Two men on a stage

by liberal japonicus

Here is the Guardian's live blog about it, feel free to drop your own observations here.

Comments

[CharlesWT]

I'm not going to watch it. The only reason that I might watch it is that I don't live in a high rise apartment.

[John Thullen]

So, like trump, you live on the second floor of a one-story building?

[CharlesWT]

I live on the second floor of a two-story building. So I would probably survive if I watched the debate and felt compelled to jump out of a window.

[John Thullen]

No thorn bushes among the shrubbery?

[russell]

Never wrestle with a pig

[Girl from the North Country]

I am unspeakably depressed by the whole thing. Biden is transparently the more decent man, but it's hard to imagine that anybody's view was actually changed tonight, and alas we have reason to believe from the last three and a half years that a Trump tactic like the constant ridiculous hammering on Hunter Biden actually works on its intended audience.

[liberal japonicus]

GftNC, me too and sick to my stomach as well. A lot of those tics probably worked, talking over Biden, interupting, lying. I can easily see his supporters walking away thinking he's so beset by people who don't like him (and therefore don't like me) that this was the only thing he could do. I wish Biden would say he is not going to agree to another debate unless the moderators can shut off the mics.

[hairshirthedonist]

I think they need to be in sound-proof booths and muted when it’s the moderator’s or the opponent’s turn to speak. No discretion. You get time to speak and are otherwise muted.

[Snarki, child of Loki]

plus a rising level of electric shocks for blatant lies, also, too.

Trump would be getting 20kV before the debate was over.

[wj]

it's hard to imagine that anybody's view was actually changed tonight

The thing is, Trump is currently behind. By enough that he needs to have something change at least a few people's views. This wasn't it, and he's running out of time and opportunities.

[nous]

Looks like Bannon's "Flood the zone with shit" is still in full effect.

[CaseyL]

As strange as it seems to us, there are people who pay no attention to politics except every two or four years, starting about a month or so before the election.

This might be their first real look at Trump that isn't edited and massaged, or isn't in front of an adoring crowd.

It was so utterly repellent, so **alien** a performance, maybe it will break through their indifference.

[liberal japonicus]

CaseyL, maybe. I hope so.

https://talkingpointsmemo.com/news/media-reactions-first-trump-biden-presidential-debate

I just can't believe that there are going to be 2 more of these.

[russell]

Trump's supporters will either think it was great, or they will be slightly embarrassed and vote for him anyway.

The press coverage is basically calling it a disaster. "It" wasn't a disaster, Trump was a disaster.

Never wrestle with a pig, except Biden is obliged to do so. And he is diminished by having to do so. Everything Trump touches, everyone Trump engages with, is thereby diminished.

Trump's behavior in the debate is an insult to his office, to our form and process of governance, to his opponent, to the moderator and sponsors of the debate, to every person in the nation, and to every person in the world who wishes our nation well.

Trump shames this nation. He makes a mockery of anything worthwhile or decent.

Shame on us all for allowing such a farce. Not just the debate, all of it.

[Girl from the North Country]

I should also add, as a note on Trump's repetition of certain tropes (e.g. Hunter Biden) that he kept hammering on the word "superpredators". Obviously, he has been advised that this is an excellent way to influence African American voters not to vote. After all, it worked last time: constant repetition of HRC making that speech seems to have been (according to the C4 piece) a key part of the 2016 Trump campaign to target their AA category of "Deterrence".

Other than that, what russell said.

[Marty]

This thread reads like my fb Trumpie thread except with the names reversed.

So nothing much gained. I read two reviews that had Trump winning. The left leaning guys said nobody won, which would mean Trump won.

Not a good night for Joe.

Oh yeah, I wouldn't have watched it if you paid me. WTF could you possibly think you could learn from it?

[Nigel]

That your President encourages organised white supremacists ?

[Nigel]

As for 'winning', if you care to look at it in those terms, your guy is well behind in the polls.
If nobody won the debate, he loses.

But it's pretty clear from post debate polling that he lost that, too.

[Nigel]

It's a view...

The Debate Was Good!
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/the-first-presidential-debate-was-good.html

[russell]

This thread reads like my fb Trumpie thread

Meh. The "above it all" thing is wearing thin.

WTF could you possibly think you could learn from it?

Nothing I didn't already know.

[Marty]

I'm not above it all. I am right in the middle. Everybody's fucking crazy. Every line quoted here is quoted there with 180° different interpretation.

As far as Trump being behind I recall similar warnings four years ago. So I dont really put much stock in it.

