CNN's debate was no fair fight

Optional@lemmy.world to politics @lemmy.world – 307 points – CNN's debate was no fair fight
salon.com

I don't know what was wrong with Joe Biden. It's hard to imagine that they ever would have asked for a debate if this was the way he is normally. We've seen him recently holding press conferences and giving speeches and he seemed to be fine. They said he had a cold so maybe he really was on drugs — Nyquil or Mucinex or something that made him seem so shaky and frail. Whatever it was, it was a terrible debate for him and if he does stay in the race (which is almost certain in my opinion) the campaign is going to have a lot of work to do to dig out of the hole that was dug last night. The media smells blood and they are circling like a bunch of starved piranhas.

. . . For some odd reason, moderator Jake Tapper told Trump in the beginning that he didn't need to answer the questions and that he could use the time however he wanted. Trump ran with that, essentially giving a rally speech whenever he had the floor and was unresponsive to the vast majority of the questions. He made faces and insulted Biden to his face, at one point calling him a criminal and a Manchurian candidate. If anyone had said 10 years ago that this would happen at a presidential debate they would have been laughed out of the room. 

After the debate when most of the country had turned off cable news or gone to bed, CNN aired its fact check. And it's a doozy:

It sure would have been good if even some of that epic litany of lies could have been checked while people were still watching. The decision to have the moderators sit like a couple of potted plants woodenly asking questions about child care while Trump responded with irrelevant lies was inexplicable. Why did they even bother to ask questions at all? They could have just run the timer and let the candidates talk for two minutes each about anything they wanted. It probably would have been more enlightening.

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Are all American "debates" like this? The moderators just let them rattle off lies and skip the questions without challenging them?

Nope.

Up till this year a non partisan committee handled the debates and lent it an air of impartially and at least tried to hold candidates to the questions.

Both parties decided to boycott those debates, and set up their own with CNN as the host.

I've been bitching about it for months now and everyone's been telling me it'll be fine...

Edit:

2020 debates

https://youtu.be/pjW6WKpSCeQ?si=kwPHhz6XQd4EcVN-&t=1780

Hard disagree. This wasn't unusual. Presidential debates are notorious for moderators being ineffectual and unwilling to challenge lies.

I've never seen a debate where the moderators did a fact check. You'll see candidates call each other out sometimes, but moderators don't actually moderate. Timing answers to be ridiculously short so nothing of substance can be said is also a perennial feature.

I've never seen a debate where the moderators did a fact check.

During the one Obama Romney debate I remember Obama asking for a live fact check of some sort and getting it. So it's happened before.

Yes, Obama had to ask for it. The moderator wasn't about to say Romney was a lying sack of shit on their own. That's my point.

In general, the "debates" have always been a nationally televised pissing contest for as long as I've watched them.

Fact checkers challenged many of Trump's statements. Trump falsely said that he "brought back (college) football"; as he had commented on his wish for the conferences to play, but took no official action. Trump also repeated the claim that he "got back" Seattle and Minneapolis from left-wing protesters, and continued to repeat conspiracy theories about voter fraud. He said, without evidence, that drug prices will fall "80 or 90 percent," in reference to his efforts to cut drug prices[50] and exaggerated that he is making insulin at prices "so cheap, it's like water", despite insulin prices remaining fixed at about $300 per vial. Trump also misleadingly said that the U.S. economy before the pandemic was "the greatest economy in the history of our country"; although GDP growth was high in the first three years of the Trump presidency, it was higher under Presidents Dwight D. Eisenhower, Lyndon B. Johnson, and Bill Clinton, and the unemployment rate was lower under Eisenhower.[51] Nominal GDP was higher than at any point in US history, but this is true for the large majority of US Presidencies.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_debates#Format_and_debate

Those all happened afterwards. During the debate nobody has ever been told they lied about a particular thing by a moderator.

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Pretty much every Trump debate has been like this. This one was actually an improvement from 2020 and 2016 because his microphone was turned off so he wasn't able to just yell over the other person and constantly interrupt.

I don’t know if this is an improvement. As many feared, the muted mic saved Trump from himself. I’m sure his staff was actually pretty excited about that rule.

It would prevent him from doing what he did last time, which polled terribly.

That's very true, I should of said "from a civility standpoint it's an improvement".

Yes. 90% of the time is almost always off topic. Sometimes a candidate spends a whole sentence saying something related, but that's as close to organized as it ever was.

Trump definitely does more personal attacks, but that's about it. I've seen a moderator make a correcting statement once.

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