↓
 
Home » Who “won” the debate?

Who “won” the debate?

The New Neo Posted on by

You can see a lot of commentary on the question of who won the first debate. I’m not going to even try to chime in my answer, and not just because I didn’t watch it. It’s because I not only don’t know, it’s because I think no one knows.

I’ve noticed that commentary is all over the place in terms of the answer and in terms of the reasons for giving whatever the answer might be. The left is fairly unanimous in saying Biden won and Trump lost and is a boorish idiot as well. But the left always says that. It’s the right that’s interesting, and it doesn’t fall into neat pro-Trump vs. NeverTrumper lines. It’s the pro-Trump camp that is split.

I also think the answer depends on the audience to whom each candidate was appealing. Was Trump merely trying to “solidify his base,” and did the debate help him achieve that goal because he came off as a feisty aggressive fighter? But I thought Trump’s base was already quite well solidified, and they already know he’s a feisty aggressive fighter. I thought it was the people on the fence he had to woo – if there are any.

Maybe he doesn’t think such people exist, and so no use trying to appeal to them. Maybe he wanted Biden to alienate some of his base, which may be softer than Trump’s. Maybe that happened, for example when Biden disavowed his support of the Green New Deal.

Some people say the fact that Democrats are now trying to say there should be no more debates between Biden and Trump is evidence that Democrats feel Biden lost this debate, and don’t want to expose Biden further. But although that’s possible, that’s not my interpretation. My first thought on hearing their demand was that they think Biden did pretty well in proving he could function in a debate for 90 minutes, and that was their goal all along, so they think it would be wise to quit while they’re ahead.

2016 was a very strange and difficult-to-predict presidential election. I think the same is true, but double, for 2020.

Comments

Who “won” the debate? — 24 Comments

  1. I just saw that the Moderator of debate two will be Steve Scully, political editor at C-Span, who worked as an intern for Biden, and was on the staff of Sen Teddy Kennedy.

    Scully will follow Wallace who went on record last December to accuse Trump of undertaking the “most direct sustained assault on freedom of the press in our history,”.

    This highlights questions I have rhetorically posed to myself; “who is the Commission on Presidential Debates? How are they appointed? Who are the individuals who are presently exercising this power?”

    We are informed that the RNC approves the moderators and the rules. So, the next question would be, “who at the RNC is deliberately sabotaging the Trump campaign?”

    We have entered an alternate universe.

    If Biden doesn’t back out first, Trump should declare the process to be totally corrupt, and walk away. State emphatically that he will run on his record, and can be judged on that. Can’t hurt him anymore than the phony debates will.

  2. Chris Wallace won. In a just world, Wallace would be run out of the industry, in 2016. But he was given a 2nd chance, doubled down, and his own industry lauds him. Wallace will continue to make bank, and nobody will riot outside his work or home to cancel him.

    Biden won because Chris Wallace only covered topics interesting only to Biden’s base. Name one topic that any Trump supporter cares about and then search for that topic in the transcript.

    Then there is this:
    WALLACE: I’m the moderator of this debate and I would like you to let me ask my question and then you can answer your —

    (CROSSTALK)

    TRUMP: Go ahead.

    WALLACE: You, in the course of these four years have never come up with a comprehensive plan to replace Obamacare and just this last Thursday, you signed a largely symbolic executive order to protect people with pre-existing conditions five days before this debate.

    ME: That’s not a question, that’s an opinion, actually two of them, asserted as facts. Trump was right to interrupt Wallace and correct him. But those who weren’t already decided about Trump will be turned off by the exchange.

  3. I don’t know who won or what “won” even means in this context. The Left may have thought Trump lost but he didn’t lose the way they wanted him to.

    Trump was supposed to stand there and be on the defensive all night while Biden lied and smeared him and Wallace helped. These people all have a fantasy about “putting Trump in his place” and Trump’s performance shattered that delusion. That’s why they don’t want any more debates. Watching Trump fight back is psychologically painful for them.

