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What does hillary gain from a debate?
I think she gains the chance to further undermine Trumps credibility as actually being able to perform the job. Though considering how things are going for Trump right now, maybe she won’t have anything to gain from them at all. Though giving Trump something like an hour of free improve time to hang himself with some outlandish comments might be very tempting, especially if all the run up to the debate is just a series of Trump gaffes and scandals. Either way she can’t possibly push to not debate him, not without some really big excuse. She is the professional after all, and the expectations will be that debates will only benefit her because of her knowledge and experience. If she is seen as running away it will undermine her claim to that. The champ can’t run away from the challenger.
That’s her weakness in this. She has to stand and fight, but I don’t think Trump can fight her on policy or demeanor. He has to fight her with what he is best at, and that is rage against the system. He has to force her to defend a seemingly unfair system rigged to favor the two main parties.
Or just start tearing into his shtick about her many failures. I don’t see how she can attack without the return fire being devestating. Nobody believes her, not really, so it’s mostly downside. Sure trump will say something dumb, but he will also point out the empress has no clothes and that nobody wants to see that. Hillary can’t deflect, and she can’t absorb like trump can.
So I think she doesn’t debate but she will try to make it a no platform move against trump because probably misogyny.
I don’t think Trump absorbs so much as he is oblivious, also Hillary is a master at deflecting. Her routine is transparent if you know what the facts actually are. The debates though will be about the the people who are just tuning in to the election then. Her lies will serve her well I think, they have so far. Also there is the fact that when Trump gets going he loses track of the attack line and instead goes off in some strange direction. Maybe her being there will keep him more focused, but I would not count on it.
Also there is one other thing Hillary can gain from a debate. If Trump goes overboard she can then play the wronged woman card. Remember when she cried to win New Hampshire?
I think at the least Hillary has to have one debate before she can shut it all down.
Doomed! We’re all doomed! Doomed I say! Doomed!
I’m sorry, what was the question again?
Doom is a good word highly under used in its original form which means something closer to fate. We are doomed to have Hillary or Trump as president. Unless a miracle happens. Hope springs eternal.
Valiuth, I value your opinions, and I always enjoy your point of view. I’m sorry for being so flippant, but really, I just can’t take it seriously anymore. Far from having a win/win situation, in my opinion, what we have is a lose/lose situation.
Debate schedules? Seriously? Trump/Clinton?
I’m buying more ammo, and practicing more at the firing range.
As Adam Smith said, ‘There is a lot of ruin in the country’. But eventually, there is too much ruin. So, I’m not optimistic. I find my Dad’s philosophy more and more appropriate.
I am a cheerful pessimist. But really, we are all Doomed! Doomed I say! (Sorry, something wrong with my keyboard)
I think if they mess with the rules, then it will look like the system is rigged. Your point about determining if a candidate is serious by that person having registered in all 50 states is a great idea, though. I think we let it play out with Trump and Clinton. I cringe at the circus it will probably be, but that’s politics for you. I expect that Trump will continue to help Clinton with his performance.
I think Hillary’s best move is to go on vacation. Trump is the only example known to nature of spontaneous self-immolation. All she does by showing up is remind people that she’s almost as frightening as he is.
Plus, Trump’s audience is composed of know-nothings. He doesn’t discredit himself to his supporters by showing up to a debate and talking as though the nuclear triad was a dance craze. They don’t know the difference. Yes, she knows more about . . . nearly everything . . . than he does. But everyone persuadable already knows that and those who don’t know it aren’t persuadable.
The other catch-22 for Johnson and Stein is that you have to get to 15% in the polls to be included, but if you’re not at 15% you’re not included in most of the polls. So it really is a system designed to keep third party candidates out of the debates.
Of course that shouldn’t be that big a surprise, as the commission was a creation of the two major parties. I think the idea is to look independent, not to be independent.
True. I would like to see more participants at debates particularly the libertarians. I think more voices would force people to talk past the debate less.
I’m not sure if that is true. I think there are many people who haven’t been paying close attention. Maybe they have heard somethings, and have a general leaning. They will want to sit down and see the two candidates stacked up against each other to make the final call. If both candidates play to their worst profiles then the debate won’t matter, but if one stands out by not meeting expectations (either being better or worse) then it will matter.
