i am extremely unconvinced that trump won this debate (or even that biden lost it) amongst the voters that trump absolutely has to get in order to win and i think there’s a whole lot of unconscious bias at play with people who do (DEI training works!)
Frank luntz (yes, I know he sucks) was tweeting about how as the night went on, his "undecided" focus group swung pretty heavily away from Trump because of how they viewed his attacks on biden.
Like everyone on this site is not the target market and people seem to forget that.
I just looked how it ended up and when all was said and done the crowd up decided Trump won the debate (that noted I think focus groups, including the pro-Biden Latino one above, are basically entertainment, but that’s especially true in Luntz’s case).
Oh absolutely I trust them as much as far as I can throw them (especially luntzs) it's more an example of "all this panicking is absurd from an election standpoint".
Honest question: How accurate have his focus groups been in predicting election outcomes? (I know he's had some success at selling generally unpalatable Republican programs with language changes, but is he someone that should be trusted as a neutral arbiter in a neutral focus group?)
God no. His focus groups are rarely actually undecided, and he is still very much in the republican strategist mindset.
But if you've got multiple instances of "undecided" voters saying "oh what the fuck" it's something to consider.
I think Biden's performance was a disaster but so was Trump's in a different way, and it really remains to be seen which one of those wins out in the long run (even if personally I think Biden's was more damaging)
political-analysis-as-shrug-emoji isn't exciting but it's often the best we can do
“How would Laura Ingraham spin this for Trump?” should be their model but they think they’re too good to be that partisan (even though they clearly are).
Look. I could get a gun and shoot myself in the dick, maybe bleed out and die if I'm lucky, or I could stop gooning over my insecurities. We'll lose this democracy, this republic, because we have fee fees and tingles and anxiety.
The idea that Biden will step down tonight because NYT columnists say so before he can even look at his own internals is just really galling. Like, think less of yourselves, people.
in a vacuum i think trump won but imo people are discounting what normie voters reaction to hearing trump speak again for the first time in four years.
also there’s plenty of sound bites biden can capitalize on with ads that trump lacks the money and staff for
The ways that Biden failed in my brain made me cringe sadly because I would expect better. The ways that Trump failed just seemed like watching us sitcom with the same plot over and over, he always fails in the same way.
The problem is that the media, from top-to-bottom, is lining up to frame Biden as senile and needing someone with power of attorney to take him out of the race.
While, at the same time, somehow none of those things are true of Trump.
I’m always curious in asking my perpetual offline normie Boomer mother her opinion and her thoughts were watching it on the morning news, Biden sounds tired, but Trump just lied and yelled. So there’s that.
It may have motivated Trump’s base and scared Dems, but I doubt most of the public was moved
The way that half this site's on suicide watch you'd think that Biden shat his pants on stage and declared he wanted to choke a Gazan child to death with his own two hands before lapsing into aphasia.
(Suicide watch or, alternatively, smugly posting about how the Libs should have bowed to them when they had a chance because now Trump's odds of winning have increased from 1000% to 1000000%)
Disclaimer: did not watch debate. Get stomach twists from everyone who says you have to in order to understand HOW disastrous.
I do think many of us-I know I was-kind of expecting SOTU Biden to show up, trounce Trump & move the polls finally.
Is it partly that?
Biden had a cold and he tripped over a response early in the debate. His voice sucked and he struggled to speak clearly. Trump meanwhile said a bunch of crazy shit very clearly. Joe will be over his cold by the next debate and Trump provided a lot of sound bites for attack ads.
A lot of the people freaking out have been doing so for months, so it's more of a "look at how this confirmed my priors" situation more than anything else.
It's pretty damn clear to me. An 🔵 old man with actual plans and achievements with an entire system to back him up v. 🔴💀🔴 a manic, vicious, vindictive sociopathic felon completely divorced from reality who will make sure he has no brakes this time around. I'll take the 🔵old man ANY day.
Trump basically blamed everything on illegal immigrants, said Putin told him it was his dream to take Ukraine, and dodged every question in order to...keep talking about illegals.
Biden was death rattling his way through scripted lines and still was somehow better than the dude I understood.
I'd be very interested in hearing you go into some detail here e--since I *think* I know what you're getting at, and I agree, but I've never taken any of these DEI trainings yet.
