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Election 2020 The Final Countdown v. Nov. 3rd

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harris is anti american and anti the constitution. Literally will make biden get less votes. Wanting to steals everybodys guns is sure going to go down well with america right?
 
cduggles said:
It’s interesting because Harris is being given the edge on winning, and everyone is saying the debate wasn’t that important, but if either of them had screwed up it would have been really important.
Pence sounds fine until you remember he’s VP with Trump, and then he just seems rabidly opportunistic.
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Pence was certainly a lot better than Trump, but he still repeatedly went over time and ignored the moderator repeatedly asking them to stop.

Neither of them seem able to follow the rules they agreed to. Though to be fair Harris wasn't perfect either on this.

Oh hey did you know Harris was a career prosecutor? :D
 
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I don't know if this is the right thread for commentary on the VP debate, but here goes.

1. I felt bad for that fly that was stuck with a Mike Pence on its ass for so long. When I started cracking up, my brother thought the fly was literally on the TV, when he realized it was on Pence, he broke out in laughter too.
2. Pence played the Sarah Palin strategy of answering questions, but not necessarily the questions that were asked.
3. Pence deserves a good bitch slap for his constant disregard for the agreed upon rules for the debate and talking over the moderator so many times.
4. Pence tried to pull off the exact same "dont believe your lying eyes and ears, believe me instead" bullshit Trump failed so spectacularly to accomplish.
5. Pence did the ticket no favors with tonight's performance.
 
Anonymous Dissident said:
2. Pence played the Sarah Palin strategy of answering questions, but not necessarily the questions that were asked.
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That tricks been around forever. If you get a question you don't like, you just answer with a speech that says whatever you want to say. If someone says you didn't answer the question, insist that you actually are answering the question.

Harris did a particularly obvious version of it when she wouldn't just say "no we won't pack the Supreme Court". That's what she should have said. Even if they do think they might do that, politically it made more sense to just say no.

Instead she basically just made a speech covering another political point she wanted to make.

I thought overall harris did relatively poorly. Nowhere near as badly as trump did. But not as well as I might have liked.
 
This is the best article I’ve seen on the debate strategy, and why Harris didn’t fact check Pence moreso:

Let it be said first: It is insane that the vice presidential debate is still happening in person. While viewers ought to be focusing on the words coming out of the candidates’ mouths, they will be partially consumed by those words’ attendant droplets instead. One of the main things everyone watching the debate will have to think about is whether Vice President Mike Pence is infected, and whether he’s infecting Sen. Kamala Harris with the aerosols that will easily circumnavigate the tiny plexiglass barrierserected between the candidates, which Pence nearly refused. They should have moved it to Zoom, or at least an outdoor venue.

Plexiglass drama aside, the incumbent VP is coming in as the favorite, here. Pence is the perfect counterweight to Donald Trump. Pence is driven by ideology; Trump is motivated by narcissism. Pence is playing the long game in politics; Trump is in it for instant gratification. Pence knows policy; Trump knows insults. Pence is focused and controlled; Trump is frenetic and cannot stay the course of a train of thought for more than a few seconds.

All this makes Pence a formidable adversary for the Democratic VP nominee as they face off in Salt Lake City for their first and only debate Wednesday night. There’s been a lot of speculation that Harris, known for her reputation as one of the Senate’s most brutal interrogators, will wipe the floor with Pence, but in the lead-up to the debate, both Harris and former primary opponent Pete Buttigieg—who has been playing Pence in her practice debates—have cautioned viewers not to expect an easy win for the senator. In an interview with Indianapolis Monthly, Buttigieg said Pence was an underrated debater whom “it would be a real mistake to underestimate.”

Casual political observers may be setting the bar low for Pence for two reasons. First of all, the VP debate of 2016 was held three centuries ago, so if you were somehow alive to witness it, the events of the intervening years have probably crowded the details from your brain. Secondly, throughout Trump’s term, in the shadow of an attention-hogging president, Pence has slunk around in the background, lulling Trump’s detractors into thinking of him as the madman’s mild-mannered, cowed assistant. He’s easy to caricature, what with his old-timey gender politics and the fact that he calls his wife mother. He doesn’t exude any notable whiffs of charisma or otherwise telegraph that he’d be good onstage.