    People have talked about Clinton derangement and Bush derangement and Obama derangement but it’s different when it comes to Trump. Trump-haters see him as beneath them and can’t believe he has the audacity to fight back.

    Mike

  4. After the debate I was confused.

    Now, 24 hours later I’m pretty sure Trump won
    🙂 🙂

  5. Debates are generally pointless. Everyone, except with perhaps 1-3% of the LIVs who don’t pay attention, already know who they are voting for. Hint: birds of a feather flock together.

  8. “Debate” is a gross misnomer. These so-called debates are really press conferences where the press (just one, Wallace, this time, but not always) poses questions of their own choosing. Calling them questions submitted by the public is BS; they are sorted through and selected.

    I do not watch these “debates” as a result of seeing fat Candy Crowley’s false correction of Romney. I cannot stand the humbug bias, which I also perceive in Wallace.

    A proper debate poses a question; the debaters take pro and con positions, and the more persuasive debater wins, regardless of position.

    The presidential “debates” are symbolic of the general dumbing down of the USA, coupled with the elitist leftist media, of which Wallace is one, which is responsible for the dumbing-down.
    Wallace’s income, which I estimate approximates $10 mill per year, is secure regardless. The rest of us, not so much!

  10. Barry,
    If Trump won, it is because he was (correctly) seen as the victim of an assault.

  11. I was hoping for a disastrous performance from Biden that would put his cognitive decline front and center as a campaign issue. That didn’t happen and so Biden “won”. I noticed the betting odds moved several point in Biden’s favor right after the debate and now favor Biden 60-40. The odds were close to 50-50 just a couple of weeks ago. There is still plenty of time for Biden to stumble but this was definitely a missed opportunity for Trump.

  12. The debate was a hot mess that was not enjoyable for anyone who watched. Biden has said he looks forward to the next debate but the main reason Democrats said their should not be one was because it was fairly pointless. Most viewers did not learn anything about the important future of this country. They just saw each one cutting the other off before they could lay out their plans. I had texts from conservative Republican friends who said they were disgusted by the whole thing. They also acknowledged that Biden didn’t seem senile [something even Tucker Carlson noted].

  13. The left won. Throughout this entire summer we’ve seen with our own eyes leftist extremists rioting and looting and killing and Chris Wallace successfully turned the entire issue around and made the entire thing about white supremacy. You know: The thing that wasnt even an issue anywhere near the comparison.
    The left seems always to get away with that, be it Hunter Biden, Hillary’s email server, Benghazi, corrupt FBI agents…etc…Instead we’re stuck having to defend ourselves against russia collusion and “hands up dont shoot”.
    This is extremely frustrating.

  15. @YeetTheMarxists:

    The Hispanics for all their myriad faults are not going to knowingly vote for Blacks rioting in their neighborhoods and the importation of job lots of Somalis.

    A look around the US suggests that the prime directive of Hispanics once they achieve critical mass in a locality is to ethnically cleanse same of Blacks. And very sensible of them it is too.

    Do they give Whites the boot? I would think not so actively given that Hispanic neighborhoods tend to drive Whites out anyway given that differing peoples do not like to live together and do not enjoy each other’s typical dysfunctions. Read Victor Davis Hanson on how Hispanics turned his corner of the Shire into a rubbish tip.

    It is sensible to make common cause with them and leverage their sensible racial consciousness and animosities in the present fight. This does not make them Legacy Americans’ bestest buddies in the Long Game.

    Do I need to add that anyone finding the tone and content of the above discomforting is displaying traits which do not bode well for the long term survival of their genetic inheritances? One can choose to stand above the Fray. Whether or not the Fray will respect that is another thing entirely.

  16. It wasn’t a debate. It was political theater. The real question is, “Who performed better?” Trump certainly did. He was the strong, Alpha male. Biden appeared frail and rehearsed. Trump was more natural. Confident. At times even funny.

  17. My husband turned on a popular German talk show tonight, and they were talking about the Proud Boys. I certainly follow American politics more closely than anyone on the show, and I had never heard of them till this week. I have the feeling that the Dems want to do all they can to hurt America’s image abroad and make it impossible to accomplish anything in Europe.

