[Winstonm]

If Harris isn't elected after this Trump debate fiasco, the United States should push the self-destruct button.

[jillybean]

Winstonm, on 2024-September-10, 20:59, said:

If Harris isn't elected after this Trump debate fiasco, the United States should push the self-destruct button.

I’d say the USA will have already pushed the self-destruct button if they elect Trump after this debate fiasco.

[thepossum]

It's a clear choice between something

[pilowsky]

Looks like Trump made a dog's breakfast out that debate.

[kenberg]

jillybean, on 2024-September-10, 20:16, said:

I don't pretend to understand politics like the contributors here do.
However, IMO Harris killing it.

I am glad to see that you are back to the discussion.

I am, however, less entusisastic about the Harris performance. I suppose that in the next week or so there will be plenty of polls. I will be surprised if there has been any improvement in her standing. Becky and I watched only the first half hour oor so, we will try to watch the rest today. We rarely watch tv after 8 and the debate started at 9 our time. But realy Beky found it unsatisfactory, I saw it as painfully disappointing.

I am with you in not claiming to understand politics, especially the effest of speeches and debatess, all that well. I hope my assessment is way off. I impatiently await the polls.

[jillybean]

Perhaps it was Trumps usual, vile, angry outbursts (Immigrants eating family dogs and cats?) and failure to convey any Presidential qualities or policies that made Harris look like a winner, in my eyes.

I will be interested to hear your and Becky's opinion after watching the entire broadcast.

I, along with the rest of the world will be watching closely for the next 55 days.

edit: I agree, Harris response to the Economic question was a significant stumble.

[kenberg]

I now have my morning coffee so I will expand a little on the above. Let's take the first question to Harris:

"When it comes to the economy, do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?"

Here is the start of her answer:

"So, I was raised as a middle-class kid. And I am actually the only person on this stage who has a plan that is about lifting up the middle class and working people of America. I believe in the ambition, the aspirations, the dreams of the American people. And that is why I imagine and have actually a plan to build what I call an opportunity economy. "

You do not have to be a political expert to think that the first part of a response to the question should be either "Yes, I do believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago" or "No, I do not believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago" But that was not her answer, not at the beginning, not at all.

Ok, so maybe she said something that would attract voters? I am trying to think of the voter who responds with "My goodness, I had no idea that Harris believes in ambition, aspiration and dreams. Now that I know she favors such things of course I will vote for her"

I did not think her responses got better as we got further on.


My overall view of the race: When Harris replaced Biden there was enthusiasm. Thiis was fueld by many people seeing Trump as the total louse that he is, and seeing Biden as being in no mental shape to serve another four years. So polls showed Harris looking better than Biden did. But thatbump up of enthusiasm has taken place and now more is needed. I don't think the debate provided what was needed.

We shall see.

One more thing. Becky and I were not alone in only watching the first half hour, or at least I doubt we were alone. Many people are not up for 90 minutes of political back and forth. The first half hour counts for a lot, just as the opening part of the first response counts for a lot.

But I will get to the remaining parts of it. I cannot speak for Becky, she really did find it very unsatisfying.

[awm]

I thought Kamala Harris's answer here was good, even though it's something of a dodge.

The point of this question is convince Americans that are worried about their economic situation that you care about them and will work to make their lives better.

Giving a literal (yes/no) answer here is basically a trap. An answer that "yes, Americans are better off" (even if true for a majority or on average), will convince these worried voters that she does not care about their situation. An answer that "no, Americans are not better off" will be an admission that Trump was better on the economy. Any comments about non-economic things (like Covid or abortion rights) in answer to this question will convince such voters that she doesn't understand their issues.

She gave the best possible answer to this trap, by pivoting to how she comes from a middle class background and has plans to help people who are struggling economically.

[kenberg]

awm, on 2024-September-11, 09:31, said:

I thought Kamala Harris's answer here was good, even though it's something of a dodge.

The point of this question is convince Americans that are worried about their economic situation that you care about them and will work to make their lives better.

Giving a literal (yes/no) answer here is basically a trap. An answer that "yes, Americans are better off" (even if true for a majority or on average), will convince these worried voters that she does not care about their situation. An answer that "no, Americans are not better off" will be an admission that Trump was better on the economy. Any comments about non-economic things (like Covid or abortion rights) in answer to this question will convince such voters that she doesn't understand their issues.

She gave the best possible answer to this trap, by pivoting to how she comes from a middle class background and has plans to help people who are struggling economically.

Fair enough, not all yes/no questions can be answered simply. But she really did not adress it at all.

From what I have been reading, I gather that many people think Harris did very well. I remain skeptical.

The debate provided her with opportunity. I hope that those who think she did well with this opportunity are correct. I just did not see it that way.

