First presidential debate (1 Viewer)

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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.………..

     
    As an outsider I must admit I prefer the slow guy with the facts rather than the quick energetic guy with the lies and weird answers. I really dont understand US politics in many ways. We elect people (mostly) bases on intelligence and production. We had one guy a few years back who was a "mini-Trump" and that party never got beyond 15% of the vote and still dont after his death. But they cater mostly to people like the MAGA crowd. Anti-vax etc.. It sometimes feels that politics in the US is more about "Visual performance" rather than ACTUAL performance (Passing laws, governing)

    Just watched CNN fact check lies list from the Debates. Bidens was on 2 pages. Trump was 11 pages long... So it is still the snake oil salesman against and elderly stateman with a bad cold.

    Add to that the people they surround themselves with. Biden surround himself with competent, hardworking and intelligent people who want to serve the people of the US . Trump surrounds himself with "Yes (wo)men" who are willing to give in to every one of Trumps authoritarian impulses as well as far right extremists who sees Trump as a way to implement their agenda. Trump does not care about Competence or knowlegde. He just want people who ask how high when he says jump!

    I guess it is one of the weaknesses of the US duality system. When you need to forge a governement based on multiple parties (we have 13 and the current government are currently a cooperation between 4 of them here) then you learn to listen and make compromises.

    We do have a very agressive press who consistently calls out politicians spewing lies - no matter what party it is
     
    No, you have not said this before. We have suspected it, but you have not said it before. Anyone who wants Trump to win doesn’t care about America, IMO.
    True gaslighting is the act of deceiving someone to make them doubt what they know and their own sanity.

    So many people who obviously are going to vote for Trump and hope Trump wins lie about it. When they are challenged the gist of their response is you're imagining things that aren't there.

    Trump is more than a liar. He's a true gaslighter. It makes sense that so many of his followers mimic his behavior. I doubt they realize or understand what they're doing. It's strictly a monkey see, monkey do dynamic for them.
     
    As an outsider I must admit I prefer the slow guy with the facts rather than the quick energetic guy with the lies and weird answers. I really dont understand US politics in many ways. We elect people (mostly) bases on intelligence and production. We had one guy a few years back who was a "mini-Trump" and that party never got beyond 15% of the vote and still dont after his death. But they cater mostly to people like the MAGA crowd. Anti-vax etc.. It sometimes feels that politics in the US is more about "Visual performance" rather than ACTUAL performance (Passing laws, governing)

    Just watched CNN fact check lies list from the Debates. Bidens was on 2 pages. Trump was 11 pages long... So it is still the snake oil salesman against and elderly stateman with a bad cold.

    Add to that the people they surround themselves with. Biden surround himself with competent, hardworking and intelligent people who want to serve the people of the US . Trump surrounds himself with "Yes (wo)men" who are willing to give in to every one of Trumps authoritarian impulses as well as far right extremists who sees Trump as a way to implement their agenda. Trump does not care about Competence or knowlegde. He just want people who ask how high when he says jump!

    I guess it is one of the weaknesses of the US duality system. When you need to forge a governement based on multiple parties (we have 13 and the current government are currently a cooperation between 4 of them here) then you learn to listen and make compromises.

    We do have a very agressive press who consistently calls out politicians spewing lies - no matter what party it is
    The bold part is exactly what the problem is. As a society, we put too much value on the facade of leadership than actual leadership. We get swept up in the talking the talk and ignore the walking the walk. We are an emotionally unhealthy society that is more concerned about how people appear than how they actually are.

    Our press is too profit driven to care about the health of our country. We are diseased and dying, and we are going to die if we don't start getting healthier faster. If we choose Trump, we choose to spiral deeper into our dysfunction and we are done. If we choose Biden, we are at least trying to make healthier choices, but we'll still have a lot of work and healing to do.

    What I have stress and anxiety over, is that I have no sense of how we are going to choose. There's so much disinformation and people being dishonest that it's hard to get a sense of what the majority of thought is.
     
    Anybody who is going to wet the bed over a bad debate performance to the point that they think Biden should step aside, well, I question where their priorities are. Biden didn’t articulate things well, and he sounded awful. But he didn’t claim women are allowed by Democrats to abort babies up to 3 days after birth, like the convicted felon did. He didn’t avoid answering questions he didn’t want to answer totally bringing up stuff that wasn’t even close to the the topic he was asked. He didn’t tell lies with every breath. And not only lies, but damned lies.

    The choice is still the same choice. A convicted felon, a crook who cares only about himself, who used the office of President for personal gain before and will do it again, a person whose only criteria for handling a deadly pandemic was his personal political gain (causing hundreds of thousands of needless deaths) versus an old man who implements policy well. An old man who has made good decisions about the economy, taming inflation without a recession. An old man who had a cold, and wasn’t as fast on his feet as he was during the State of the Union six months ago for whatever reason.