But he is good, by GOP standards—which is to say that, as a former right-wing radio host, he’s a practiced liar and a smooth defender of indefensible cruelties. Viewers will judge him alongside Trump’s harrowing performance from last week, meaning Pence will look lovely by comparison to voters who like their Republicans less explicitly nasty and more beholden to codes of decorum. But Pence’s biggest asset is one he shares with the president: He is shameless. In 2016, every time Sen. Tim Kaine brought up one of the litany of terrible things Trump had said or done—proposing a “deportation force,” backing “punishment” for women who terminate their pregnancies—Pence simply denied that it had happened, no matter if it had already been recorded and broadly disseminated to the American public. When Kaine reminded Pence of Trump’s bit about how more countries should have nuclear arsenals, Pence responded, “He never said that,” shaking his head with the mild exasperation of a parent trying to calm down a hysterical child. Pence’s mien was unflappably smug as he gaslit viewers about the things they’d seen and heard with their own eyes and ears. With a dry laugh and a bemused smile, he made Kaine’s legitimate criticisms sound like bizarre conspiracy theories concocted by someone with Trump derangement syndrome. “Do you not take deductions?” Pence asked Kaine when confronted with Trump’s tax avoidance. “How does that work?”

All of this means Pence’s strategy in 2016 bears some strange similarities to Joe Biden’s in 2020. Biden spent much of last week’s presidential debate shaking his head and muttering “that’s not true” whenever Trump lied. The tactic did an OK job of giving voice to America’s moral outrage at the president. But Harris is unlikely to take the same approach against Pence partially because Harris has a higher bar to clear. According to reporting from BuzzFeed News, “Harris likely won’t take on the role of fact-checking Pence, or try to confront him frequently over falsehoods” because research has shown that “women candidates pay a high price for negativity and can be harshly punished by voters over issues of honesty.” Healthy society we’ve got here!

We’ve already seen this Harris strategy play out. Since taking the VP nomination, Harris has foregrounded the sunnier side of her political persona. I don’t think I’ve ever seen her grin for as long as she did during her Aug. 12 acceptance speech, in which she painted a lengthy, detailed picture of her life as a loving caregiver:

Whether I’m cheering in the bleachers at a swim meet, or setting up a college-room dorm, or helping my goddaughter prepare for her school debate, or building Legos with my godson, or hugging my two baby nieces, or cooking dinner—Sundaydinner—my family means everything to me. I’ve had a lot of titles over my career, and certainly, vice president would be great. But Momala will always be the one that means the most.
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Like Barack Obama, who was up against a similar—though not congruent!—prejudice against Black anger, Harris has focused her message on the concept of hope. “Optimism is the fuel driving every fight I’ve been in,” Harris said in a recent Elle profile, urging America to confront its racist past “in a way that is motivated by love.” At this dark moment for the country, in a magazine that almost always features its cover models sporting a contemplative resting face or a pout, every single one of the photos in Harris’ profile, including the cover image, picture her smiling with teeth. In the 2016 debate, Pence’s leathery composure made even corny-dad Kaine seem combative. Harris, whose race and gender will predispose certain voters to set her baseline of acceptable anger even lower, will make every attempt to steer clear of that trap.

This could have its own costs. For left-leaning voters who are fired up to unseat a president they see as a mortal threat to human rights and American democracy, Harris’ pivot away from the scorching indignation she’s brought to Senate hearings and primary debates may feel like an insufficient response to the crises of 2020. During the Democratic primary, her most memorable moment was her skewering of Biden on the issue of busing. Her polling numbers rose after that debate, and Biden’s lead shrunk. When she monologued about the current president, Harris spoke with the searing clarity of a former prosecutor on the dangers of Trump’s illegal maneuvers to enrich himself and retain power.

But Harris is speaking to a different audience now: unmotivated voters, maybe some Obama-Trump voters, and others who aren’t slam-dunk Democrats. With positivity as her message, she’ll have to make an affirmative case for how a Biden administration would change the country for the better. This has been a weak spot for Harris—her presidential campaign was sunk in part by her inability to stake and stick to clear positions on important issues. Still, Biden is maintaining a wide lead in the polls, and hardly anyone’s votes are swayed by the VP debates, anyway—though the 2020 calculus may be slightly different now that the incumbent president is infected with a deadly virus, and he might have infected his opponent (Biden is still testing negative, but as we’ve seen in the past week, it can take several days for someone with COVID to test positive).

Since Pence is such a talented liar, it’s probably useless for Harris to take the Kaine route of lambasting Trump and his cohort for all their evils, anyway. Last week’s presidential debate was a clash of two mutually exclusive realities, an unproductive exercise that made any certain truth seem unattainable. And voters with the urge to waste an evening watching the VP debate have probably spent the past four years absorbing enough news coverage and feeling the impact of the Trump administration on their lives to make up their own minds about whether the current state of the country is good or bad. The best Harris can hope for, tonight, is that there are no huge headline-making moments that could move the needle.

