Harris delivered a ‘masterclass’ debate. Will it change the race?
With the presidential race on a knife’s edge, Trump’s support remains relatively stable
it's so funny how for weeks everyone telegraphed "she's gonna bait him" and her team was like "we're gonna bait him" and he managed to act normal for like 3 minutes and then she said one thing about his rallies and it was like feeding a gremlin after midnight
Look, I know this is a late response and all but this is serious: it's feeding a mogwai after midnight that turns it into a gremlin. Gremlin feeding times have no impact on their behavior.
There's enough fake news and disinformation in the world. You are doing all of us a great service. o7
Nope.
Trump fans don't care.
Harris fans saw confirmation.
Disinterested voters didn't watch.
...and a news media that desperately needs a horse race for clicks will continue to hold Harris to a higher standard than the orange Mr. Magoo.
Trump was barely coherent throughout, but you'll see the media clean up his word salad as 'Trump vigorously defended his economic policies and the handling of the pandemic.'
Really love how y'all have morphed into claiming the lying fake news media is out to get your candidate.
Clips of this will spread through media and word of mouth, though. People who did watch it can tell their friends stories about it. That's why it's good that she did well. It builds cultural momentum.
Disinterested voters didn’t watch.
It was a highly entertaining debate. Plenty of folks who dislike them both showed up with big bowls of popcorn to root for injuries. And Trump was true to form, just stepping into rake after rake for the full 90 minutes.
I came to count how many times Trump says "millions and millions"
Thing is Trump made his most ridiculous statements highly memeable.
"They're eating the dogs!" is gonna live on like "They're turning the fricken frogs gay!"
That might draw enough of the disinterested crowd to figure out what happened that night.
Yep, had a conversation about it with a coworker who won’t be voting. His stance on roe v Wade (he brought it up) was that both sides have points but he didn’t understand what the decision was about as evidenced by him thinking that the government just shouldn’t have a say in medical decisions.
Precisely. Harris is losing ground nationally and is losing ground in battleground states. Unless this debate significantly moves the needle, which I don't think it will for the very elegant reasons you summed, current trend lines indicate Harris losing steam and Trump continuing to pick up voters. No amount of wishful thinking will change that.
I've been tracking polling all year and you can see the past few weeks of progress here:
https://lemmy.world/post/19253997
Harris is losing ground in AZ, GA, PA and MI. If that slide continues with no debate bump it's going to be super hard to pull out a win.
WI moved to toss up. MI is on the verge of moving from Harris to toss up next week. PA and AZ have outright moved to the Trump category.
There's time to reverse it... but man...
People not voting for Harris because of Gaza need to avoid watching the debate, otherwise they’ll change their minds. No matter how bad things are, they can get worse.
Why is it always 'voters need to lower their standards', and never 'candidates need to be decent human beings'?
Who is the best alternative to Harris right now? Do I think she's perfect? No. Do I think she's the best alternative to Trump? Yes. We don't have a super progressive candidate that stands a chance of winning in this race, we picked Biden in the primary, he stepped back and now we have Harris. The system sucks, but that's what we have until voters put candidates in place to change the system.
Because having a tantrum because reality does not conform to your sense of fairness not only accomplishes fuck-all, but actively makes things worse.
instead of whining about voting for somebody you don't absolutely love all aspects of, why don't you use your time advocating to change the voting system so that you can vote for somebody else meaningfully.
Why do you think people still fall for the, "I'm just asking questions" routine?
Because the world is imperfect and politicians will always disappoint you.
Because Liberals have always been spineless and will continue to be. There is a parasocial worshiping dynamic how they interact with people in power. Harris just praised a Dick Cheney endorsement. There is no red line for them.
Still not voting for genocide.
If things get worse, we'll just have to do something other than vote won't we?
What, are you gonna be on the front lines with your guns shooting? The overwhelming majority of people with this mindset have never held a firearm in their entire lives and have no idea what they're even talking about. What are you even insinuating here? Is your end goal that we burn the entire country down because "wahhhhh both sides aren't perfect"? Grow up, only children refuse to see greater good through compromise because they can't see past not getting what they want. Single issue voters love to stick their head in the sand and pretend the one issue that they're whinging about is the most important in the world.
Have fun standing on your "genocide" comment when you're in a fascist dictatorship run by nazis. "but but but the genocide wah"
Have you seen the debate?
