Now that we have a new thread, in order to ensure that this thread continues to meet TL standards and follows the proper guidelines, we will be enforcing the rules in the OP more strictly. Be sure to give them a complete and thorough read before posting!
NOTE: When providing a source, please provide a very brief summary on what it's about and what purpose it adds to the discussion. The supporting statement should clearly explain why the subject is relevant and needs to be discussed. Please follow this rule especially for tweets.
Your supporting statement should always come BEFORE you provide the source.
On June 15 2019 11:53 Danglars wrote: Debate compositions announced! The groups are named Orange and Purple. June 26th is the first night, Orange, where (imo) Warren does battle a very struggling cadre: Booker, Castro, de Blasio, Delaney, Gabbard, Inslee, Klobuchar, O'Rourke, Ryan. Purple, the follow night of the 27th, has many heavy hitters: Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg, and Harris. Joining them are Bennet, Gillibrand, Hickenlooper, Swalwell, Williamson, and Yang.
Warren might look like she had it too easy, or might just look great. All the puns about the Orange "kiddie table" are coming out in the media.
I'm hoping for some good Biden vs Sanders moments in Purple group. Pete's at the adult table, and will look youthful compared to Biden & Sanders. Harris can play on the old white dude factor as much as she wants, and maybe the base really values the diversity more than current polling shows it.
It probably goes without saying, but candidates like Klobuchar, Beto, and Booker are looking to have a great performance to revitalize their campaigns.
I was wondering how this would shake out.
Warren probably fares the worst in an unexciting crowd and O'Rourke likely to capture much of the attention. If she ends up taking him to task with the lack of policy angle it could work out well for her though.
Biden-Sanders is the obvious headliner with Buttigieg sliding into the underdog role pretty much squeezes Harris out of the picture. She'll be trying to walk the tightrope of both performing masculinity/whiteness and using appeals based on her non-masculine/non-white identity.
It'd probably be fun to guess post debate headlines and see who could get the closest. "Buttigieg Teaches Old Dogs New Tricks" is one I'd be surprised not to see some variation of.
On June 15 2019 11:53 Danglars wrote: Debate compositions announced! The groups are named Orange and Purple. June 26th is the first night, Orange, where (imo) Warren does battle a very struggling cadre: Booker, Castro, de Blasio, Delaney, Gabbard, Inslee, Klobuchar, O'Rourke, Ryan. Purple, the follow night of the 27th, has many heavy hitters: Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg, and Harris. Joining them are Bennet, Gillibrand, Hickenlooper, Swalwell, Williamson, and Yang. https://twitter.com/reidepstein/status/1139570682159861766
Warren might look like she had it too easy, or might just look great. All the puns about the Orange "kiddie table" are coming out in the media.
I'm hoping for some good Biden vs Sanders moments in Purple group. Pete's at the adult table, and will look youthful compared to Biden & Sanders. Harris can play on the old white dude factor as much as she wants, and maybe the base really values the diversity more than current polling shows it.
It probably goes without saying, but candidates like Klobuchar, Beto, and Booker are looking to have a great performance to revitalize their campaigns.
I was wondering how this would shake out.
Warren probably fares the worst in an unexciting crowd and O'Rourke likely to capture much of the attention. If she ends up taking him to task with the lack of policy angle it could work out well for her though.
Biden-Sanders is the obvious headliner with Buttigieg sliding into the underdog role pretty much squeezes Harris out of the picture. She'll be trying to walk the tightrope of both performing masculinity/whiteness and using appeals based on her non-masculine/non-white identity.
It'd probably be fun to guess post debate headlines and see who could get the closest. "Buttigieg Teaches Old Dogs New Tricks" is one I'd be surprised not to see some variation of.
Yeah I agree with everything you're saying here. Same thoughts here. I feel like this is a devastating development for Warren. She needed to have an opportunity to appear equal to Biden and Bernie.
As an aside, I still find myself firmly in the Bernie camp. He's far and away my top hope right now.
Warren has the advantage (I think) of being on day one, maybe talk won't last after day 2, but if she does really well then it will be memorable. It's all on her. Basically I think it's obviously not good to be seated at the equivalent of the undercard debate, but it does give you the opportunity to really outshine everyone else.
I applaud the DNC finding a way to do these debates worse than the GOP did. Qualifying candidates selected at random? lol. They are just so afraid of being accused of bias that they are willing to let these things happen.
Also I hope these are actually interesting. The Bernie/Hillary ones were not. Better not be two hours of them just agreeing with each other. Cruz vs. Trump for instance actually had some really meaningful moments (or at least I had hoped they were, lol).
