13th October 2016, 8:19 PM
Dark Jaguar Wrote:That view of political debates is where you and I differ. First of all, the people "analyzing" the debate have NO actual studies to back up any analysis of who "presented" better, because they didn't actually bother with nationwide polls to determine how the actual voters interpreted the debate. What few limited polling exists indicates neither side really "won" in that sense.Huh? The scientific polls show Clinton easily winning both debates. Trump does great in easily rigged online not-really-polls, but that says little. And I do think that such polls do get mentioned in the press, though it will take a bit of course as you need to wait for the data. Still, I agree that debate analysis could be a lot better than it is with more of a focus on fact than optics.
Quote:More to the point, why are we determining "winning" in terms of who influenced the most voters? The sole determining factor of who "wins" a debate should be who had the most convincing argument, but heck, most "debates" these days don't even take a form that could be remotely considered to be two sides arguing about an issue. What exactly DID Trump and Clinton debate, in specific terms?This is a very good point. In high school or college you debate a single topic for the debate. In high school debates were ~20 minutes total, going back and forth with set times for each. But in a presidential debate they cover dozens of subjects, constantly switching between them at will whenever a candidate wants to change the subject, which makes fact-checking or judging MUCH harder, yeah. Do you penalize a candidate for not answering the questions if they do make good points on whatever it is they are talking about, to make up a plausible example?
Quote:If nothing else though, moderators should be fact checkers. They should be calling out both candidates when they say things that are factually incorrect, and that didn't really happen either. Clinton said some things that were wrong, and Trump said a LOT more things that were wrong, but you had to wait until after the debate to find that out.With Trump doing that would be difficulty because you'd need to fact-check him like every other sentence, but yes, I agree that moderators should be doing that many times more often than they have in either debate. They do fact-check him on a few of the most important points, but they let everything else go, which isn't good, it lets the truth-challenged get away with far too much.
Quote:This isn't some impossible challenge. They can and SHOULD have researched what was likely to be discussed beforehand and have people in the background who can research any curve ball statements. If that means there's some pauses in the debate while the "judges" come back with the facts, so be it. Further, let's stick a giant screen behind the candidates. The very few times they would actually point out Trump's inaccurate statements, Trump flatly denied it. Stick a TV up there with video clips of the candidates at the ready, montage style, so when they are caught claiming they never said this or that, they can run the clip right in front of them and HUMILIATE THEM IN REAL TIME. This needs to happen. This needs to become the standard way of doing this stuff.This is a great suggestion, I just doubt any press actually want to go to all that hassle... and plus, with how one party now lies far more than the other fact-checking both equally will bias you against the Republicans, and people, on the right particularly, will savagely attack any media outlet doing that... as we have seen this year, as Trump and his cohorts attack the press for "biased" (read: fair and accurate) coverage. So yeah, if they're getting this much pushback as it is, there's really no downside to going all the way and doing as you suggest, isn't there? So get on that, press... Yeah right.
There is one famous example of a fact-check in a past presidential debate, though. You may recall how the right still claims that Candy Crowley was wrong when she fact-checked Romney during a debate in 2012. She wasn't wrong, but it was a very controversial moment, and the moderators this year have tried to avoid causing that kind of controversy, while still calling him on a few of his biggest lies. that's too bad, because we need more moments like Crowley's in that debate last cycle.
Quote:I'm not necessarily disagreeing with you on the Bill Clinton scandal, and it's a fact that not only is Bill not the candidate in question, but Trump has done the same stuff if not worse. However, don't let politics blind you into a double standard. This scandel is, ultimately, no different than any of the other rape allegation scandals and should be treated identically. Forget that the republicans have been trying to slander the Clintons for decades. That's all true, but irrelevant to the specific claims of these women. You can't have a double standard of saying THIS person's rape allegations should be taken seriously but THAT person's rape allegations are probably just machinations of political opponents and shouldn't be taken seriously, not when actual real women are making the claims. Either you support potential rape victims or you don't. There is no middle ground.I agree that their original charges should be taken seriously, yes. However, you cannot separate the claims by the three who appeared with Trump from politics, not with how they, well, appeared with Trump! If that happened because of a reaction against Democrats for supporting Bill Clinton, the man who harassed them or worse if what they say is true, then that's sad for sure... but still it has resulted in them tying their claims to right-wing politics. That they have does not mean that what they claim didn't happen, certainly, I believe we should separate what happened in the past from how they are today, but it does make them as they are today look bad. I can see how some would go from there to not believing their claims, though as I said given Bill's extensive cheating history it'd hardly shock me if they were true.