First presidential debate (2 Viewers)

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    Optimus Prime

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    Since we usually have a separate thread for these
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    NEW YORK (AP) — President Joe Biden begins an intense period of private preparations Friday at Camp David for what may be the most consequential presidential debate in decades.

    The 81-year-old Democrat’s team is aware that he cannot afford an underwhelming performance when he faces Republican rival Donald Trump for 90 minutes on live television Thursday night. Biden’s team is expecting aggressive attacks on his physical and mental strength, his record on the economy and immigration and even his family.

    Trump, 78 and ever confident, will stay on the campaign trail before going to his Florida estate next week for two days of private meetings as part of an informal prep process.

    The former president’s allies are pushing him to stay focused on his governing plans, but they’re expecting him to be tested by pointed questions about his unrelenting focus on election fraud, his role in the erosion of abortion rights and his unprecedented legal baggage.

    Thursday’s debate on CNN will be full of firsts, with the potential to reshape the presidential race. Never before in the modern era have two presumptive nominees met on the debate stage so early in the general election season. Never before have two White House contenders faced off at such advanced ages, with widespread questions about their readiness.

    And never before has a general election debate participant been saddled with a felony conviction. The debate-stage meeting comes just two weeks before Trump is scheduled to be sentenced on 34 felony counts in his New York hush money trial.

    “You can argue this will be the most important debate, at least in my lifetime,” said Democratic strategist Jim Messina, 54, who managed former President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign.

    PRESSURE ON BIDEN


    The ground rules for Thursday’s debate, the first of two scheduled meetings, are unusual.

    The candidates agreed to meet at a CNN studio in Atlanta with no audience. Each candidate’s microphone will be muted, except when it’s his turn to speak. No props or prewritten notes will be allowed onstage. The candidates will be given only a pen, a pad of paper and a bottle of water.

    There will be no opening statements. A coin flip determined that Biden would stand at the podium to the viewer’s right, while Trump would deliver the final closing statement.


    The next debate won’t be until September. Any stumbles Thursday will be hard to erase or replace quickly.………..

     
    I really hope people read Clooney's op-ed.

    He is one of the biggest supporters and fund raisers of Joe on earth. Hillary before him. Obama before her.

    He doesn't take shots at the President. He also isn't looking for clicks or ratings. He is in close contact with him and has been for years.

    Here is an an archiver site if you can't see the article behind the paywall:




    Here is Reuter's posting of Pelosi and Clooney -

    George Clooney has weighed in.


     
    I really hope people read Clooney's op-ed.

    He is one of the biggest supporters and fund raisers of Joe on earth. Hillary before him. Obama before her.

    He doesn't take shots at the President. He also isn't looking for clicks or ratings. He is in close contact with him and has been for years.

    Here is an an archiver site if you can't see the article behind the paywall:




    Here is Reuter's posting of Pelosi and Clooney -

    He is entitled to his opinion, but if he is such a huge fundraiser and close to Biden, wouldn’t it be better to communicate this privately? I am pretty tired of men telling me that Biden needs to go with no serious plan for a replacement. The men who are gung-ho on replacement, especially those who are calling for some sort of open primary process or some sort of reality show type super debate with moderators ranging from absurd to worse, are really getting on my nerves.

    They are willing to gamble everything for this long shot idea of replacing a candidate after the primaries have been held, and the candidate has won the nomination, for all intents and purposes. It’s never been done before, not successfully. These pundits and celebrities won’t suffer one iota of discomfort if Trump is elected. To them this is just an acceptable gamble.

    For a whole lot of regular people, the stakes are just too high. If Biden decides to step aside, that would be one thing. But from what I can tell, public calls for him to step aside are having the opposite effect. They are stiffening his resolve to stay in. I don’t blame him. He’s done an excellent job.

    So to George Clooney, respectfully, shut up.
     
    Interesting paper by a Northeastern prof.

    “Led by David Lazer, university distinguished professor of political science and computer science at Northeastern, the report indicates that the debate had little if any impact on people’s voting preference. Lazer hopes the report helps illustrate the dangers of making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to the media interpreting data.

    “Even the New York Times, which is usually better about this, talked about a very tiny shift that was totally insignificant statistically like it was evidence that it was a shift toward Trump after the debate,” Lazer says. “My hope is that reporters look at this and say, ‘Maybe we need to be careful in overinterpreting noise as actual signal.’””

     
    Here’s a bit more with the take-away:

    “Seeing the dominant narrative coming out of the debate, Lazer and the team at CHIP50 decided to test the hypothesis that Biden had lost ground in public opinion after the debate. Notably, Lazer says, they didn’t survey two different cross-sectional groups of people before and after the debate like most polls. Instead, the team was able to survey the same group of respondents from a survey conducted before the debate.

    Lazer says using the same group of people helps make the results more precise, which is important in polling that inherently has a margin of error.

    What the report finds is that Biden held on to 94% of the people who said they would support him before the debate. For Trump, 86% of people who said they would support him before the debate said they would do so after the debate.

    “What we see is that there is some churn –– maybe 10 percent or so of people change what they answer –– but that the net result is not a movement away from Biden,” Lazer says. “If anything, it seems that Biden is holding on to his people somewhat better than Trump.””
     
    This is important because people are using polling to pressure Biden to step aside.

    ““In this case it’s actually materially affecting decision-making,” Lazer says. “If you make the narrative that things are cratering for Biden, it may affect whether Biden stays in the race. I don’t know if he should stay in the race or not, but decisions should be made on accurate information.””
     
    So to George Clooney, respectfully, shut up.
    I agree 100% with Clooney. If Joe Biden is the Democratic candidate, Trump will win. We all have opinions......my opinion is the abysmal performance of the President at the debate is not something he can recover from - as it can't be fixed. Father time is calling. It was a game changer. Fat lady singing moment.
     
