Prickly City by Scott Stantis for October 15, 2020

Sure Carmen you can have all the pipe dreams you want.

NNNOOOooooo! YER THE PUPPET!!!!

You can’t have an intelligent debate when one of the parties lacks intelligence.

So debaters always sink to the lowest common denominator? I’ll leave it to the rest of you to decide which one is the lowest common denominator, since I’m sure that’s not universally agreed upon, and I don’t want to get myself into a flame war here.

But why? Why did Trump, down by six points in the polls and facing his last chance to turn things around, come into the first debate against Joe Biden with a strategy — if that’s what it can be called — of blowing up the event with 90 minutes of bullying, interruptions, and ad hominem provocations?

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First, Trump, the king of powerfully simplistic political branding, no longer seems to have a message.

In 2016 he had his four pillars of immigration, trade, Obamacare and corruption. He had slogans that were effective: “Make America Great Again,” “Build the Wall.”

Quick, what’s Trump’s message in 2020?

Nothing really leaps out.

There is no Trump legislative agenda on Capitol Hill.

He was asked recently by The New York Times what he wanted to do in a second term and the paper noted he talked about cutting regulations and taxes, appointing conservatives judges and border control.

But the paper also somewhat mischievously recorded this meandering non-response from the president that became a popular meme:

“But so I think, I think it would be, I think it would be very, very, I think we’d have a very, very solid, we would continue what we’re doing, we’d solidify what we’ve done, and we have other things on our plate that we want to get done.”

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Finally, and most important, Trump in 2020 is burdened with a record, one that has sunk him into chronic unpopularity for several years now, even during the height of his economic boom.

Trump was not the first American politician to successfully win an election by casting himself as a populist outsider taking on the corrupt establishment.

That playbook is as old as the republic.

But those outsiders who suddenly arrive in Washington or a state capital with no experience and ill-equipped for the job suddenly realize the limits of the campaign schtick.

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https://www.politico.com/news/2020/09/30/trump-debate-tactics-423547

The first debate between the U.S. President Donald J. Trump and former Vice President Joe Biden was devoured with eager anticipation all over the world.

But top Kremlin propagandists and state media experts came away disappointed, reluctantly acknowledging that Biden managed to wipe the floor with his loudmouth opponent.

Russian state media TV show 60 Minutes played a compilation of what they seemingly considered to be Trump’s greatest hits of the night, consisting of the incumbent’s tasteless insults of his opponent.

The hosts and some of the experts heartily laughed along in an attempt to support Trump’s cringeworthy performance, resembling a squad of miscreants gathered at Dr. Evil’s lair.

Their exaggerated cackling came off as forced and unnatural, falling short of the desired effect.

In spite of their best efforts, Moscow’s mouthpieces had to concede that the debate was nowhere near the finest hour for their preferred candidate.

The host of Russia’s 60 Minutes Evgeny Popov conceded, “All the while we’ve been thinking that Biden is feeble, but it turns out he isn’t. He was able to handle the debate well and acted in an absolutely normal way.”

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Dmitry Abzalov, Director of the Center for Strategic Communications, noted, “Importantly, this was Trump’s chance to show that Biden is weak.

Trump needed the debate more than Biden, he wanted to show that he [Biden] couldn’t handle the 90-minute format without a break requested by Biden’s representatives.

Trump wanted to obliterate Biden, but so far failed to do so.”

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https://www.thedailybeast.com/russian-media-calls-trump-putins-piglet-admits-he-lost-the-debate

Man, the two week delay is just killing this strip.

The Interpreter: A democracy without voters? What’s the longest you’ve ever had to stand in line to vote? If you live in a wealthy democratic country that isn’t the United States, that probably seems like an odd question. … never long enough to keep track of … That this is tolerated at all, and for so long, communicates a disturbing comfort with voter suppression. Americans have become inured to this

Videos show closed-door sessions of leading conservative activists: ‘Be not afraid of the accusations that you’re a voter suppressor’ https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/council-national-policy-video/2020/10/14/367f24c2-f793-11ea-a510-f57d8ce76e11_story.html

Here’s a bit of historical irony: Back in the 20’s NBC had a red network and a blue network. In 1942 NBC was forced to divest and sell one of the two. The red network abides and became what is now NBC. The blue network was the one sold off, and it became ABC. Tonight, Ol’ Punkinhead’s medicine show will hawk its snake oil on NBC whilst Biden will hold court on ABC.

I could wish ‘A Pox On Both Your Houses’, but that curse has already descended.

“Lofty ideals delivered in tones of high statesmanship”?

BORRRRRRRing!

This is why Trump wiped the floor with everyone in 2016. Whatever else he was, he wasn’t boring. At least not until he did the same ol’ shtick for five years running.

The viewers win.

Political debates have never been that way Carmen. Neither party ever truly answers any questions and mainly concentrates on insulting their opponent.

VOTE

Considering even the debate here between Cory Gardner and John Hickenlooper, maybe we should end all future political debates.

As in, no one wants to seem them in the same room together, anymore, anyway.

Using the Cory – Hick matchup as an example:

Cory Gardner never answered any questions – especially those regarding his support and votes for Trump agenda items. In just about every case, he instead asked John to talk about corruption charges leveled against him. Cory tried to treat the entire 90 minutes as one of his negative campaign ads (which run pretty much continuously right now). This in spite of the moderators constantly reminding Cory that that line of questioning was already over – and that Cory had yet to answer any questions aimed at him.

While not as ridiculous as the Joe and Donald show, still, the Cory and Hick show demonstrated to me that the debate process is broken, perhaps fatally.

And the hitch: Thanks to mail-in voting, for many of us, the debates don’t matter – our vote is already a “done deal.”

Turned our ballots in at the County already… time for a Blue Wave!!

Wow! Carmen fell asleep and woke up in….well, no century ever, as far as I can tell.

We don’t have Presidential debates. We have dueling sound bites. Two minutes is not enough to discuss and explain your policy, or refute you opponent’s policy.

Like I said above, I don’t think a “debate,” in any sense of the word, works anymore.

One, if it’s not a campaign soundbite, good luck getting the candidate to answer a question.

Two, by the time they’ve been grilled in the primaries, by the time they are “officially” nominated, we’ve already made up our minds.

Let’s face it: These last two weeks of the campaign are the worst – the ugliest.

So, why not just mail in our ballots as soon as they’re printed, and turn the TV off!