I've had people say it's a hardening, actually ~ US presidential election 2016 part 9/11 never forget

the atmosphere is gonna be a lot more toxic this time around. kinda getting an unstoppable-object-vs-immovable-wall feeling about this one

Which one is which?

the danger for trump imo is not that he's made to look stupid, it's that he says something unscripted and appalling in response to a zinger

eh I think both are dangerous for him

his "appalling" zingers won't hurt him that much will they? will it have to be worse than "blood coming out of her whatever?"

on the other hand if he comes off as someone who obviously has no clue what he's talking about that'll hurt a lot of his soft support

That's totally down to whether you're watching with red lenses or blue lenses. Everybody who was watching with red lenses thought Palin killed it, totally wiped the floor with the inept Biden. Everybody who was watching with blue lenses thought OMG, that woman is so unprepared and awful, so glad we have folksy Uncle Joe on our side.

Pretty much every debate I've ever seen and then read reactions to, I could find equal numbers of people who thought it went very well for their candidate. Trump will certainly get rave reviews from the people who already think he's awesome, ditto Clinton.

The only exceptions are the rare "oops" moment or "you're no Jack Kennedy," one of which worked and one of which didn't.

Which one is which?

the object is Trump's understanding of the universe. the wall is the actual universe. we are all paying for the wall.

I get that declaring a winner could be a matter of perception, but that's just it. I mean, Palin didn't say anything nearly as word scramble as her usual shit, though, right? And everyone expected a train wreck.

this thread about trump's television prowess is kinda true, but a) he's not in charge of the event, like the apprentice or his own rallies, and b) he's not going to get the crowd adoration that he craves, as at his own convention or on wwe. i'm not sure he can work a crowd that he can't see or get instant applause from

there's a big difference between Palin/Biden and Clinton/Trump let's see if we can identify it hmmm

well the difference here is that Palin at one point actually was a governor and apparently not a total disaster so there was at least some sense that she knew how government worked

I do think if Trump has a moment like the "nuclear traid" one in the GOP debates it'll hurt him.

I think Hillary's goal shouldn't be to attack his ideas so much, but rather to put across the impression that he lacks the know-how to accomplish anything

the difference I was getting at was the reversed gender/moron roles

iirc the Palin debate was the archetypal "all she has to do is come off as vaguely semi-competent and she beats expectations," thus both parties "accomplished what they needed to accomplish." She didn't exactly crash and burn but it was not like she radically stepped up her game. It wasn't campaign suicide like the Couric interview and it probably didn't change anything at all. The significance was sort of in what didn't happen - her spending the whole thing in gibberish mode, Biden yelling at her to get back in the kitchen or whatever it was people were anticipating.

See also: The Lysergic Acid Diethylamidiotic Joe Biden & Sarah Palin VP Presidential Debate thread in the 2 zero zero 8 (2008 party over oops)

a man attacking a woman for being stupid is a totally different scenario than a woman attacking a man for being stupid - audiences don't respond well to men attacking women

xxp

the difference I was getting at was the reversed gender/moron roles

oh I wasn't actually responding to you

and yeah I agree this factor is significant. I still think back to Sanders shouting over Clinton and how badly that came off.

The predictwise graph is really shitty - it frames the % from 50% upwards and picks the polls-only rather than the polls-plus for extra volatility - graphed against this it would look less concerning, and indeed suggest that the predictwise graph isn't seriously moving at all, which seems more nuts.

http://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/2016-election-forecast/#plus

which is why the Biden/Palin comparison is irrelevant its a totally different scenario

xp

you guys are right what if Trump says something unscripted and appaling

it's like a daily mantra here. the security blanket that protects you from the boogie man

a man attacking a woman for being stupid is a totally different scenario than a woman attacking a man for being stupid - audiences don't respond well to men attacking women

Yes. Regardless of whether you consider it fair or unfair, Trump does run the optics risk of being mean to a woman, with whatever NAGL-ness that entails. Personally I don't care if it's unfair; this man needs to be defeated by any means available.

a man attacking a woman for being stupid is a totally different scenario than a woman attacking a man for being stupid - audiences don't respond well to men attacking women

out of curiosity, what's your evidence for this?

i mean other than "all my friends in SF would be totally appalled"

AF: the truncated y-axis on that predictwise graph is a reasonable complaint. but the polls-only model is the default model on the 538 website. seems like the fair one to use. but if it's not to be trusted as you say, then it shouldn't even be on the website, much less the default.

i don't agree that PW hasn't moved much, but it's true it's ended up pretty much back where it started:

http://i.imgur.com/FM7XtXB.png

clearly things went v badly for trump in august, both in "narrative" and actually polling. but that far out from a 2 horse race election where both candidates are going to get at least 40% of the vote because it's a 2 party system, getting as bullish as 538 did seemed wild. and 538 has gotten much much lower than any other predictor in the past week.

xp Trump going after Fiorina ("who would vote for that face?") and getting a bad response was one of the few times he actually looked humbled. I believe he started polling lower after that for a while too.

haha jic I was mentally comparing the election to that particular sketch myself just yesterday...also the one with the two rich WASPy guys campaigning for nothing in particular

xposts

out of curiosity, what's your evidence for this?

