First 2020 Debate Thread - Page 6 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#15124147
Beren wrote:No, there isn't, his mere base would be enough to get him elected governor of Texas at best.


I hope you are right.

If Biden gets elected though, day 1, I will be complaining and bitching about him, and how we should throw him out of office. :lol:
#15124148
Rancid wrote:Maybe but being a complete asshole isn't a prerequisite for being a good leader. Also, there's a huge myth that you have to be an ass to be a good leader. This is not true at all. All the good leaders at the company I work for, are not assholes. Ask Navy Seals if they'd rather have an asshole that is the best performer or a very trustworthy non-asshole that is a little less skilled than the asshole. They will pick the latter, because they are better for team unity and trust. When you have unity and trust, you get results.

Assholes are destructive to the cohesion of any team or organization. Trump is an unqualified rat with no backbone. He has no principals or values, he is honor-less scum that moves with the wind and only believes in himself. He's not a good leader, he is the worst type of man there can be, because he's not a real man. He's a bitch. It's baffling that so many so called grown men, who would claim to be men of values and honor would vote for this weasel.

I reject the idea that being an asshole is a sign of a "good leader". I think lots of Trump voters believe this, and it's because most people don't understand what a good leader is. They think it's gordon gecko, it's not. They think it's the bullshit they see in Hollywood movies. It's not.

There are a lot of so called men, that are letting themselves be fooled by this weasel called Trump.


Excellant *like*
#15124150
Rancid wrote:I reject the idea that being an asshole is a sign of a "good leader". I think lots of Trump voters believe this, and it's because most people don't understand what a good leader is.


I actually had people like Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton in mind when I deduced there have been a bunch of "good leaders in the form of an asshole".

Trump merely frustrated the people who we see as enemies or useless. It is lazy to actually say "relying on Trump (or any other leader in this case) is the way to go". I might in some sense do exactly this, but it doesn't mean I necessarily see this as correct.
#15124158
@wat0n , you replied to my comment that the American founding fathers drew from Classical experience that;

Oh, they did for sure. Indeed, they also criticized how their political systems worked. For instance, there was criticism of how the Senates formed by members that served for life were eventually overrun by the lower chambers that were elected by the people. That's where the idea of having term limits for Senators comes from.


This is true, they believed that they could do better than their counterparts in ancient times.

On political clientelism being a deterring factor against the formation of a ''Deep State'';


It does. That's why some appointments need to remain political.


And enough that aren't so that there is some kind of continuity of experience between Administrations.

On my comment that lobbying is ''as old as politics itself'';


It is indeed, and it's actually not inherently illegitimate either. But there needs to be transparency on who lobbies whom and for what purpose.


Right. Specific groups of the economy and population have specific interests and concerns, and they should be addressed but not to the detriment of the common good itself.


----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

All that being said, it's clear to myself anyway that one of the the chief lessons of history is that over time (as per the historian Toynbee) an Elite becomes out of step with it's own principles and views the foundational common stock of the population (which still believes in those principles) with disdain and hatred and incomprehension.

I read that disdain and hatred and above all, incomprehension, every day on PoFo. And this thread is no exception.

President Trump will have been viewed as the winner, and Biden as the clear loser of this first Presidential debate, by the majority or plurality of Americans. This despite the aggregate collective PoFo thoughts and feelings for or against the man one way or another.

President Trump will win re-election as President of the United States, and those who oppose him who are possessed of a Liberal ideology are going to have to understand why they failed-again-to replace him with a Liberal candidate.

And I will say now why I believe that this is the case and likely always will be. America's voters are in my opinion almost permanently historically composed of;

One third Liberals (whatever liberalism is at any given historical moment) At present they have the Democratic Party

One third Conservatives (the clingers to the more or less discarded previous stage or incarnation of Liberalism)At present they have the Republican Party

One third Populist and Nationalist (who have a concrete ideology that is not ''conservative'' or ''Liberal''). They do not have a Party and are not entirely ever politically represented.

It should be clear that neither two-thirds can win without appealing (falsely or sincerely) in some fashion to that Nationalist/Populist third of the voters.

When one or both major political parties in this two-party system begin to destroy themselves over my earlier-mentioned Elite alienation from the people, the Populist and Nationalist third of the voters captures one of the two parties or creates their own major party to fill the void. This has happened in the past and is happening now.

