I think debates don’t really matter anymore because what these people say and do is reported on constantly all day every day. That wasn’t how it used to be.
You know that the debate response had nothing to do with the debate topics or responses. Any other press conference that day would have likely had the same response. It wasn’t what he was saying that was the problem.
Any other press conference that day would have likely had the same response.
He’s done a decent number press conferences before and since that debate and has seemed perfectly capable during all of them, but the big difference is the debate is a 90 minute event in the evening when Sundowners hits hard, and most if not all of those press conferences have been around mid-day when he’s reportedly most lucid. Anyone who’s cared for or been around aging individuals with dementia can tell from the debate that he has dementia and its progressed pretty far
Debates don’t matter and that is a prime example. Trump gave no coherent answers while Biden was able to answer all but 2 questions. Yet the response was as if biden answered 0 questions and Trump intellectually ran circles around him.
They do matter because a debate can show a lot more than just answers. For example, I think for a lot of folks, the lowest point was when they started arguing about fucking golf. It showed pretty much everyone that these guys are both just utterly divorced from the real problems facing Americans. Most everyone I know IRL was just disgusted with both candidates by that moment. That nobody cared Trump lied isn’t a surprise. It’d be like being surprised that the sun rose in the east. It’s what Trump does, he’s a bullshit artist and everyone knows it, even the people who vote for him. That debate didn’t really change anyone’s evaluation of Trump. What was a surprise was Joe coming on the stage and just being an unintelligible mess. He did kind of get it together in the back half, but by then, the damage was done. That debate did change plenty of people’s evaluation of Biden, myself included.
That’s not necessarily represenative of how they act in person, spontaneously.
I go in assuming all social media is basically a lie.
I don’t lol.
I do read lemmy some now though, and a ton of sources for stuff are (unfortunately) on X
Also the format of the debates is pretty terrible. Giving only 2 minutes to answer on complex social and geopolitical topics only lends itself to trying to make the best sound-bite. I would love to see them experiment with longer form responses (even if that means fewer questions each debate), as well as things like cutaways for adding context and fact-checking.
