I watched the first hour of last night’s exercise in alternate realities and then went up to bed, knowing that if I watched the entire thing and the follow-up commentary and spin doctoring that I would be so angry it would take me hours to get to sleep and I’d been up since 3:00am yesterday.
In one reality U. S. economic growth and unemployment are still at the best level they’ve seen in decades, cuts in the personal income tax accomplished a lot more than they actually did, the many U. S. deaths due to COVID-19 have nothing to do with my omissions or deficiencies, tariffs on Chinese goods accomplished a lot more than they actually did, and Democrats are all just a bunch of Marxists burning down cities. In the other a lengthy but undistinguished Senate career is just water under the bridge, liberal interventionism never has adverse consequences, action or inaction by the Obama Administration had absolutely nothing to do with the most phlegmatic recovery in the post-war era, your family earning millions through influence peddling is just business as usual, and the violence in American cities is all Trump’s fault. Both of those alternates are only tangentially related to actual empirical reality as it is lived by most Americans.
They were both rude and disrespectful. Trump was ruder and more disrespectful, interrupting VP Biden almost continually. If any of you actually played Matt Taibbi’s drinking game, I don’t see how you made it through the first twenty minutes without collapsing on the floor in a stupor.
One of those men will be president next year. God help us all.
I think all 3 participants (Biden, Trump, Wallace) came in with a plan that under no circumstances were they to let someone else be the “alpha†and get away with a “zingerâ€.
And if that meant looking like 3 grumpy, rude man, then that was okay.
Can the primaries be redone?
I didn’t watch any of it, but got “updates†from friends who did.
Consensus from my circle is that it was the worst debate ever except for the die hard Trump supporters who now hate Chris Wallace.
Glad I didn’t watch.
See, I was right. A waste of time. Conservatives already decided Chris Wallace was a liberal because he asked Trump a difficult question once. Even though he has a strong conservative bent I always thought he was a decent interviewer and willing to ask tough questions regardless of affiliations, but sounds like he lost control last night. To be fair, not sure it was possible to control it.
Steve
Sorry to burst the bubble. Wallace has been criticized by the left as well. He was horrid.
I initially gave Wallace the benefit of the doubt regarding being a fair commentator. Those first debate thoughts also thought Trump interrupted too much, and that Biden looked more frail and confused as time went on.
After sleeping on it, and watching some video clips, I felt Wallace gave Biden more leniency in his interactions with him than Trump, indicative of a greater dislike for one over the other. My reactions to Trump’s performance and Biden’s demeanor, though, stayed the same – Trump pushed the envelop too much, and Biden’s health is too poor to withstand the rigors of being POTUS.
As for the debate itself – it was a waste of time and had an audience considerably lower than the first Clinton/Trump debate.