[kenberg]

I have now read the transcript of the debate.

https://www.washingt...formance-polls/ is a WaPo article. Some excerpts.

Quote

Vice President Kamala Harris turned in one of the more resounding debate performances in recent decades on Tuesday night — to the point where Donald Trump's allies have struggled to locate a silver lining.

They cite quick polls about the debate.

Quote

The CNN poll showed Harris winning the debate 63 percent to 37 percent among debate-watchers, while the YouGov poll showed her winning 54-31 among registered voters who watched at least some of the debate, with 14 percent unsure

And they comment

Quote

Perhaps the worst numbers for Harris in the poll were on issues. Despite her win, debate-watchers still preferred Trump by 20 points on the economy (55-35) and 23 points on immigration (56-33).

This last explains my doubts. Harris was very effective in highlighting Trump's bad features. But we all knew this already. More was needed. Saying what a total jerk.scumbag/whatever Trump is gives viewers nothing new, and thus (my thinking) is not likely to move voting preferences much.

[barmar]

I haven't watched the debate yet, but I've seen clips and Harris did pretty much what I expected her to do. She was poised while Trump rambled as usual. Her experience as a prosecutor gives her a huge advantage in scenarios like this. I also watched the documentary "Girl Talk" (about the experience of the girls in the Newton South (MA) debate team) over the weekend; at the end they had a montage of famous women who had been on debate teams when they were in high school or college, and Harris was in the list.

But I don't know how much effect it will have. Remember that because of the Electoral College, only the 7 swing states really matter. Many people are staunchly in one camp or the other, nothing in the debate is going to switch their votes. There's a small percentage of people in these states who are undecided and need to be swung, but what really matters is energizing people to go to the polls in the first place.

I'm staking my hopes on issues like reproductive rights getting out the progressive voters, I don't think it will be the Trump vs. Harris personality or policy differences.

[hrothgar]

kenberg, on 2024-September-11, 06:12, said:

I am, however, less entusisastic about the Harris performance.

Harris had three main goals last night

1. Do no harm
2. Help Trump to self destruct
3. Introduce herself to swing state voters

There are all sorts of focus groups, real time "dial" analysis, and polls showing that Harris was wildly successful with all of this

I'm sorry that she didn't also spoon feed you whatever magic words you need to hear to feel better about things

[kenberg]

hrothgar, on 2024-September-11, 14:51, said:

Harris had three main goals last night

1. Do no harm
2. Help Trump to self destruct
3. Introduce herself to swing state voters

There are all sorts of focus groups, real time "dial" analysis, and polls showing that Harris was wildly successful with all of this

I'm sorry that she didn't also spoon feed you whatever magic words you need to hear to feel better about things

I figured that one of her goals would be to get those who were still unsure about whom to vote for to decide to vote for her, or perhaps even to get some who were planning to vote for Trump to rethink this.
I hope she succeeded. Perhaps she has. I guess we will see. I very much hope so, I would be very happy to find that my skepticism was mistaken.

I'll still be voting for her even if she doesn't spoon feed me. I'll cope. Actually I am not expecting anyone to spoon feed me. I suppose if someone really wants to, we could talk about it. Nah.

[pilowsky]

It's hard to understand why a reasonable person (looking at you Ken) could watch the debate and take away from it that Harris was not satisfactory because of a couple of cherry-picked answers.

When the other person on the stage was a ranting unhinged lunatic?


Did you find the Trumpy fantasies about immigrants eating cats more palatable?

[kenberg]

pilowsky, on 2024-September-11, 17:20, said:

It's hard to understand why a reasonable person (looking at you Ken) could watch the debate and take away from it that Harris was not satisfactory because of a couple of cherry-picked answers.

When the other person on the stage was a ranting unhinged lunatic?


Did you find the Trumpy fantasies about immigrants eating cats more palatable?

I have been having second thoughts and this stuff about eating cats and dogs is one of the reasons. My thinking had been that since everyone, including Trump supporters, knows Trump goes off on truly weird tangents it wasn't going to help to keep pushing that. But the cat and dog eating claims might still come as a shock. William Brangham on PBS looked into it and apparently Vance says he has been recieving reports but the police have not been recieving reports. Brangham asks "If your dog went missing would you contact the police or write to your senator?" Actually, a cat I had went missing and I called animal control. They had her, I went and rescued her. Writing to my senator did not occur to me.

So sure, the reports are fake as with so much of what Trump says. My thinking was that we all know Trump makes stuff up so pointing this out will not get votes that Harris does not already have. But yeah, maybe I'm wroong.

I was not intending to cherry pick. I started with the first question and her response because I think if the responder does a bad job there it is more of a problem than making a slip halfway through when people are drinking their second glass of wine and nodding off.

Anyway, if I were her adviser as she was gettng ready for the debate I would hace advised a differebt approach from the one she took. But then maybe there is a reason why I was not hired as her adviser.