What President Trump has done is capture the Republican Party for Populism/Nationalism and united them with Conservatives, because both segments of the voters have come to rightfully believe that Liberals have gone way too far overboard.

Liberals in their echo chambers have come to believe that they can get a majority of the people to elect their candidates on a national level when only a third of the voters truly will ever be any kind of comfortable with them. There has been no meaningful appeal to Nationalists and Populists or Conservatives, nor can there be, for the Liberals have hit their singularity of peak political and moral insanity.

This previously was the point reached in American political history where a segment of the population would just as soon kill and/or subjugate/or secede from the other side and force the survivors to accept their political ideology or splitting the country, rather than accept defeat at the ballot box. They historically (at that point close to bloodshed), justify their desire to kill and/or Secede forcefully with projecting this desire upon their political opponents, accusing them of not wanting to accept the results of an election. Most of the time the heated rhetoric can be calmed down and people pull back from the brink, because there are enough sane and moderate people who rationally or at least pragmatically step back from the Abyss. One time in American history it did not.
#15124162
Rancid wrote:Maybe, but his base is still as rabid as ever, and there's enough of them to get him re-elected. Many Americans want a president that's a basically an asshole.


Perhaps ….. time will tell. Don't forget the math: 100 % minus trump's mentally challenged "base" of at best 42% = 58%. But history reveals that sometimes we get lucky ….. this from the trump's taxes revealed thread:

Food for thought: When Harry Truman left the office of the presidency in 1953, he was so poor that he moved into his mother-in-law's house in Missouri. All he had to live on was his pension as a former army officer of $112 @ month. He refused to trade on his celebrity , turning down lucrative consulting and business arrangements. "I could never lend myself to any transaction, however respectable, that would commercialize on the prestige and dignity of the office of the presidency."

Surely a "loser" in Donald J. Trump's book. America great again? Indeed.

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Harry didn't have bone spurs either, I think that makes a big difference.
Last edited by jimjam on 02 Oct 2020 03:49, edited 1 time in total.
#15124164
annatar1914 wrote:President Trump will have been viewed as the winner, and Biden as the clear loser of this first Presidential debate, by the majority or plurality of Americans.

And you would be wrong.

Every poll taken shows Trump lost.


:lol:
#15124165
jimjam wrote:Surely a "loser" in Donald J. Trump's book. America great again? Indeed.


Exactly, an actual principled person would be called a loser by our weasel and chief.

Here's the thing, a principled man, even if you do not agree with his principles if far more respectable than an unprincipled weasel that cares for only himself and/or hides his true intents. These people are punk bitches. That is our president, a punk bitch with no honor. Again, the irony is that many of his rabid voters would certainly claim themselves as honorable principled individuals. :lol: Fucking beta cucks.
#15124182
ingliz wrote:And you would be wrong.

Every poll taken shows Trump lost.


:lol:

Except for the Telemundo poll of presumably Spanish-speakers, where 66% gave the nod to Trump. But that was a Twitter poll, so I have some doubt as to its rigor. :eh:

Here’s Conrad Black’s take on the debate:

Trump Wins Round One, Barely
There was no clear winner in Tuesday’s presidential debate and the country was the loser.

President Trump could have won decisively if he had just followed Napoleon’s famous advice not to “interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.” The moderator, Fox News Channel’s Chris Wallace, did an excellent professional job largely without bias, and undoubtedly more fairly than those who will conduct the next two debates, but he didn’t come down hard enough on the interruptions. If Trump had just allowed Wallace to follow up on his questions of Biden, the former vice president would have stumbled badly. Trump’s irritating interruptions created an incoherent cacophony that enabled Biden to escape severe embarrassment.

On balance, Trump almost certainly won, but a very few viewers would have had the perseverance to listen carefully enough to note that Trump defended his own record quite capably, and Biden was very shaky and imprecise both in criticism of his opponent and in explaining why he should be president. As was expected, the fact that he got through 90 minutes in the ring with Trump without becoming incomprehensibly muddled, empowered his supporters to claim that in limping out intact, he had won.

For those who followed it carefully or replay it, it will be clear not only that Trump is a much more forceful and articulate man than Joe Biden, but that he also clearly won the argument, insofar as it could be perceived within the tumult of interruptions.