Didn't the candidates need to raise a certain amount of money to get on the stage? And then I guess they wanted the people with more "radical" ideas going up against the "establishment" to get wildly different views/opinions out into the public sphere.
I feel the first group will mostly be along the same lines in terms of talking points, whereas the second group will give us varying degrees of philosophical points. But will allow Yang to be seen as different from Bernie and Biden as Harris is to Buttigeig and Biden.
On June 15 2019 23:07 ZerOCoolSC2 wrote: Didn't the candidates need to raise a certain amount of money to get on the stage? And then I guess they wanted the people with more "radical" ideas going up against the "establishment" to get wildly different views/opinions out into the public sphere.
I feel the first group will mostly be along the same lines in terms of talking points, whereas the second group will give us varying degrees of philosophical points. But will allow Yang to be seen as different from Bernie and Biden as Harris is to Buttigeig and Biden.
Technically it was a donor/donation threshold (meaning "To qualify for the debates on June 26 and 27, candidates had to either score 1 percent in three qualifying polls or amass support from at least 65,000 unique donors.")
As for why they did random selection on which debate night candidates got, it's because they didn't want to be seen as rigging the stage or making a kiddie debate, which somewhat unsurprisingly they managed to avoid neither (though from different campaigns than most expected).
The DNC can't win with selecting who debates on what day. If they do it randomly, people complain. If they don't do it randomly, people complain. They did it semi-randomly to try to avoid some of the problems with random, and people are still complaining.
Frankly, my issue with these events is that they are called "debates" even though that's not really what they are. When the Democratic and Republican finalists take turns responding to each other later in the election cycle, that will be a debate, although it will likely still be a poor example of one.
On June 16 2019 03:05 Taelshin wrote: It would be awesome if Tulsi came out swinging the first night and crushed the group. Hoping for a Spartacus moment as well.
She (and anyone else in Liz Warren's group) certainly has a chance to make a splash, since the only person seriously polling well in that group is Liz Warren. I fully expect Liz Warren to stomp on everyone else though and drum up more support, although I kind of wish she was in the same group as the other heavy hitters.
On June 15 2019 23:11 micronesia wrote: Frankly, my issue with these events is that they are called "debates" even though that's not really what they are. When the Democratic and Republican finalists take turns responding to each other later in the election cycle, that will be a debate, although it will likely still be a poor example of one.
Yeah calling them debates is being pretty generous. They are basically taking turns giving mini speeches, sound bytes and platitudes. I guess having a real, substantial debate would be political suicide in today's world because the audience has no patience for nuance and lengthy arguments.
On June 15 2019 11:53 Danglars wrote: Debate compositions announced! The groups are named Orange and Purple. June 26th is the first night, Orange, where (imo) Warren does battle a very struggling cadre: Booker, Castro, de Blasio, Delaney, Gabbard, Inslee, Klobuchar, O'Rourke, Ryan. Purple, the follow night of the 27th, has many heavy hitters: Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg, and Harris. Joining them are Bennet, Gillibrand, Hickenlooper, Swalwell, Williamson, and Yang. https://twitter.com/reidepstein/status/1139570682159861766
Warren might look like she had it too easy, or might just look great. All the puns about the Orange "kiddie table" are coming out in the media.
I'm hoping for some good Biden vs Sanders moments in Purple group. Pete's at the adult table, and will look youthful compared to Biden & Sanders. Harris can play on the old white dude factor as much as she wants, and maybe the base really values the diversity more than current polling shows it.
It probably goes without saying, but candidates like Klobuchar, Beto, and Booker are looking to have a great performance to revitalize their campaigns.
I was wondering how this would shake out.
Warren probably fares the worst in an unexciting crowd and O'Rourke likely to capture much of the attention. If she ends up taking him to task with the lack of policy angle it could work out well for her though.
Biden-Sanders is the obvious headliner with Buttigieg sliding into the underdog role pretty much squeezes Harris out of the picture. She'll be trying to walk the tightrope of both performing masculinity/whiteness and using appeals based on her non-masculine/non-white identity.
It'd probably be fun to guess post debate headlines and see who could get the closest. "Buttigieg Teaches Old Dogs New Tricks" is one I'd be surprised not to see some variation of.
I feel like they should put all the front runners together. Also these people who are at <1% should GTFO.