[thepossum]

Apparently when a place has gone to the dogs eating them is a no-no

The vote still seems quite close

Commentators also seem to think debating prowess was on display - different style to where I learned debating

[johnu]

kenberg, on 2024-September-11, 11:56, said:

Quote

Perhaps the worst numbers for Harris in the poll were on issues. Despite her win, debate-watchers still preferred Trump by 20 points on the economy (55-35) and 23 points on immigration (56-33).

The poll numbers on the economy are exactly the reasons Harris didn't try to overthink the problem.

A month or so ago, the QOP media were trying to invent a new campaign strategy against Harris using Ronald Reagan's highly effective line against Jimmy Carter, "Are you better off today than you were four years ago?" They were quickly laughed out the building when anybody who didn't have Alzheimer's pointed out that in the summer of 2020, unemployment was in double digits, millions of businesses closed or curtailed operations, millions of people lost their housing or were behind in rent/mortgages because they lost their jobs or had curtailed hour at work, lines at food banks were miles long, the stock market crashed, there were shortages of all sorts of goods like toilet paper, cleaning products, and even things like washing machines. Harris did allude to the Great Depression level unemployment rates under Trump, but sure, she could have said more in the 2 minutes she had, in addition to correcting the 2 full minutes of lies that was common for the Trump segments.

Also, since the media has a short attention span, they've spent the past 2 years highlighting inflation and blaming the Biden administration for not stopping it, even though inflation has dropped to 2.5% in 2024, but the media still fixates on 2021 and 2022 when inflation skyrocketed as the world and the US came out of Covid. Unemployment rates have stabilized around 3.5% but obviously things could be a little better. Hundreds of thousands of good paying green energy jobs could help the unemployed. Yes, high inflation was very bad, but what would anybody do to fix it? (oh, Harris has suggested anti price gouging laws) It took time, but inflation is under control.

Trump inherited a booming economy from Obama that had been going strong not long after Obama took office and just about kept up with the trending Obama numbers until the economy just crashed in Trump's last year. With Trump's economic record, how does anybody rate Trump better on the economy, when Biden/Harris took over a failing economy and got America back to pre-Covid health with a record high stock market.

With some multilateral talks between the countries south of the US plus overall improving post-covid economic conditions in those countries, plus an unprecedented gang crackdown in El Salvador has resulted in sharply decreased numbers of people trying to cross the Mexican border. Harris was involved in talks with those countries. Harris mentioned the sharp decrease. There was a border bill to increase security on the border. Trump told his cult members in Congress to vote against the bill, and they did, killing that bill. Harris mentioned that. Honestly, what are you expecting to happen in a 2 minute answer to a question? These are serious, complicated problems, and if there was an easy solution, the problem would have been solved by now.

Unfortunately, the general public doesn't know enough about the problems to understand the difficulty of the solution. So they succumb to slogans, "Build that wall.....", or in the case of the economy, only concentrate of inflation because that's something they can see every day. They don't like inflation, but don't know enough to know that Trump is lying when he says he can magically lower prices, or that America will have a depression if Biden, or now Harris is elected in 2024, when in the real world they lowered unemployment to normal levels and the stock market is having record highs.

For fans of the West Wing, there was a famous scene called the 10 word Answer. That certainly applies to both the economy and immigration.

[Winstonm]

kenberg, on 2024-September-11, 18:41, said:

I have been having second thoughts and this stuff about eating cats and dogs is one of the reasons. My thinking had been that since everyone, including Trump supporters, knows Trump goes off on truly weird tangents it wasn't going to help to keep pushing that. But the cat and dog eating claims might still come as a shock. William Brangham on PBS looked into it and apparently Vance says he has been recieving reports but the police have not been recieving reports. Brangham asks "If your dog went missing would you contact the police or write to your senator?" Actually, a cat I had went missing and I called animal control. They had her, I went and rescued her. Writing to my senator did not occur to me.

So sure, the reports are fake as with so much of what Trump says. My thinking was that we all know Trump makes stuff up so pointing this out will not get votes that Harris does not already have. But yeah, maybe I'm wroong.

I was not intending to cherry pick. I started with the first question and her response because I think if the responder does a bad job there it is more of a problem than making a slip halfway through when people are drinking their second glass of wine and nodding off.

Anyway, if I were her adviser as she was gettng ready for the debate I would hace advised a differebt approach from the one she took. But then maybe there is a reason why I was not hired as her adviser.

I thought Kamala Harris sounded a little uptight and nervous on the initial question. The one thing none of us know is what her team decided was their strategy, their goals in the debate. I heard quite a few of the MSNBC crew claim that she had two goals pre-debate 1) to introduce herself to those who were unfamiliar with her, tell them her history as middle class and a prosecutor. 2) To get Trump angry by goading him so that he would look "unpresidential".

