CNN's debate was no fair fight
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.
Don't let the optimism here fool you. Biden needs to bring on board undecided voters. And they aren't impressed.
Honestly I think anyone who is old enough to vote and saw the unholy shitshow that was 2017-2021 is literally incapable of being undecided.
If that is even possible somehow, I’m sure there’s nothing Biden can do that will specifically change that.
Polls show there's still undecided people. For example in Pennsylvania there's 6 points unaccounted for in polling. And Biden really needs to pick up those points.
Polls show a lot of things. They are very often critically flawed.
Not really no.
Disagree. Landline-multipart-questionnaires are positively an alien concept from the dark ages of three networks and an independent city newspaper.
Good thing that's not the sole method anymore. They do cellphones, text messages, mail, and email. Just about anything except passing a public link around for anyone to use.
Yes. Also bad.
Well then what's your preferred method for being contacted?
To not be. I don’t think that’s an unusual position either.
You must be fun to live with, you complain that you think something is broken but you don't want to help fix it.
Help fix polls??!
No. No I don’t. I don’t want to help fix coal-rolling, advertisements, door-to-door sales, or cold-sales-calls either. Those things need to go extinct. There’s no fix for them.
So you don't want the politicians to know how you feel on the issues?