    We have two political cults in the US.
    Yeah, but I don’t agree with you about who is in the other cult, I’m sure. But keep your know-it-all attitude. You do you.

    I have always said I am fine with the idea of Biden stepping aside if he decides to do so. He has earned the delegates, and there is no way to replace him without it being his decision. This is dealing in reality, not cult-like at all.

    What is amazing to me is that so many so-called progressives are just fine with throwing away valid elections because they believe some polls. Yet these same people will claim they are pro-democracy. And calling people like me, who are pointing out the actual pitfalls and craziness of throwing away valid election results are “cult” or “Trumpish”.

    How do you square that in your mind?
     
    I like this guy’s POV. Biden apparently did a great speech today at the NATO conference. I didn’t see a lick of coverage on it, just some tweets from people who watched. It was supposedly like his SOTU speech, though. This is from Twitter, copy-paste so all can see it.

    “I will just say this: I am all for folks having a debate about their preferred candidate. But the reality is that Biden has been very clear that he is in it to win it.

    He held over 20 events before Trump held 1 in the past week. He interfaced with voters. He gave a powerful NATO speech today. He is determined, and while lots of voters wish there was a younger candidate, if you put Biden up against any other name being thrown out, he comes out on top. It’s not as if there is a consensus alternative, and you certainly cannot skip over and disregard VP.

    The polls have not fundamentally changed since the debate. If you truly care about democracy, or view Trump as a threat, you of course can have your opinion about who is the best person to take him on. But based on the data referenced above, and the fact that Biden has made clear he is not going anywhere (to the delight of key factions of the Dem Party), it is your job, if you are in any way part of the pro-democracy coalition, to do everything in your power to make sure he wins.

    You don’t wave the white flag and say you are going to lose 4 months before an election when not a single vote has been cast. Especially when you actually have a historically incredible record to run on. Seeing electeds do this is the epitome of irresponsibility.

    Record job growth. Best GDP growth in the G7. Record low unemployment. Energy independence. Beating OPEC. A stronger than ever NATO alliance. Historic investments in manufacturing. Historic climate efforts. Outpacing China for the first time in decades. Leading the world in semiconductors and chips.

    Be loud about your accomplishments. Be loud about the Trump threat. Call out all the reasons he is unfit. Call out his danger to the American experiment. Sound the alarm about Project 2025. Be loud about his connections to Epstein. Remind Americans of the fact that he is responsible for millions of deaths with the way he botched the COVID response. Remind people of the daily chaos under his presidency.

    If you can’t do that, and you’d rather give up, then maybe it’s you who should retire and get out of the way.”
    Speeches with teleprompters don’t prove anything, and past experience doesn’t mean anything unless people believe he can bring the same in another term. Obama was way behind because most people didn’t know him. Biden has peaked, and he is losing. Most dems would be leading with a little campaigning.
    Saying he doesn’t think he can finish his next term is most definitely not the same as saying he cannot do the job. He is currently doing the job, and doing it quite well. Did you see any reporting on his address to the NATO conference today?
    When you hire someone, it’s for the tenure of the job. He can do the job, but many would-be democratic voters don’t think he can do it well for the entire term. I did see the NATO speech, and Biden did very well, but it was with a teleprompter. He didn’t have to think on his feet for that. He did that to some extent in the Step interview, but the whole interview focused on his ability. He wasn’t facing an adversary that was lying and attacking him. I think he can still often handle that, despite not doing it against Trump, but not as well as 4 years ago, and it is hard to imagine he’ll do that well for another term. He sometimes has to do that as part of the job. I suspect he would do well initially, but do poorly towards the end of his 2nd term.
     
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    I blame the folks in the Democratic Party that agreed to debate. If there was a 20% chance that he has a "senior moment" at the debate and crashes, you simply decline to debate. You take the heat for it, but you don't expose your candidate. Keep him hidden and ride it out until the election. Biden would likely win in that scenario.

    What happened is you took every voters fear (that Biden is too old to serve another term) and put it on blast. You just cemented this fear into the minds of everyone watching. It doesn't matter what you did the last 3.5 years.....Biden did some great things. You are running to lead for the next 4 years. When the electorate thinks you're too slow and too old to function in the future, that opens the door to get the Orange Messiah back into the White House. We can all agree that is not an option.
     
    I’m indifferent to whose opinion it is, whether you be a political leader, actor, garbage truck driver or stay at home mom. I think all of them are valid, but I don’t take one person’s opinion as more important than another as a practice.

    The idea that if everyone who had doubts would just be quiet and not voice their concerns, we’d have a better chance of winning is both not the way a democracy should work nor is there any evidence that I’ve seen pointing to it having any significant outcome on the general election in November. I don’t believe discouraging people to voice their opinion is a healthy practice. Remember how anyone who didn’t support Trump was a “liberal” or “RINO”? Let’s not go there.
     
    Yeah, but I don’t agree with you about who is in the other cult, I’m sure. But keep your know-it-all attitude. You do you.

    I have always said I am fine with the idea of Biden stepping aside if he decides to do so. He has earned the delegates, and there is no way to replace him without it being his decision. This is dealing in reality, not cult-like at all.

    What is amazing to me is that so many so-called progressives are just fine with throwing away valid elections because they believe some polls. Yet these same people will claim they are pro-democracy. And calling people like me, who are pointing out the actual pitfalls and craziness of throwing away valid election results are “cult” or “Trumpish”.

    How do you square that in your mind?

    There wasn’t a dem primary.

    The cope going on in this thread is as pathetic as MAGA.
     

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