Harris's policy is a two-state solution. A ceasefire that by definition ends the genocide.
Trump's solution is to, no joke, entirely wipe out Palestine.
How is this in any way comparable? You HAVE your anti-genocide option right now!
God this take is such a loser position. "Fine, I'll just take my ball and play a different sport!"
Guess what dummy, you're playing soccer with these Yahoos whether you like it or not so pick a fucking side and THEN ALSO DO MORE."
...burn the fucking barn down with the animals in it, ya dumb bystander...
No hard feelings when I get the order to round up your kids to put into the camps after Führer Trump gives the signal, right? I'll just be following orders, and don't worry, work will set you free someday! I'm sure the dead Palestinians from our nuclear launch will thank you from the afterlife for sticking it to The Man.
As much as I want us to do something more than wash a finger at Netanyahu, there is not the support for anything more than voting for that.
Voting for either side is voting for Genocide. Not voting or voting third party when you're left wing is voting for Trump which is genocide with extra bad things sprinkled on top. I'd say don't kid yourself but I suspect that horse has already bolted
Fox News poll, right after the debate.
Boomertown.
Fox is conservative STATE propaganda. No different to Russian or North Korean state propaganda. Regardless of the blatant bias, there is literally nothing stopping them from manufacturing this "poll" out of thin air.
Fox isn’t state media. I dislike the mendacious fuckers as much as the next guy but let’s try and stick to facts.
The US has very few state media organizations. Voice of America is one. Radio Free Europe is another.
Fox is an independent organization, if they were state media the Biden admin would have control of their news. That obviously isn’t the case.
Good news is 8% managed to get their head out of their ass. Who is answering that poll besides hardcore conservatives?
Russian Bots
The comment about Haitian immigrants eating cats definitely clenched it for me.
My ass cheeks that is. As I was dying laughing.
The labels are wrong on this graph.
The question was: Are you a racist piece of shit?
Yes
No
I don't know
Looks like 25 people voted, one of them is sane and one is in a coma.
It will change a lot.
This will dramatically increase the number of Republicans who will tell everyone they're not voting for him, and then vote for him.
A few Republicans I know said they were going to vote libertarian or just not vote after watching the debate so she did pretty fucking well.
Despite how much they go on about how nuanced and special their views are, libertarians will find a way to vote GOP like they always do.
You are likely right sadly.
libertarian
Is there even a candidate now that wormbrain dropped out?
He fucked up dropping out as well as everything else. People can still vote 🪱 in a bunch of states.
Oh yeah they have their own candidate. Just some guy. Probably the guy that doesn't talk about age of consent laws too much. They try to pick a composed member of the party for that spot but who knows lol
A few Republicans I know said they were going to vote libertarian or just not vote
Very funny that he is straight up Biden-ing himself.
Some Republican politicians will switch perhaps.
The answer as always is, wait a week. We'll know when the post debate polling hits the news.
It wasn't a masterclass. It was functional. What she did masterfully was bait Mangolini into showing how incoherent he really is.
I think it will, but people won't think it did. Harris was dropping slightly in the polls, Polymarket odds were up to 52/46 Trump. The betting markets being the most responsive item to check, it's currently 50/49 Trump, back to tied. I think polls will look similar, back to essentially tied, but that's where things were a couple weeks ago so it might just erase the mini slump from everyone's mind.
Did she? I listened to the debate and she sounded mid for most of it. She spent more time attacking Trump than she did answering the questions she was asked.
Sure, she fared better than her predecessor, but "not shitting her pants" is a low bar. Trump was definitely worse than her, but again, if the bar is "don't act butthurt when your opponent says your rallies are boring", then congrats, I guess.
Reading comments from both sides, it seems that the left sees her not being geriatric as a win; and the right thinks that Trump was unjustly treated (targeted questions, live fact-checking, etc...), which is absurd considering that (a) they also asked Harris difficult questions (fracking and Israel, for example, which she did have a hard time answering), and (b) he was given free reign to talk out of order more times than I can count.
I think Harris "won" because Trump sucked. He sidestepped questions regarding an abortion ban ("I haven't talked with JD about it" fucking lol) and Ukraine ("Do you want Ukraine to win the war?" "I want the war stopped" TWICE in a row, followed by "I know Putin really well" and a rant about the awesomeness of Victor Orban); he repeatedly told lies (post-birth abortion and pets-eating immigrants being the highlight) which were promptly caught by the live fact-checker, and even showed weakness and undecisiveness ("do you have a plan?" "I have concepts of a plan").