  18. Ann Althouse had an interesting take on the debate, namely that Trump was not about to let Biden do to him what Biden did to Paul Ryan in 2012: “Debating Trump, Biden got a big serving of what he dished out 8 years ago. Ryan did a fantastic job of maintaining his cool, staying substantive, and going high when Biden went low. And then he lost the election. I’m sure Biden would have been willing to do what he did in 2012 and be completely rude and irritating as hell once again, but he’s 8 years older, and, more importantly, Donald Trump is not Paul Ryan.” [italics in original]

    Several commenters noted that Trump may well have studied that 2012 debate beforehand.

    https://althouse.blogspot.com/2020/10/biden-continually-interrupts-ryan-in.html

  19. I couldn’t watch it. I was a debater in high school, and I can never watch these darned things: I keep thinking of debates as an adversarial technique to destroy bad arguments in pursuit of truth.

    But that’s not what presidential debates are. Presidential debates are CAMPAIGN ADS, intended to use VISUAL CUES to produce favorable GUT-LEVEL reactions in the persuadable SEGMENT of the electorate.

    Or so I’m told.

    And apparently Trump won, if this analysis is correct:
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YhD4KbyxHqM

  20. “I’ve noticed that commentary is all over the place in terms of the answer and in terms of the reasons for giving whatever the answer might be. ” – Neo

    And those were the Republicans!

    The responses on the Right were not only all over the map, some of them were totally off the wall.

  21. So, are we optimists or pessimists about the election?

    http://americandigest.org/wp/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/what-a-laborious-day-42-1.jpg

    “The left won. Throughout this entire summer we’ve seen with our own eyes leftist extremists rioting and looting and killing and Chris Wallace successfully turned the entire issue around and made the entire thing about white supremacy.” – Harry

    https://babylonbee.com/news/trump-criticized-for-failing-to-fully-condemn-white-supremacy-for-327th-time

  22. On a more pessimistic note – Doc Zero is way down in the depths.
    https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1311283829282344962.html

    he crap Biden and Wallace pulled to deflect from Antifa and BLM – harping on the Proud Boys nonentities, “Antifa is just an idea” – were not just evasive tactics, but a real danger to the American people. Democrats are mainstreaming political violence.

    When your response to violent left-wing groups trashing cities and killing people is “hey, what about this little band of online loudmouths nobody ever heard of before?” you are mainstreaming political violence. You’re explicitly equating it with jerks writing nasty tweets.

    Biden, like other Democrats before him, is signaling to Antifa/BLM that he has their backs. Their violence will be indulged, excused, and overlooked while Dems and media obsess over vastly smaller groups that aren’t burning down cities or assaulting people in restaurants.

    If you don’t treat political violence as absolutely beyond the pale – no exceptions, no indulgences, no whining about unrelated nonviolent groups you don’t like, no salutes to the righteous grievances of rioters – you are normalizing that violence, and there will be more of it.
    Also, violence has to be denounced immediately. Waiting a few months and then musing that maybe the boys went a little overboard when they leveled a city block isn’t good enough. Belated criticism is an effort to control political fallout from the violence, not a denunciation.

    Democrat obsession with the white supremacist phantom menace has gone far beyond whataboutism or deflection. It’s an ongoing effort to justify and encourage left-wing political violence, with dangerous consequences.

    Why not organize hundreds of rioters and trash everything in sight to get what you want, when you know your Democrat buds will finger a busload of dumbasses in Hawaiian shirts or something as an equivalent or greater problem that the public should be MORE worried about?

    The phantom menaces are also treated like problems the GOVERNMENT should be more worried about. Nobody’s imposing mandatory indoctrination seminars to raise awareness about groups that are actually waging organized campaigns of political violence on the streets.

    We have a real problem with organized left-wing political violence causing billions of dollars in damage, injuries, and deaths. That problem should be addressed directly and immediately. If some white supremacist group ever does the same, it should be addressed likewise.

  24. America won the debate.

    Trump is going into isolation, like a magical adept wizard.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

↑