[russell]

Everybody's fucking crazy.

No, they're not.

But in honor of your "I'm in the middle" comment, another $100 to Biden/Harris.

It's the end of the quarter, folks, if you have even as much as $5 to spare, now's the time to throw it in the kitty.

Everybody isn't crazy. Trump actually sucks.

All your Trump supporting buddies? Maybe some of them suck, too.

I quit following my Trumpie friends on FB. That way maybe I'll still be able to be friends with them, when this horrifying freak-show is over.

If it all just seems like so much noise about nothing to you, fine for you. Some folks think what's going on is actually consequential.

I dont really put much stock in it.

Me either.

[JanieM]

m: This thread reads like my fb Trumpie thread

r: Meh. The "above it all" thing is wearing thin.

m: I'm not above it all. I am right in the middle. Everybody's fucking crazy.

I wonder, if it's only that you're "in the middle," why you get such a high from coming here over and over and over and over yet again to tell us how awfully stupid we are and how superior you are to such a bunch of idiots.

If you think russell's 7:13 comment is the thought train of a crazy person, well, I know who I think is either crazy himself, or either downright malevolent or just plain stupid. Your feelings got all hurt a while back when you thought I was implying that you're a troll. Well, maybe you should stop acting like one.

And with that, I'm going back to trying to take my own eternal advice.

[liberal japonicus]

https://www.usnews.com/news/top-news/articles/2020-09-29/biden-campaign-raises-its-biggest-hourly-sum-as-first-debate-ends

I suppose one way to read this is that all us Marxist liberals are worried, and so we are madly throwing money at Biden in an attempt to erase the fact that we, like your left leaning friend on FB, think it was a dead heat and so have been guilted into throwing money at Biden. However, an alternative reading is that we are so horrified at that piece of shit who was on the left side that we are throwing in our money because we realize that we won't have a country left if Trump wins...

[russell]

Trump supporters will either think it was great, or they'll be mildly embarrassed and vote for him anyway.

Marty likes the tax cuts, deregulation, and judges, plus the (D)'s are going to destroy the country, so he'll find a way to live with another four years of, in his words, eating a shit sandwich.

I don't eat shit sandwiches, and in fact the idea that I might be expected to eat a shit sandwich seems, to me, to be a very high-value tell that somebody might be abusing my loyalty.

But everybody's got their own choices to make.

In any case, that's another $25 each from me to every fund-raising campaign on BalloonJuice, plus another $100 to the (D) GOTV effort in the swing states.

If you got $5, today's the day to throw it in the pot.

We wouldn't tolerate the kind of behavior we saw last night from a four-year-old, and this asshole wants to be POTUS, again.

Let's kick his sorry @ss out.

[russell]

Everybody's fucking crazy.

Says the man who called Obama a tyrant, and thinks the (D)'s are not just mistaken on policy, but are going to destroy the nation.

Whatever.

[russell]

And, in honor of the insanity of the ObWi commentariat, $100 to Common Cause, so they can continue to sue Trump to prevent him from ending the Census on Monday.

What the hell, it's only money.

If you have $5, or $10, or even $20 to throw into the kitty, today is the day to do it.

[Cleek]

I watched a few minutes of Biden, then Trump started ranting about HRC and that was all I could take. Five seconds, at the most.

The guy is utterly repellent.

[Cleek]

Another $50 in Biden’s bucket.

[JanieM]

If you have $5, or $10, or even $20 to throw into the kitty, today is the day to do it.

Yes indeedy.

Early/absentee-in-person voting starts here next week. I'll be on their doorstep...well, probably on the second day, not the first.

[JanieM]

Also kicking in a bit more to Fair Fight.

[Girl from the North Country]

I am extremely annoyed that Vladimir Putin is able to spend money to affect the US election, and I am not.

[Michael Cain]

If I had a buck for every meeting I had to sit through where there was that one asshole who knew little but insisted on talking over everyone, I could have retired earlier.

Way back, when I was doing early research on using the internet for real-time multi-party multi-media communications, my experimental control protocols always included a way for the leader/moderator to cut those people off. Wallace could have used one last night.

[Nigel]

Console yourself, GFTNC, with the thought that the Dems apparently broke their hourly fundraising record during the first hour of the debate.

On the grifter's side, crickets thus far.

[Girl from the North Country]

That is some (small) consolation, Nigel.

[Nigel]

When I discovered I can't even buy an official "Will you shut up, man ?" T-shirt (US campaign finance laws apply), I consoled myself with £50 on the Dems winning Ohio, at 3/2.