Harris does have another option. The joy she’s been expressing in her recent appearances and interviews can be marshaled at Pence’s expense, in the same way Pence smirked and snickered at Kaine in 2016. My favorite Harris moment from the Democratic primary was the time Biden claimed to have the support of “the only African American woman that’s ever been elected to the United States Senate.” Harris interrupted him. “No, that’s not true. The other one is here,” she said, chuckling at Biden’s error. She seemed genuinely amused, shrugging as if to say, “What is it with this guy?!” and laughing for a full 10 seconds. Correcting a political opponent’s lies—when the lies aren’t exactly life-or-death—doesn’t have to be grim. In disastrous times, there is still laughter to be had at a liar’s expense.
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slate.com

Don’t Expect Kamala Harris to Demolish Mike Pence Tonight

She has her work cut out for her.
slate.com slate.com
 
I walked in on the debate and a curmudgeon was talking over the mediator who was say "okay - times up". He just didn't give a fuck. I'll vote for him i think it was Bieden IIRC based on watching the news with my parents years ago.
 
TheLoveBandit said:
Sounds like the start of a media bias thread...if there was such a thing.



Article didn't link the study, and while I find the evaluation of Fox consumers less informed than those who watch no news both humorous and unsurprising, I am curious how consumers of left wing media (CNN, MSNBC) would rank on the same survey. EDIT: found an article talking about the survey, MSNBC and CNN did bad, but still notably better than FOX. They also broke down a bit of radio v television, and where the respondent's political views lie in relation to the sources they listened to.

More from the article, which shows a heavy left lean (anything Trump is vile, anything Clinton is cleared). Interesting in reading it that while it blames the media for giving Trump's candidacy for too much coverage, thereby giving it legitimacy:



But, I read further....



Again, the bias is showing. I should have stopped there, but I didn't. I regret it.

Conservatives view MSM as covering for the left, and lambasting Trump and the right. Progressives view the MSM as ... ? I won't speak for the left, but would like to read the replies. I honestly would like to know.

The article views the MSM as being at fault for giving Trump too much air time, and not enough for Hillary, and now Biden. The heart of the article is that MSM should be exposing how bad a person Trump is, and how great Biden is. THAT is the MSM's job according to this article, along with a return to being unbiased journalists rather than dollar chasing buzz fiends. Somehow, those two priorities aren't going to work out.
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I see you found it interesting too!

Nothing like a bit of provocation to stoke the fires to life.... 🧐
 
democrats going to try declare trump disabled now with the 25th. Pelosi is the most unamerican old bitch how they can even try declare that jesus shes up to some illegal shit coup before the elections. If anybody is going to start a civil war it would be that dumb bitch trying to remove a elected president who got a virus and is doing well.
 
That would be a bad move for the Dems to try to declare him disabled. Just let the election happen ffs. Quit giving the other side ammo for calling foul play.
 
it would be digging their own grave, and very strange since trump is actually recovering well she just wants to make herself the president and i feel like she might pull dirty tricks on biden if he wins and declare him disabled due to dementia just to be president. I believe she is very selfish and has her own interests at play and biden should watch out for the back stabbing from harris and her when he wins to remove him and place the first women in charge.
 
TripSitterNZ said:
it would be digging their own grave, and very strange since trump is actually recovering well she just wants to make herself the president and i feel like she might pull dirty tricks on biden if he wins and declare him disabled due to dementia just to be president. I believe she is very selfish and has her own interests at play and biden should watch out for the back stabbing from harris and her when he wins to remove him and place the first women in charge.
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The vice president can't just declare the president disabled and remove them. A majority of the cabinet has to agree to do that.
 
CFC said:
I see you found it interesting too!

Nothing like a bit of provocation to stoke the fires to life.... 🧐
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You rang?

Hit the erratic dramatic up with an invite to shitbird server
 
cduggles said:
Buttigieg throws major shade:
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When the DNC stole the primary from Bernie the second time, they should've at least picked him or Booker. Hopefully their calculations were correct though, choosing to go with the familiar face or whatever. We will know soon enough I guess.

I wonder what job Biden will give Mayor Pete? He's been campaigning pretty hard. Bernie has too though (maybe he'll get to be janitor or something).
 
Well to me that is just freaking ridiculous I mean whatever is truth or not about Trump to say that he is "afraid" to debate is verging on total and preposterous ridicule.

It's more the case that he is simply refusing to submit and commit to yet another attempt at weakening the length of his arm in a dishonest and corrupt roundabout manner.
 
Anonymous Dissident said:
2. Pence played the Sarah Palin strategy of answering questions, but not necessarily the questions that were asked
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No way true. What he actually did and very cleverly and effectively was get the relevant and important points across to the public rather than being controlled and dominated by the oppressive containement role and job the bitch in the middle was put in place to do, 100-percent entirely in favour of the Democrats at every possible opportunity under strict Direction and instruction of course.
 
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