previous debate performances where this happened, including debates involving Hillary, with the effect being a negative impact on the male attackers polling numbers/electoral victories

maybe 90% wasn't that wild. some of the others got up there. but none of them swung up from 50%, or went back down to 50%.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/15/upshot/as-clinton-trump-race-tightens-heres-how-forecast-models-differ.html

haha ah yes, sanders "shouting over" the person he was having a televised argument with, who can forget that unmistakable tactical blunder. i'm sure if trump does something similar, the reaction from the general election voters watching on fox news or CNN will be just like amanda marcotte's a few months ago

btw I think the one dynamic that is at play here that wasn't in Biden vs Palin is Trump's ego, which is something he absolutely hasn't been able to put aside. Clinton might take a shot at his net worth (which we know bothers him), or his hotel, or his various business failures, and it'll cause Trump to go nuts. I remember how weirdly defensive he got about Trump University during one of the GOP debates. Maybe Clinton won't even acknowledge him at all to some extent. I have no doubt there's a team of psychologists working with her on these ideas right now.

Hey look a nicely put reddit comment. What we already know, but succinct and relevant to the debate because his confident tone is unlikely to waver and that's all much of the population will focus on when they assess how he performed.

[–]HBlight [score hidden] 5 hours ago
He is a salesman first and foremost, and he does not want you to care about the product, he just wants to sell it, he wants you to buy a feeling in order to make the sale. So if he wants you to buy the idea that something is good or bad, he is going to load his speech with everything he can to leave you with the impression that the thing feels good or bad. He speaks bluntly and with absolute confidence even when not making sense, because making sense is not the goal, you buying the feeling is the goal.

every time Trump attacked a woman in the debates it went poorly for him (Fiorina, but also Megyn Kelly), Lazio leaving his podium to wave his papers in Hillary's face also failed/backfired, I'm sure there's other examples - also fyi Sanders didn't win

xp

I'm sure there are other examples I'm forgetting at the moment but in general yeah that is not a winning tactic for a man

trump criticizing HRC's looks would be a lot different, sure, than him just in general being dominating or even condescending (though i don't see how the latter is possible given the knowledge gap between the two...). i assumed we were talking about the latter

Xpost that is really well put

(The Reddit comment)

this format is just so terrible for him compared to the rowdier, crowded GOP debates where he had the advantage of being viewed as a novelty (until it was too late). I can definitely see him doing decently because he's so good at deflection and if the moderator doesn't call him out on that he'll do fine. I can also see him losing his marbles if he gets dressed down a bit, especially since Hillary is pretty unflappable in a way his GOP opponents weren't.

Hillary Clinton has never been mad

she gets mad but i don't think she'll lose her temper during the debates. she's been listening to assholes like trump her entire life and she knows what is at stake in remaining poised and calm. it's not like he's going to be able to catch her off-guard - she's already assuming he'll mention monica lewinsky.

is this the kind of debate that allows vigorous booing and cheering from the audience? some of the GOP debates were just bonkers in that respect, very surreal.

If Trump does shout over or interrupt Hillary during the debate, he'll probably do his projection move and claim afterward that's what she did to him, and attack her temperment.

Jim Lehrer used to promise he'd end the debate should anyone applaud a nominee – and deduct time from the nominee.

on balance i think booing/cheering is bad for hillary if allowed, but it does seem to encourage trump to say particularly stupid things

is this the kind of debate that allows vigorous booing and cheering from the audience? some of the GOP debates were just bonkers in that respect, very surreal.

no - they're asked to remain silent. Trump definitely knows how to play a crowd - it's one of his few legitimately great political skills - and without any response he's not gonna know how to modulate his message

yeah it'll be interesting to see whether trump can get the crowd on his side/break the applause rules

i mean who am i kidding i'm not going to watch the debate

He doesn't have any great skills.

FWIW he's also been progressively isolating himself from face-to-face encounters with anybody not on board with his campaign. Very limited interview contact, lot of softball chats with weak followups (Lauer, Fallon), the press isn't on the bus/plane, that thing where only camera-people were allowed to follow him around for what was hyped as a big event, etc. Clinton's surely in a bubble of handlers and selected crowds too, but I expect he really just isn't warmed up for defending himself when someone's right there pointing out that he's changing the subject. Clinton meanwhile just needs to get more people to commit to voting for her, so they'll stop feeling like they have to run to the Libertarians of all people in order to express their dissatisfaction. Given how high she was post-convention, there are plenty of people out there who are not constitutionally averse to voting for Hillary Clinton. Apparently a lot of them are skittish or easily-swayed but I don't think anything that's happened between then and now would indicate she's lost them forever and it's doomed to be this super-tight race until the end.

Thankfully in a few days I can stop writing fanfic versions of this debate in my head but I do think there's a strong chance it hurts Trump - certainly not driving away his long-term fans, but maybe shedding soft support as someone said above.

He doesn't have any great skills.

― Treeship, Friday, September 23, 2016 12:51 PM (eleven seconds ago)

no, he's gotten this far purely out of luck

His success is a measure of the breakdown of our political culture, not of anything positive on his part. A broken system behaves in chaotic, random ways: this one spit up Trump.

re: not warmed up for the debate

https://twitter.com/SopanDeb/status/779346098389417984

Like, maybe his "skill" is shamelessness. People admire the fact that he is a giant blemish on the face of a system they resent, or something. But anyone could act like a racist asshole and refuse to take responsibility for anything they've ever said or done. Unique, sure, but hardly a skill

"chaotic, random ways"

idk i think it was just a matter of time before the GOP cooled it with the dog-whistles and went explicitly racist