But my thinking here is that Clinton may not need the debates, but she can’t easily avoid them. Trump given how things are going needs to change things up. Starting a fight about the debates I think can play to his rhetorical skills and offers a distraction where he can once again assume the mantle of fighting for the little guy rather than being the guy to insults grieving mothers and babies.
The best way to game things out would be for Trump to fight to let in Stein and Johnson, but allow Hillary to kill the idea behind closed doors, and then tar her with it.
Certainly agree that she can’t easily avoid them.
The problem with this article is the stolen base. He shows, correctly, that third parties are a wash or slightly favor Trump. That isn’t the same thing as “the LP is a wash or favors Trump”. Indeed, unless you believe that the Green Party steals roughly equally from the two parties, the latter is obviously not true. It’s something of a pattern for fivethirtyeight to promote Johnson and pretend that Stein doesn’t exist. Also for Colbert, Bee, Maddow, Maher, and pals. I’m sure that they all have the best interests of limited government at heart.
James:
By the way James, who would you vote for? I’ve seen you do this anti-Johnson rant over and over both here and on Facebook (and in NR). But if you’ve ever said who you’d support, I missed it.
I was a Reagan member before I was a mod. So far as I know, mods get no special commenting privileges.
I agree. The bar that they fail to clear is exceedingly low.
If they make 5% (double digits is, afaik, irrelevant), they get $100m in public funding next cycle. That means that any limited government candidate running in 2020 will have a significantly more difficult time. Since it’s hard to spend $200m (and $100m in public money should net at least an equal amount in private) and not get 5%, that means that we’ll have limited government candidates at a disadvantage for the foreseeable future. It condemns the American right to the fate of the Thatcherite left, when a third party meant that a minority of ideological extremists was able to transform the country on a consistent plurality vote.
It’s true that if you define the vote as meaning what you want, then you can support voting for anyone, but the public meaning as it is heard is not defined by the voter. The Neo-Nazi who I got to enthusiastically support Rubio in New Hampshire (on the basis that Rubio’ s foreign policy in the Middle East was the most competent, meaning that he’d staunch the refugee crisis, which would keep Europe white more than any other candidate’s policies) was not conveying a message of Neo-Nazism through his vote.
What is harder than claiming, eg., that one’s voting for Weld to express support for his dress sense (I believe this to be the quality in which the LP ticket is most clearly winning, so long as one does not include spouses), is the idea that J/W is a conscience vote. They are not, as they themselves repeatedly say, the lesser evils. No one who loves America, though, should intentionally choose the greater evils.
I don’t think that the difference between the major party candidates is as great as the difference between the candidates and Johnson. If I was in a close and plausibly decisive state, I’d probably support Trump on the basis that a: I think he’s likely to be impeached if he wins, and I like Pence, b: that he’s more likely to see something like Simpson Bowles passed over his veto than Clinton is likely to pass something like that, and c: that I like his judicial picks as presented and believe it more than 90% likely that I would prefer any alternative picks to Clinton’s choices.
If I were not, I would support Stein because third parties always destroy the principles that their labels stand for and the Green Party’s principles are worth destroying. I think reasonable people can disagree about which of Stein, Clinton, and Trump are best, though. Clinton seems to have the most competent foreign policy, both on trade and security, and that matters to me.
It’s completely beyond me why Trump doesn’t attack Stein. If he let loose with just a couple of lines about how she was the worst candidate out there, a real extremist, he’d shoot her support through the roof and make things much harder for Clinton. I don’t think that he should support Stein in public, because that would be terrible for her.
I think it’s worth discussing the outrageous fraud against the American public that the CPD.
James: My overall idea for Trump is that he needs to: 1) Change the subject from what a jerk he is, and 2) do it in a manner that seems authentic to him and that he might be able to sustain. The way I see it is Trump is doing much to drive people to Hillary because of his terrible personality. The optics of arguing for Stein and Johnson I think plays well with basic American values of fair play. Doing this therefore might help to soften his image (or at least give him the best chance he has of doing that without also seeming like he is back tracking). If Trump can make himself look less scary while still maintaining his anti-establishment angle, it might actually make people considering Stein feel more comfortable voting for her over Hillary, because they will loath Trump less.
In the end considering that every last poll that has come out is showing him down some even by double digits. I think throwing a hail marry is his only shot. This is something I don’t think anyone would expect him to do.