On June 15 2019 11:53 Danglars wrote: Debate compositions announced! The groups are named Orange and Purple. June 26th is the first night, Orange, where (imo) Warren does battle a very struggling cadre: Booker, Castro, de Blasio, Delaney, Gabbard, Inslee, Klobuchar, O'Rourke, Ryan. Purple, the follow night of the 27th, has many heavy hitters: Biden, Sanders, Buttigieg, and Harris. Joining them are Bennet, Gillibrand, Hickenlooper, Swalwell, Williamson, and Yang. https://twitter.com/reidepstein/status/1139570682159861766
Warren might look like she had it too easy, or might just look great. All the puns about the Orange "kiddie table" are coming out in the media.
I'm hoping for some good Biden vs Sanders moments in Purple group. Pete's at the adult table, and will look youthful compared to Biden & Sanders. Harris can play on the old white dude factor as much as she wants, and maybe the base really values the diversity more than current polling shows it.
It probably goes without saying, but candidates like Klobuchar, Beto, and Booker are looking to have a great performance to revitalize their campaigns.
I was wondering how this would shake out.
Warren probably fares the worst in an unexciting crowd and O'Rourke likely to capture much of the attention. If she ends up taking him to task with the lack of policy angle it could work out well for her though.
Biden-Sanders is the obvious headliner with Buttigieg sliding into the underdog role pretty much squeezes Harris out of the picture. She'll be trying to walk the tightrope of both performing masculinity/whiteness and using appeals based on her non-masculine/non-white identity.
It'd probably be fun to guess post debate headlines and see who could get the closest. "Buttigieg Teaches Old Dogs New Tricks" is one I'd be surprised not to see some variation of.
I feel like they should put all the front runners together. Also these people who are at <1% should GTFO.
They'll start dropping out after they have the opportunity for some limelight (like with these two "debates"). Once most of them don't see an uptick in polling above 3%, they'll likely leave before it becomes too expensive to get literally nowhere. Most of them are polling at 0-1%, and will probably stay there over the next month or so (and it wouldn't change any later).
Couldn't you do some kind of seeding thing? Like 1 4 5 8 etc in one debate based on polls and 2367 in the other or something? It seems a pretty big fail to have Biden and Bernie in the same group for the first debate.
Obviously polls are imprecise but pro sports have been dealing with the issue of unbiased-but-balanced groups for a long time. The wheel didn't need to be reinvented.
On June 15 2019 23:11 micronesia wrote: Frankly, my issue with these events is that they are called "debates" even though that's not really what they are. When the Democratic and Republican finalists take turns responding to each other later in the election cycle, that will be a debate, although it will likely still be a poor example of one.
Yeah calling them debates is being pretty generous. They are basically taking turns giving mini speeches, sound bytes and platitudes. I guess having a real, substantial debate would be political suicide in today's world because the audience has no patience for nuance and lengthy arguments.
More precisely, the political class has so little respect for the general intelligence of the voters that they assume the audience has no patience.
I'd love it for someone to actually try it in the modern environment.
On June 16 2019 08:28 Gahlo wrote: I'd love to see Trump try to conform to rules of an actual debate.
He never would, and there apparently aren't any moderators who would actually hold him accountable. All they need is the power to cut off his mic, and they still wouldn't do that because so many moderators are pushovers unfortunately.
Could you believe if we had a real debate with real accountability? Something like this? This would be amazing.
On June 15 2019 23:11 micronesia wrote: Frankly, my issue with these events is that they are called "debates" even though that's not really what they are. When the Democratic and Republican finalists take turns responding to each other later in the election cycle, that will be a debate, although it will likely still be a poor example of one.
Yeah calling them debates is being pretty generous. They are basically taking turns giving mini speeches, sound bytes and platitudes. I guess having a real, substantial debate would be political suicide in today's world because the audience has no patience for nuance and lengthy arguments.
People think that and yet Joe Rogan's three-hour podcast interviews on Youtube are incredibly popular. Tulsi has already done long interviews with Rogan and Michael Tracey and she spoke really well (and genuinely). I bet if you got a group of, say, five or six of the top candidates and did a three-hour debate/discussion on Youtube it would get massive amounts of views.
Since we're debating about debates, let us think about what the point of a debate is.
If one is a logical and fair-minded person, the purpose of a debate is to find truth or weigh value judgements. One would go into a debate with an open mind, and be willing to concede to superior points.
But of course in modern western-style democracy this is never going to happen. The optimal heuristic is "I am always correct and I going to keep arguing and never concede no matter what". It's the only way to get elected.