The Democrats can claim the partial victory of their candidate having survived to fight another day, but the Democratic campaign—which has consisted exclusively of nonstop defamation of the president with a new false allegation every week—was discredited by Biden’s failure to make any of his accusations stick, or even sound like he believed them himself.

These Foolish Things . . .

For those who want a strong president, Trump won; for those who do not want an overbearing president, he did not win and to the extent that he did not win, perhaps Biden did.

But Biden could not refute Trump’s strong argument in favor of the COVID-19 shutdown that he sponsored and against Biden’s predisposition to shut the economy down again. Biden did not reply to the question of whether he favored ending the Senate filibuster and packing the Supreme Court. He did not make a strong argument against the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett to the high court. He was unable to give any evidence whatsoever of support for his campaign from any law enforcement organization; he denied the charges of his son’s corruption in Ukraine and China, a subject that he invited Trump to take up by mentioning his other son who was a decorated combat veteran.

Biden had no answer to allegations about the Trump-Russian collusion fraud, of which he was to some degree aware from the start, and was not altogether successful in trying to straddle between the militant African Americans in his party and opposition to mob violence. He was reduced to saying that “Antifa is just an idea,” and that sociologists and psychologists should accompany police in their general tasks of law enforcement. He will have disappointed the Left of his party, announcing (unconvincingly) “I am the Democratic Party now.”

But they now have nowhere else to go. The best he could do for them was to allege that there was “systemic injustice” in the country. He made no effort to defend his media allies and protectors from Trump’s dismissive attacks.

Biden denied that he was in favor of the Green New Deal even though his vice-presidential candidate Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.) cosponsored it and he presented a harebrained proposal for giving $20 billion to Brazil to help reverse the reduction of the Amazon rainforest. He completely bobbled his attempt to explain his healthcare plans and the impossible fiscal burden of enactment of the Biden-Sanders taxing and spending proposals. Trump effectively exposed the Democrats’ panic campaign on the coronavirus but was careful to be solicitous of victims.

The Record, For What It’s Worth

For anyone who analyzes the exchanges at all, it is obvious that Biden continued the Democratic campaign of incitement of Trump-hate. He called Trump “a clown,” “ a liar,” “a racist,” “the worst president in U.S. history,” accused him of being “unpresidential,” told him to “shut up,” and had no answer, after saying the Trump was not “smart,” to Trump’s references to Biden’s false claims to academic distinction in a university he did not, in fact, attend.

Biden’s charges that Trump was trying to prevent millions of people from voting, and was responsible for killer floods and fires and hurricanes because of his climate policy were just rubbish. Trump explained his opposition to Critical Race Theory effectively and was also plausible in the elaboration of his reservations about sending out ballots to the entire voters’ list in many states. But Trump failed to raise a number of points that would have been of great assistance to him.

He rebutted the argument that he was a racist but failed to mention his Opportunity Zones program, his aid to historically African American universities, and the fact that he had produced full employment and more swiftly rising incomes for the lowest 20 percent of income earners than for the top 10 percent. He did not mention the southern border wall or the 90 percent reduction of illegal immigration. Neither did he mention Biden’s opposition to the killing of Osama bin Laden, and while he chastised him for his environmental nonsense, he did not make the point that enactment of the Democratic green new deal program would eliminate at least 7 million jobs in the oil and related industries.

Trump did not reject white supremacists as promptly as he should have done and, when he did, it was scarcely audible amid the contending voices of all three participants speaking at once. He was reasonably effective in rejecting the myth that he had ever endorsed the Klan and the Nazis at Charlottesville in 2017.

Raising the Game . . . Maybe

If it could be measured in points as in a prizefight, Trump was the victor, but few voters will do that and those who disliked Trump would not have been persuaded to soften their views and will be relieved that Biden survived.

Those who have a positive opinion of Biden knew his limitations and he did not exceed them. But it was an unedifying spectacle: I suspect Biden’s vagueness, his scrutiny of notes, and his outrageous insults of the president personally will be found more unsatisfactory than Trump’s endless interruptions and his general belligerence. Trump is the one who needed to win and while he marginally did so, it is unlikely that his performance will provide him any sort of breakthrough. He dodged the tradition of an incumbent president losing the first debate, as Carter (1980), Reagan (1984), George H.W. Bush (1992), and Obama (2012), did; my guess is that Trump will gain one or two points in most polls, but I do not predict that with any confidence, and it remains a very close election.