(Biden currently 5/8 on for the Presidency.)

[Snarki, child of Loki]

What, the UK no longer has the ability to print custom T-shirts?

I blame Brexit.

[wj]

As far as Trump being behind I recall similar warnings four years ago. So I dont really put much stock in it.

At the 50,000 foot level, yeah the polls in 2016 did have Trump behind. But if you look closer, he was within-the-margin-of-error close in the critical swing states. In the event, Trump won all those, still within the margin of error of the polls. Just like you can draw 3 and fill an inside straight -- wildly improbable though it is.

At the moment, however, Trump is not within the margin of error in several critical states. He could improve his position enough that running the table on the margins of error could do the job for him again. But he's not there now.

[wj]

Am I the only one who suddenly realized that this thread should have been entitled

Two men and a cranky child on a stage

;-)

[Girl from the North Country]

You and the Biden campaign, wj. Their new ad has a soundtrack of a crying baby behind Trump, who has one of those weird emoji crying faces superimposed on his head.

I still think they missed a trick on amount of Trump's tax payments v amount the US taxpayer has had to pay for his golf.

[Girl from the North Country]

Official reaction [in China] was careful but that of the Global Times, a Communist Party propaganda sheet, was gleeful.

Hu Xijin, the paper’s editor, said that Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden “obviously did not show an exemplary role to American people on how to engage in debates.” He added: “Such a chaos at the top of U.S. politics reflects division, anxiety of U.S. society and the accelerating loss of advantages of the U.S. political system.”

Foreign policy was barely mentioned in the debate, but China has been a regular target during the campaign on topics as varied as the coronavirus pandemic and trade. Wang Wenbin, a spokesman for the Chinese Foreign Ministry, said on Wednesday that the government “resolutely opposes” efforts to involve China in the U.S. election and that accusations leveled against Beijing during the debate were “groundless and untenable.”

In Beijing on Tuesday. Foreign policy was barely mentioned in the debate, but China has been a regular target during the campaign.
In Beijing on Tuesday. Foreign policy was barely mentioned in the debate, but China has been a regular target during the campaign.

Others weighed in on Chinese social media platforms, saying that the debate had left them puzzled and amused. One user said that Mr. Trump’s frequent interruptions of Mr. Biden lent a “comedic feel” to what should have been a serious discussion, while another compared the debate to a quarrel at a vegetable market.

Oh oh, let's hope they don't do another mocking cartoon (of the quarrel at the vegetable market, for example). If they do, we here on ObWi had better put on our seatbelts. Last time they did that, we were accused of being (not so) closet PRC fellow travellers...

[CharlesWT]

...Mr. Trump and Mr. Biden “obviously did not show an exemplary role to American people on how to engage in debates.”

Rich coming from a country where political debate is verboten.

“Such a chaos at the top of U.S. politics reflects division, anxiety of U.S. society and the accelerating loss of advantages of the U.S. political system.”

Better chaos than China's top-down unrelenting authoritarianism. (They need to work on their English grammar too.)

[Girl from the North Country]

Ok, not where the one possible statement of the obvious I was expecting was coming from, but it'll do!

[Cleek]

Wapo says Biden and the toddler are now tied... in SC.

DIAF GOP SOBs.

[russell]

Rich coming from a country where political debate is verboten.

The phrase "shanda fur die goyim" comes to mind.

[JanieM]

(They need to work on their English grammar too.)

No they don't, at least not according to them. My son spent five years teaching English in China, and I spent a month with him at one point and team-taught a class every day. People would argue vehemently with us to the effect that whatever they thought a certain usage should be was correct, and our version was wrong. That is: two native speakers, one of whom has a PhD in English from Yale (which they knew). They knew better.

Hey, there's a billion and a half of them, and last I knew they're all taught English from about eight years old onward. It won't be at all surprising if eventually what they say goes. (Although really, that's only a stopgap until Chinese becomes the lingua franca for the whole world. It's much easier to learn to write it, doncha know!)

James Fallows, who also lived in China for a long time, did some wonderful columns years ago about Chinese English. They were fascinating and sometimes hilarious. Here's one, but there were several around that same time IIRC. Also a language log commentary reacting to that column.

[JanieM]

One addition to my morning comment; russell already addressed this in terms of who's crazy and who isn't, but I want to make it explicit in terms of what "the middle" might mean.

Anyone who thinks that if the Democrats get elected the country will be destroyed by some boogey-man with the label "socialism" on it is not "in the middle." That is utter Fox-brain lunacy.

