Nightmare in session
Can I watch this thing? I don’t know. It will be torture.
Here’s one place to watch it: ABC on Facebook Live.
If we don’t see each other again…it was a good ride.
Tip Jar
Can I watch this thing? I don’t know. It will be torture.
Here’s one place to watch it: ABC on Facebook Live.
If we don’t see each other again…it was a good ride.
I can’t watch it. I’d like to, because I’m a politics junkie, but if I do I’ll end up getting escorted from the building or my head will explode.
I’m sitting here feeling as nervous as if I was the one going up on stage! But as much as I can’t bear to watch, I can’t bear not watching either. :-(
It’s not bad. Figure one should show up for purported apocalypses; what if they take attendance? I find Trump appalling, generally unwatchable, so it _is_ intermittently painful… (I’m occasionally skipping bits of his bits, when it really gets gruellingly silly, I must confess; guy’s kinda repetitive anyway; doubt I’m missing much)..
But I gotta tell you: Ms. Clinton is doing well, so far. If it’s really the end of the world or not on her shoulders, you might have chosen worse, looks like. Several big belly laughs from the room, when she’s answering some of Trump’s wanderings off into his favoured alternate realities with appropriate incredulity…
Have to confess: I’m finding her pretty watchable, too. Dunno if she’s consciously steering this way or it’s just another case of what the myth her opposition has tried to build just isn’t so, but I’m hardly seeing cold wonk. More lively, knife fighter wonk…
(Her cybersecurity bit came off as a bit hesitant and low info for my tastes, mind, but let’s face it, you probably can’t possibly go too inside baseball there, for me.)
… ‘nother thing:
It’s been said–and sure, it kinda annoys certain of the unapologetically language-based among us to hear it–that if you really want to know who’s ‘winning’ one of these, watch it with the sound off…
… but, y’know, by this standard, it’s also looking very good for those who’d rather not have to stockpile canned goods. Hillary looks a bit wry, a bit amused, wide awake and on her game. Trump looks awkward, annoyed, defensive.
Did the world end? [peers over edge of desk]
… hrm, where to begin:
Well, as said, above, from the visuals, I think the apocalypse may just have been rescheduled.
Just heard a focus group out of Florida break 19 in 20 for Clinton took this one.
Headline: Trump on defensive.
His spin doctors will be at work. They’ll try to do the standard turn strength into a negative. Suspect they’ll try to say, oh, she was too cavalier, too dismissive, too mean… This is standard. One thing you need to watch with this guy: even if he’s none too quick on his feet, and like a lot of bullies, really pretty weak when confronted, he’s good at manipulation, division, post-facto editing, especially. I expect he’ll barge into whatever post spin thing he can, now, try to say he won, anyway… Grumble about how clearly, the media were in the tank for her…
I’m suggesting anyone actually in those rooms take a clue from Ms. Clinton. Smile indulgently. Maybe pat him on the head, even. He’s earned that much.
Was listening on NPR, which carried the BBC broadcast. Less painful, because I didn’t have to watch an orangutan mugging for the screen.
Clinton, IMNSHO, was at her weakest when she tried to be clever in a clearly scriptwritten way–for instance, “Trumped-up Trickle-Down Economics”. “Trumped up” isn’t the same as “amped up”, so the joke fell pretty flat. On the other hand, she shined in just about every other category. Trump’s main claim to success here comes from the fact that he managed to avoid at least some of the more obvious dog-whistles. He still crumbled on the facts, on the presentation, and on the temperament. (The laughter when he claimed to have a better temperament than Hillary was refreshingly audible.)
Both candidates had obvious supporters in the crowd; I’m assuming this was by design. The crowds were generally well-behaved, at least verbally–other than a few bursts of laughter as their candidate got off what they felt was a zinger, there weren’t any interruptions. That said, it was telling when I listened to those bursts of laughter. Clinton’s supporters clearly had a fairly solid mix of men and women. Almost all the laughter at Trump’s couple good one-liners were obviously male voices.
Weakest part of it–the moderation, of course. Clinton rose to the challenge of Trump’s attempts to bully her, which meant she HAD to demand the opportunity to rebut the troll’s lies.
I watched for a bit and then switched to just listening, which was much better – at least, less torturous, if also less fully informed.
Afterward I was thinking it went well, she was way better than I expected, and he was less awful than I expected but still astonishingly awful…and none of that will make any difference.
But then it occurred to me that there are a lot of people who just dislike Clinton, for a host of reasons. The debate could move some of them into her corner – and that would make a difference. It won’t shift Trump fans, of course, because his awfulness is what they like. But it could shift people who were resisting voting for Clinton.
My fear: the undecideds (and who are these people?) will be unmoved. Yes, Clinton was in command of the facts. She seemed prepared and poised. Trump was petulant, narcissistic, and tone deaf. But this is how it has always been. If nothing has moved the needle for the undecideds before, I can’t see how this debate will change anything.
I can. I feel less disgruntled about voting for Clinton than I did before the debate, so I extrapolate from that to other people who have not been actively watching the two of them campaigning. I think it’s fair to speculate that if I feel less disgruntled, others may actually shift from voting for Stein or not voting, to voting for Clinton.
The fact that she is even still standing on her feet, still fighting and moving forward, and doing it with grace and dignity, after 25 years of almost total hate…that counts for a lot in my book. She’s stronger than almost anyone I’ve ever known.
Trump breaks down and whines from a single criticism. What would he do with all that loathing? He manages to keep himself isolated from it by not allowing it near him most of the time, from what I can tell. What will he do if he’s president and the Prime Minister of Germany says something about him that he doesn’t like? Clinton will know how to deal with that – she’s dealt with it for years. Trump will just collapse into schoolyard bully mode. That’s not good for the US, and it’s not good for the rest of the world.
Collapse into schoolyard bully mode while having the nuclear codes. I don’t think it’s possible to overstate how horrific a Trump presidency would be.
My view of the ‘will the undecideds be moved’ thing:
Yes. Dunno how many, but yes, some will.
Why? Because the debate is a bit like sports. Uncontrolled, unpredictable, you don’t know how it will end, anything can happen. People will watch who _haven’t_ already picked her, either as the lesser of two evils or, seriously, a decent, competent, sensible choice, even if you don’t agree with her on everything. Making it one of the rare remaining fixtures in the world in which people don’t pick their sources by what they already believe…
And Ms. Clinton benefits _enormously_ from this, with people raised on a steady diet of she’s the devil. It’s like they let her slip into their living rooms, in this rare instance, be a bit charming, be a bit wry, be practically _masterful_ in the face of a belligerent asshole who would have overcome lesser creatures. So now, some of them, at least, are thinking: geez, _this_ is the woman we’ve been told is the incarnation of evil? Damn. I kinda like her, now.
Plus, I suppose, it’s debate mode as opposed to campaign mode. I don’t like campaign mode so ignored it as much as possible – but my idea of her was being tinged by the snippets I couldn’t help seeing.
Maybe it’s just as simple as the fact that she wasn’t having to project her voice to a noisy crowd.
And of course she benefits from the contrast with that out of control tv personality across the stage.
Krugman today saying essentially the same as mine above. (And muttering a bit about how it ever came to this level of silliness.)