This behavior is true of politicians and true of most average people as well. What percentage of people whom you know always argue fairly?
Televised debates are held by networks for their own ratings, it's commercially motivated. Most people who watch debates have already made up their minds. They will watch it and then proceed to post on the internet about how their candidate is very good and the other one is very bad. Very few actually come in with an open mind.
Hence, the optimal strategy (for maximizing political capital) in a televised debate is to use it as a platform to drum up your own voter enthusiasm. Trump does this very well, he knows that logic doesn't work on most people and he can say anything he wants as long as it fulfills the purpose of getting his supporters emotionally charged up. Trump is actually a pretty skillful political operator, whether by intent or chance.
On June 16 2019 08:28 Gahlo wrote: I'd love to see Trump try to conform to rules of an actual debate.
He never would, and there apparently aren't any moderators who would actually hold him accountable. All they need is the power to cut off his mic, and they still wouldn't do that because so many moderators are pushovers unfortunately.
Could you believe if we had a real debate with real accountability? Something like this? This would be amazing.
Of course they won't. Trump is entertaining and the goal of the television network is to maximize their ratings. They are not incentivized to produce a fair debate. But the root cause is still the electorate, because they like to watch these kind of things. In democracy, people get the sort of politicians they deserve.
On June 15 2019 23:11 micronesia wrote: Frankly, my issue with these events is that they are called "debates" even though that's not really what they are. When the Democratic and Republican finalists take turns responding to each other later in the election cycle, that will be a debate, although it will likely still be a poor example of one.
Yeah calling them debates is being pretty generous. They are basically taking turns giving mini speeches, sound bytes and platitudes. I guess having a real, substantial debate would be political suicide in today's world because the audience has no patience for nuance and lengthy arguments.
People think that and yet Joe Rogan's three-hour podcast interviews on Youtube are incredibly popular. Tulsi has already done long interviews with Rogan and Michael Tracey and she spoke really well (and genuinely). I bet if you got a group of, say, five or six of the top candidates and did a three-hour debate/discussion on Youtube it would get massive amounts of views.
Possibly, although Tulsi Gabbard is still polling at ~0%. Some limelight is still better than no limelight though, and more platforms and interviews can only increase exposure, which is definitely good for anyone who's up-and-coming.
On June 16 2019 11:31 Pangpootata wrote: Since we're debating about debates, let us think about what the point of a debate is.
If one is a logical and fair-minded person, the purpose of a debate is to find truth or weigh value judgements. One would go into a debate with an open mind, and be willing to concede to superior points.
But of course in modern western-style democracy this is never going to happen. The optimal heuristic is "I am always correct and I going to keep arguing and never concede no matter what". It's the only way to get elected.
This behavior is true of politicians and true of most average people as well. What percentage of people whom you know always argue fairly?
Televised debates are held by networks for their own ratings, it's commercially motivated. Most people who watch debates have already made up their minds. They will watch it and then proceed to post on the internet about how their candidate is very good and the other one is very bad. Very few actually come in with an open mind.
Hence, the optimal strategy (for maximizing political capital) in a televised debate is to use it as a platform to drum up your own voter enthusiasm. Trump does this very well, he knows that logic doesn't work on most people and he can say anything he wants as long as it fulfills the purpose of getting his supporters emotionally charged up. Trump is actually a pretty skillful political operator, whether by intent or chance.
I'm with you on your point about politicians and the political debates among nominees. I'm even a little optimistic with large fields in that political points and lines of disagreement spawn a host of news articles and provoke reading afterwards. I like the increase in exposure to counterarguments even if they're phrased in sound bites.
My other point is in weighing value judgments. Like it or not, people will vigorously disagree on what law and society should value. They'll do it to the point where it appears to outside observers that they don't have an "open mind" and are unwilling to concede. The societal values disagreements only scratches the surface on that topic. The largest one is weighing freedom vs safety.
Not all policy disagreements stem from big gaps in values, but sometimes the gulf between policies is so large that bridging it in a series of debates is unlikely. It might take over a dozen new individuals debating in some capacity over a period of many years. It's also going to look like somebody's arguing in bad faith, simply because one can't wrap their minds around any of the framework supporting the contrary idea. That relates directly to your point: politicians are better off assuming one conclusion from the priors and debating from that, for example, that increased government control and subsidization of the medical industry is the right direction for prices and availability. It's also a key feature of the American republic. What we can't agree on, we'll take to the ballot box. What most affects me will be decided by state and local, where several states may disagree and have totally different systems and be equally happy with the result.
EPT