    I doubt anyone who knows who Trump is and who Biden is will change their vote based on this. I know who these guys are. There is only one sane choice.
     
    This is a helpful article on what could happen should Biden decide to step aside. As the article says, if he doesn’t decide to step aside, there isn’t anything that democrats can do to replace him on the ticket. I’m not saying he should step aside, I’m just providing for information purposes.

     
    Anybody who is going to wet the bed over a bad debate performance to the point that they think Biden should step aside, well, I question where their priorities are. Biden didn’t articulate things well, and he sounded awful. But he didn’t claim women are allowed by Democrats to abort babies up to 3 days after birth, like the convicted felon did. He didn’t avoid answering questions he didn’t want to answer totally bringing up stuff that wasn’t even close to the the topic he was asked. He didn’t tell lies with every breath. And not only lies, but damned lies.

    The choice is still the same choice. A convicted felon, a crook who cares only about himself, who used the office of President for personal gain before and will do it again, a person whose only criteria for handling a deadly pandemic was his personal political gain (causing hundreds of thousands of needless deaths) versus an old man who implements policy well. An old man who has made good decisions about the economy, taming inflation without a recession. An old man who had a cold, and wasn’t as fast on his feet as he was during the State of the Union six months ago for whatever reason.

    I doubt anyone who knows who Trump is and who Biden is will change their vote based on this. I know who these guys are. There is only one sane choice.
    While I agree with what you say about out 2 choices, my concern about Biden is that last night might be Biden at his best. His staff tried to have him in peak form for this debate, and if this is his best then we are in deep doodoo.

    I am concerned that the US cannot survive 12 years of a Trump/Biden presidency. WE will come out materially different than we were in 2016 and I do not believe these changes will be beneficial to the vast majority of our population. Sadly, most of those reasons center not around policy, but rather around disinformation spread by news sources and the absence of our population's ability to use critical thinking skills to separate facts from lies. I agree with Biden's policies for the most part, but I don't think he is on solid ground mentally and physically.

    IMHO, neither Trump nor Biden will serve out a 4-year term. Each is likely to die or be removed from office due to incapacity. Both candidates demonstrated last night that they are not in charge and are instead puppets of those behind the curtain pulling the strings.

    Bring on the alcohol, it's gonna be a long 4 years either way. Longer if Trump gets elected, IMHO
     
    Angrily little boys who cry wolf are angry little boys who cry wolf.

    This debate will have very little influence on the election. What happens in October and in the first four days of November will be what determines the outcome of the election.

    Biden is done.
     
    You are correct.

    He never should have ran again.
    I know that is your opinion, but it wasn’t due to last night.

    I didn’t like his debate performance but I can see that he has done a good job as president. And as long as he is on the ticket I will vote for him, or whoever else the Democrats put on there.

    I will do this because Trump is corrupt, and a sociopath who was responsible for hundreds of thousands of extra deaths during a pandemic. And he took away women’s right to bodily autonomy with his court picks not because he believes abortion is wrong, but because he doesn’t care about anyone but himself. He will sell out this country and everyone in it to benefit himself. He’s already sold out women, he would sell out his children if he thought it would benefit him.

    He is completely amoral, he is completely unfit.

    Biden is old, he didn’t perform well during a debate. I don’t care, because I care about America more than I care that he’s old, especially when his record as president has been good.
     
    my concern about Biden is that last night might be Biden at his best. His staff tried to have him in peak form for this debate
    I think we saw Biden at his best during the State of the Union, and last night may have been his worst. I’m not going to say he cannot handle the job because of one night. I can see him doing the job.
     
    Reactions to the debate are highlighting a real problem in this country. Focus is heavily slanted towards the bad showing that Biden had, with criticism of Trump pretty much an obligatory aside to that. Trump was awful, too. We have so normalized Trump's dishonesty and lunacy that we expect it and aren't shocked by it. It should still be shocking. This puts any challenge and challenger to Trump at a real disadvantage, because we maintain a higher bar for whom and what opposes him. We expect more and when it isn't delivered, we hyper focus on that disappointment. Meanwhile, the grifter slithers away to a collective "that's just who he is."

    Count me among the concerned because I have no reason to trust Americans to choose substance over style, even when that style is bombastic and represents an existential threat to our nation. So I get it. But we have to acknowledge that a grossly uneven field has been created where we expect almost nothing of Trump while we carefully scrutinize Biden.

    Neither are good candidates nor compelling speakers but Biden is still a decent human, who has formed an administration that is working to make lives better for more people - certainly in stark contrast to anything Trump did or offers - and the outcome of the election still matters a great deal.
     

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