But those are blunders that Trump committed, not something that Harris should take credit for. Nothing I heard screamed of "masterclass" debate, and I doubt that it will give her an edge in the upcoming elections or sway electors one way or the other. After all, the people who lived under four years of Trump's presidency and watched January 6th unfold live, and still call themselves "undecided" are pretty much lying to themselves at this point.
Enlightened centrist bullshit
Yes, that whole paragraph sounded like "She won" in an awful lot of frustrated and apologetic words
For fuck's sake, y'all should stop this "enlightened centrist" bullshit whenever someone is slightly critical of the leftist candidate.
Trump sucks. It's incredible that he's even allowed to be a candidate for presidency after the shit he's done. He's dangerous for the US and dangerous for the democracy of the entire world. If there's some justice left in the US system, he will lose the elections and he will pay for his crimes.
Not liking Harris' speech doesn't make me an "enlightened centrist". It just means that I don't think her words were strong enough, or bold enough, to win her new voters, which should be the point of the presidential debate. I think she won because Trump's ineptitude will bleed him some voters, but I'm not willing to credit that to Harris' speech skills.
She spent more time attacking Trump than she did answering the questions she was asked.
But those are blunders that Trump committed, not something that Harris should take credit for.
I don't think it's generous to conclude that many of those blunders can in fact be credited to Harris deliberately striking his ego.
Those still undecided aren't going to change their vote because of actual policy. But some don't want to be associated with losers - and showing just how much of a loser Trump is might make them at least not vote for him.
That's a strategy.
Tell yourself if it's more important to make Trump look like an idiot or to say actual policy right now. We're all voting for Kamala we just need the idiots to not vote for Trump
I think she actually attacked him less than she should have. Trump said he didn't know who the President is anymore. That seemed like a perfect opportunity to call out how much his age is affecting his judgement and clearly everyone else can tell you who the President is.
it seems that the left sees her not being geriatric as a win
Who on the left?
I hate to agree but I don't think you're wrong, and accept the down votes in advance. She did some things well though, the trolling on rallies was actually her sneakiest trick to rattle him. I think she could've performed better but maybe she learned some lessons for a second debate.
Overall I think there was a double standard on mic control, whenever he wanted to talk they let him. He even got to speak during fact checks, what the fuck is that? On the flip side, they didn't unmute her on rebuttals and he made a point to tell her to shut up if she spoke over him.
He is saying that she didn't win, he lost.
Which is a longer way of saying that she won, he is contradicting himself.
The debate actually infuriated me. There was no real content. Just two people screaming at each other thet the other one sucks.
Harris did better than trump because she didn't lie, but she still didn't say anything usefull. Mostly she didn't even respond to his "arguments", wich is sad, because they were that easy to respond to. Instead she continued to say what she learned by heart before the debate and what her team tokd her to say.
You miss that part about:
Working to make housing more affordable
$50k tax break for small businesses just starting out
Expanding the ACA to more people
Making pharmaceutical companies negotiate with the government to make more drugs more affordable
Making tax cuts permanent for the work class
BTW: continuing to say what you learned by heart before the debate and what your team told you to say is extremely important in a debate.
It's called "staying on point"
What we have learned from 10 years of Trump is that you lose when you respond to his arguments. His entire jig is to constantly shift the focus of the debate. He wants you to talk about Biden’s age and buttery males, instead of the economy. The best thing Harris could do (and she did) was to stay on topic.
Agreed. Respond to his policy points when he actually makes them. "Never would've happened if I was still President," is not a policy point and it's barely even a selling point. What question would that not work for? Inflation, illegal immigration, housing, school shootings, Ukraine, energy prices, climate change, and Israel: never would've happened. All because the Supreme Ruler Trump said... "Don't do it!"
Saying stuff off-the-cuff is not the purpose of a debate. It's to tell people positions that you already hold. Harris did this on several occasions here. She stated actual policy goals as well as personal positions on different topics. Trump just yelled about all the typical things and never once stated an actual reason he should be president. The best we got from him was "I have concepts of a plan."
I agree it was infuriating, but Harris did some some things of substance, even if anyone paying attention would have already known it.
Will this actually matter though? I somewhat doubt it, but I'll wait to see. I'm hoping it does, but we may be well beyond reason as a society.
Screaming? Did we watch different ones?