I think #1 goal helps explain the question 1 answer for both of us. I think Kamala tends to be a straight shooter who would normally have answered that question more objectively but that was not in her game plan, she had to go against her instincts and use her self control to follow their prep work. You could see this throughout the evening.
As time went on, and she was more successful, her goading became outright insults that Trump blustered and flusstered about but did not directly dispute or refute, she looked right at him and said the military thought he was a disgrace; later, she again looked right at him and said foreign leaders are laughing at him. He wouldn't even look at her. He looked like a petulent child being disciplined by his mother and not liking it one bit.

Trump took the bait both times, almost foaming at the mouth like Captain Queeg talking about strawberries, geometric logic, and untrustworthy officers. It was a beatdown to behold. Will it make a difference? Only to those on Pluto. We earthlings are a lost cause to the universe.

[kenberg]

Winstonm, on 2024-September-12, 12:51, said:

I thought Kamala Harris sounded a little uptight and nervous on the initial question. The one thing none of us know is what her team decided was their strategy, their goals in the debate. I heard quite a few of the MSNBC crew claim that she had two goals pre-debate 1) to introduce herself to those who were unfamiliar with her, tell them her history as middle class and a prosecutor. 2) To get Trump angry by goading him so that he would look "unpresidential".

I think #1 goal helps explain the question 1 answer for both of us. I think Kamala tends to be a straight shooter who would normally have answered that question more objectively but that was not in her game plan, she had to go against her instincts and use her self control to follow their prep work. You could see this throughout the evening.
As time went on, and she was more successful, her goading became outright insults that Trump blustered and flusstered about but did not directly dispute or refute, she looked right at him and said the military thought he was a disgrace; later, she again looked right at him and said foreign leaders are laughing at him. He wouldn't even look at her. He looked like a petulent child being disciplined by his mother and not liking it one bit.

Trump took the bait both times, almost foaming at the mouth like Captain Queeg talking about strawberries, geometric logic, and untrustworthy officers. It was a beatdown to behold. Will it make a difference? Only to those on Pluto. We earthlings are a lost cause to the universe.

I have been chatting with my older daughter and her views are very much the same as yours. IMO you can take that as a compliment.

A perhaps amusing comment about KH claiming middle class background. Yes, I probably would say so, but her parents do both have PhDs. After I got my PhD and joined the math faculty my father came out to visit. I introduced him around and a secretary asked him if he was also in academic life. My eighth grade educated father replied "No, I had to work for a living". It was a good-natured joke, my father and I got along fine, but KH would have had difficulty convincing him that she and he were of the same social class. Ah but I am confidant that he would have voted for her and certainly not for Trump.

[kenberg]

Where are we now with regard to the debate and, more generally, the election? Trump did great, according to Trump and his supporters on Fox News. He did so great he definitely will not agree to another debate and he speaks about how unfair the debate was, what with the moderators actually checking the factual accuracy of what he said. How unfair. How dare they. Republicans, both office holders and many Trump supporters, are doing their best to avoid the topic. Maybe the Tuesday broadcast can be written off as Fake News.


But still, where are we?

fivethrtyeight has some numbers, interesting and perhaps encouraging, see https://projects.fiv...ction-forecast/

The "win probability" has a Sep 12 score of 59 to 40 in favor of Harris. (There is a methodology link to help explain the numbers). That's better than the pre-debate numbers of Sep 8, those were 55-44, but roughly the same as the Aug 25 numbers of 60-40. A quick summary could be that after Harris replaced Biden there was a gathering of enthusiasm over time, then that started to slide, the debate brought it back. An oversimplification, ok, I agree, but probably a decent place to start thinking.

Here is where I am, or where I am thinking I am: We need two functioning parties. A growing number of Republicans are realizing that Trump has lost any contact with reality. In times past, if you encountered someone in a bar that spoke as Trump does you quickly excused yourself and went to the other end of the bar. Regardless of any policies that he might or might not have (not taxing overtime pay????) he is incoherent, vindictive and generally nuts. Republicans, at least some of them, are finally seeing this. Never mind why it took them so long, the time has arrived.

Harris needs to convince the undecided, and convince some Republicans, that she can forgo her more Progressive, and her party's more progressive, goals. She is a Dem, she does have progressive ideas, we cannot expect conversion to conservative aims. But perhaps something where a middle-roader can live with what she and the Dems are up to while the Republican Party gets rid of MEGA and returns to sanity. A lot of us, R and D, would like that a lot.

One more thing: Most unfortunately, she needs a very big win. Of course Trump will denounce any Harris win, no matter the margin of victory, as fraudulent. So there is trouble ahead. but we can at least hope that the win is clear enough and there are enough people who are sane enough that we will get through this.