[wj]

Although really, that's only a stopgap until Chinese becomes the lingua franca for the whole world. It's much easier to learn to write it, doncha know!

Although it's real strength is how much easier it is to pronounce.

And how can you not love a language that requires teenage boys to keep silent (because if their voice breaks, it can turn an ordinary word into something unspeakably insulting)? After all, teenagers talk too much anyway.

[John Thullen]

"Anyone who thinks that if the Democrats get elected the country will be destroyed by some boogey-man with the label "socialism" on it is not "in the middle."

Some of the usual suspects are "thinking" it in Russian.

Trump addressed Putin in his threats in the final moments of the debate ... I read, did not listen .... to illegally overturn the election results when Biden wins.

The New York Times:

'“[Trump’s] unwillingness to say he would abide by the result, and his disinformation campaign about the integrity of the American electoral system, went beyond anything President Vladimir V. Putin could have imagined. All Mr. Putin has to do now is amplify the president’s message, which the Russian leader has already begun to do.'

[Girl from the North Country]

DIAF GOP SOBs.

The phrase "shanda fur die goyim" comes to mind.

ObWi, the place where cool and groovy IT types teach fogies hip acronyms, and where Unitarians teach Jews Yiddish!

[wj]

As opposed to the debate, where an Irish (ancestry) Catholic tossed off a sarcastic "Inshallah!" when Trump claimed he would be disclosing his tax returns. Sometimes, America is so eclectic that it boggles the mind.

[nous]

Think we have had a Global English(s) (English as Lingua Franca) discussion here before.

Native speakers only have so much control over what is and isn't proper English, and how much their insistence is worth shifts with international perception of the US and the UK. And no amount of proprietary table thumping will arrest the slide if the slide happens.

Our Englishes might well end up being an interesting historical side note like Shakespearean English in Original Pronunciation, or a head-scratching regional dialect like Glaswegian.

[Cleek]

Petri debate recommendations include:

The first time you interrupt your opponent, a bell rings. The second time you interrupt, the bell rings again, and in the depths of the building, It stirs. The third time you interrupt, you hear a distant gate clank open, and the bell rings a third time. The fourth time you interrupt, the bell sounds twice in rapid succession. Footsteps draw close. Only they are not quite footsteps. Everyone in the audience goes pale beneath their masks. The fifth time you interrupt, It is allowed to enter, and may God have mercy on your soul, for It will not.

[JanieM]

As to native speakers, it's not like we agree among ourselves. I am ready to run into a cave to get away from the superspreading of a different pronunciation of "candidate" from the one I heard and said all my life until 2012.

I'm sure I've bitched about that before too, so never mind.

And I'd put the guy who changed my tire in Dennysville, Maine, on a Saturday morning a few years ago up against any Glaswegian you could mention, for the incomprehensibility of his accent to outsiders. ;-)

[nous]

Yah dere hey I growed up in norteastern 'Scansin so I get dat, eh?

[wj]

So sad. Grew up in Northern California speaking unaccented General American. So no chance for me to play with a cute regional dialect. Sigh,

[wj]

I always worry that I'm too eager to believe in things that I really, really want to be true. But on this, I've really got my hopes up.
https://poll.qu.edu/south-carolina/release-detail?ReleaseID=3677

[russell]

my wife keeps trying to tell me that, since she grew up in NE Ohio, she has no accent.

then I ask her to pronounce "wash".

:)

[nous]

Yeah, I don't have a pronounced Scansin accent until I say boat (båt).

In Africa everyone thought I was Canadian. I was fine with that.

[JanieM]

russell: I grew up in NE Ohio too, and your wife is absolutely correct. ;-)

****

I was in a long layover at Heathrow once and got into a conversation with an English woman who was married to a Texan and had lived in Texas for three years. She was back home visiting her mother, who was in a nursing home. We talked for a long time, and after a while she said, "You know, you don't have a very strong American accent."

LOL. Doesn't she watch movies or TV, to know that we don't all talk like Texans?

[Snarki, child of Loki]

"So sad. Grew up in Northern California speaking unaccented General American."

DUUUUUDE! You can always go *SURFER* accent!

Or, like ohmygod, valspeak.

gag me with a spoon.

[Cleek]

Fahg faug fowg fag

Low vowel deathmatch

[wj]

DUUUUUDE! You can always go *SURFER* accent!

Or, like ohmygod, valspeak.

Sorry, those are Southern California oddities. Which, even doing 85 mph on the Interstate, is 5+ hours away.

[Pro Bono]

"...speaking unaccented General American"

An oxymoron if ever I heard one.