreviations. Is there no way to keep politics to the politics channels folks?

I watched Top Secret! for like the third time. It's so funny! They don't make 'em like that any more. Unless they do: in which case, please tell me the title!

Hes gonna lose, so not a bad thing.

Yeah, but we said that in 2016.
- Technically, he did lose in 2016. Negative love for her too, like; enough that if I worked with ints I'd certainly have buffer underflowed by now-- but Hillary did win by three million. That should've been the liberal wakeup call, that you can win the popular and still get absolutely shafted by faithless electors.
  The only reason I don't really expect that to happen this time is how it sounded like even Fox was starting to turn on the spray-tan porky.

I hate them.

Why

Couldn't care less.

not my circus not my monkeys

two hitler-particle-emitting politicians sitting on a mountain of corpses, arguing over who can make the pile grow faster. so, par for the course as far as american elections go.

Is this about Israel? Don't lie. Their policies are nothing alike.
Specifically: You claim that Kamala Harris wants to cause more deaths in the Israel-Palestine war, but during the debate she clearly laid out her policy goal being a ceasefire and a two-state solution. Are you misinformed, or are you yourself spreading misinformation?
- is this what "working on a ceasefire" means to you?
  this is the one image I can post. the other results of the current administration's policy would get removed for gore. personally, I think if you've been "working on a ceasefire" for nearly a year now, and the result is 2000 lb bombs being dropped on tents in a refugee camp, then you're not really working towards a ceasefire and are instead just lying.
  this is not even mentioning policies on the homeless, immigrants, fracking, military spending, healthcare, all of which are significantly more to the right than they were in 2020. medicare for all isn't even mentioned any more. dems used to advocate for a path to citizenship for immigrants, that's gone out the window too.
- If "never again" ever meant anything to you hateful, downright fucking ghoulish hypocrites, the DNC, RNC and NATO logos, alongside the Amerikan flag, would be regarded with the same disdain and disgust that the swastika, the fasces, the death's head, or the SS bolts get.
  Slither your invertebrate ass into a grave.

Your racist grandpa vs an ivy leaguer who brags about having a small business owner in her life during the debate (she grew up with a nanny)

Also jesus both of them trying to outracist eachother. Kamala might be beat on the home front but she makes up for it on the world stage with the israel comments.

Kamala says 'Trump is gonna pull us out of Nato' and Trump says 'Kamala will make the US Venezuela on steroids'. I dont know why each candidate is trying to convince me to vote for the other

One of them talked about a Marxist who will get rid of Israel within 2 years and wants to defund the police and give everyone healthcare and provide transgender operations to illegal immigrants, and the other talked about a person who hates the US military, admires China's handling of COVID, and wants to defund the police and pull out of NATO, and I just wish I knew the names of either of those candidates because they're both way better choices than what we've actually got.
- Yeah, wish we could vote for those candidates.
Israel policy is generally not about race.
- Tell that to the 300,000 dead Palestinian civilians