Wallace did his best, but he should have absolutely disallowed any interruptions in the two minutes allowed to each candidate to respond, and that practice should be stipulated for the balance of the debates. This extremely important and very nasty campaign is unlikely to become any more civilized or intellectually distinguished.

One longs for Kennedy and Nixon, civilized, well-informed, highly articulate and courteous Navy combat veterans in their 40s. But Trump set out in 2015 to overthrow the entire political establishment, and he can raise his game. I doubt that Biden can.
#15124183
annatar1914 wrote:You are no more right about the situation in the United States and President Trump than you are about Assad and Syria or Maduro in Venezuela. You sure like your color revolutions though, don't you?

Pretty soon, @JohnRawls will be calling on America to invade itself to save the American democratic system from itself. He'll call it "the Puce Revolution" or something. He's laying the groundwork already..... :lol:
#15124189
Trump has effectively closed down the debates by signaling he would not agree to the Commission on Presidential Debates rules changes.


:lol:
Last edited by ingliz on 01 Oct 2020 19:51, edited 1 time in total.
#15124191
Potemkin wrote:Pretty soon, @JohnRawls will be calling on America to invade itself to save the American democratic system from itself. He'll call it "the Puce Revolution" or something. He's laying the groundwork already..... :lol:

Maybe America will invade itself indeed if those goddamn civilians can't even elect a goddamn president and the country descends into constitutional chaos.

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#15124194
Potemkin wrote:Pretty soon, @JohnRawls will be calling on America to invade itself to save the American democratic system from itself. He'll call it "the Puce Revolution" or something. He's laying the groundwork already..... :lol:


:D

Ah, what will they do when America goes back to being a Republic, not an Empire?

It's almost like seeing in ancient times a Delian league local island official lecturing Athens on it's responsibility to rule everything, in it's absurdity.
#15124200
Rancid wrote:Exactly, an actual principled person would be called a loser by our weasel and chief.

an unprincipled weasel that cares for only himself and/or hides his true intents. These people are punk bitches. That is our president, a punk bitch with no honor.


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Not to worry, Donald's personal militia, The Proud Boys ^, say these traits ideally qualify him to be leader for life.

and right wing religious folks inform me that Donald will be forgiven if he has Jesus in his heart ….. which he obviously does

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#15124202
jimjam wrote:
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Not to worry, Donald's personal militia, The Proud Boys ^, say these traits ideally qualify him to be leader for life.

and right wing religious folks inform me that Donald will be forgiven if he has Jesus in his heart ….. which he obviously does

Image


AMEN!
User avatar
By Chad
#15124219
ingliz wrote:Trump has effectively closed down the debates by signaling he would not agree to the Commission on Presidential Debates rules changes.


:lol:


Biden and the Clinton Coup Clucks Clan have attempted to shut America and President Trump down for almost four years. Biden sounded like an old record. Come on Man....&...Here's the Deal. Biden and his communist party are disgusting to all Patriotic, law abiding, taxpaying, Legal American Citizens. The debate was great for President Trump in so many ways. Biden butted in three times before President Trump followed suit. Once the barn door had been opened by Biden, President Trump took the reigns and won the debate. Bias Polls are another example of crooked Hillary getting defeated by her arrogance and now Stumble Bum Joe will follow her down the same path. Biden is a career criminal politician, that like so many in Politics, has accomplished nothing for America's taxpaying legal citizens. God Bless President Trump's second term. I hope he gets to appoint even more centrist judges. Never vote for an Antifa loving, BLM supporting, Police defunding, Leftist, Commie Pinko Democrat this Century.
#15124221
Doug64 wrote:....
... Conrad Black’s
......


Black is both a criminal and part of the establishment. Definitely the type of person who would support Trump.
#15124317
Potemkin wrote:Pretty soon, @JohnRawls will be calling on America to invade itself to save the American democratic system from itself. He'll call it "the Puce Revolution" or something. He's laying the groundwork already..... :lol:


Cool. What if Trump has infected Biden with Corona and Biden kicks the bucket?
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