The Clinton vs. Trump Debates Talkback!


Off-Topic Discussions

1 to 50 of 1,228 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | next > last >>

1 person marked this as a favorite.

The upcoming debates between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump will not just decide the fate of America, but the fate of the rest of the world too. There is no question that Hillary should become President, but a lot of Americans are voting for Trump. I guarantee a majority of Trump's supporters will regret their vote within 1 year, but by then it will be too late. I don't want to look back and say "I told you so." I want to say it right now.

Please proceed...


2 people marked this as a favorite.

You couldn't wait until Monday at least? There's still a low mileage Election 2016 thread open and taking posts.


I'm not going to watch, I've already decided and nothing that will be said will sway me.

Dark Archive

Do we really need two dumb threads for the same thing?


One specific to the debates wouldn't be a bad thing, especially if we tried to do it live, but opening it up now doesn't really do much.


NenkotaMoon wrote:
Do we really need two dumb threads for the same thing?

There should be one talkback per debate night, so we actually need one more thread just to properly cover the debates. We also need a thread for the Kaine vs. Pence debate.


thejeff wrote:
One specific to the debates wouldn't be a bad thing, especially if we tried to do it live, but opening it up now doesn't really do much.

I'm only sorry that I didn't open this thread sooner! It will take years to properly discuss the debates and their impact on American and World history.


Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:
You couldn't wait until Monday at least? There's still a low mileage Election 2016 thread open and taking posts.

No, I couldn't wait it's too important!


5 people marked this as a favorite.

I'll be watching out of fear. The standards for Trump have been so lowered, Hillary has to crush him in order to be considered "the winner". Anybody remember the Parks and Recreation episode where Leslie goes up against Bobby Newport? Or the SNL episode between Palin and Biden? If Trump manages to survive ten minutes without using some sort of slur, they'll be calling it a tie. If he lasts the whole debate without calling for nuking Sweden, they'll be calling it a solid defeat for Clinton.


I like the idea of having a sort of "chat room" thread during the debates. (I think I might have done a thread like that for some debate, or movie premier or live something.) With that said, until Monday night, I'll keep the politics to the other thread, so as to make less work for the mods.


I'll half be watching in anxietyfear for any teeny Clinton misstep, and half to see if she delivers a Verbal Kombat: Fatality. Yelling at the screen for Trump's empty promises & deplorable words will just be the icing on the sh!tsandwich.

I plan to be buzzed going in and drunk by the end.

I know the post-game commentators will be gibbering uselessly about Clinton's supposed flubs while oooing & awing that Trump didn't sh!t his pants onstage. I know this, but I'll watch them anyway, and then I will MST3K ridicule their stoopid myopic horserace-wanting uselessness. And then I will anxietyfear drink again.


It's not going to be an easy debate. The moderators won't call out lies and Trump's a master Gish Galloper. That's not easy to counter in a forum like this. You can say he's lying, but there's no way to pull in actual evidence and he'll just say you're lying back or move on to the next lie. Then you spend all your time trying to debunk his lies and can't say anything yourself.

Her best approach, IMO, is to taunt him into losing control. Get him upset and flustered and saying even wilder things than normal. Shouldn't be too hard to do. His style is obvious and she's been working hard on prep.


I don't know if I should be watching, or letting the reactions people have afterwards speak for themselves.


thejeff wrote:
Her best approach, IMO, is to taunt him into losing control. Get him upset and flustered and saying even wilder things than normal. Shouldn't be too hard to do. His style is obvious and she's been working hard on prep.

Hopefully Elizabeth Warren will be tweeting at him throughout Sunday and Monday up to the start. Also, although Trump (and Clinton) won't be able to see it from the stage, Mark Cuban has a literal front row seat... hopefully, Trump will know he's there.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

That's the thing: Trump can stay "on-script"...when he has a script to follow. But a debate requires reaction. Trump will struggle immensely if his strategy is to project himself as reasonable because Clinton can bait him.

Here's hoping.


It's also 90 minutes long. I'm not sure he can stand not being the exclusive center of attention for that long.


What we know about Clinton is that she has stamina. She endured day-long hearings. She can hold up for 90 minutes. That gives me hope.


God I hope this becomes an epic smackdown for Hillary. The polls are getting a bit too close for comfort and apparently the average swing state voter has the attention span of a squirrel, given that no one seems to be concerned about the extensive and horrible gaffs Trump had in August.

Of course if it is a smackdown, Trump will cancel the future debates giving him well over a month to let those same swing voters forget again how horrible he is.


2 people marked this as a favorite.
Kobold Cleaver wrote:
What we know about Clinton is that she has stamina. She endured day-long hearings. She can hold up for 90 minutes. That gives me hope.

Stamina?! Clinton filmed the Between Two Ferns episode right after doing interviews with CNN that ran over an extra 2+ hours... all while she had pneumonia. Clinton has stamina to burn.

Silver Crusade

2 people marked this as a favorite.
Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:
Kobold Cleaver wrote:
What we know about Clinton is that she has stamina. She endured day-long hearings. She can hold up for 90 minutes. That gives me hope.
Stamina?! Clinton filmed the Between Two Ferns episode right after doing interviews with CNN that ran over an extra 2+ hours... all while she had pneumonia. Clinton has stamina to burn.

And spite. It's a helluva drug.

Silver Crusade

Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:
Kobold Cleaver wrote:
What we know about Clinton is that she has stamina. She endured day-long hearings. She can hold up for 90 minutes. That gives me hope.
Stamina?! Clinton filmed the Between Two Ferns episode right after doing interviews with CNN that ran over an extra 2+ hours... all while she had pneumonia. Clinton has stamina to burn.

Hmm, so like Michael Jordan being sick removes any limiter she had.

Interesting...


2 people marked this as a favorite.

My master beckons! Assemble the acolytes for I have heard it whispered on the wind that when Trump is elected president, LEAFAR SHALL RETURN!


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I want to state that I am voting for Hillary Clinton, because I want to prevent the Apocalypse from coming in my lifetime. Donald Trump + Nuclear Codes in a Black Briefcase = End of World! It's as if the Republican Party decided to pick the worst possible candidate for President...oh wait, they did. My hope is that a majority of Americans will see in the debates just how unqualified Trump is to become President. Of course, hope can be lost...


Acolyte of Leafar the Loved wrote:
My master beckons! Assemble the acolytes for I have heard it whispered on the wind that when Trump is elected president, LEAFAR SHALL RETURN!

Leafar would have to return across Oceans of Time, and then create a new body. He truly is "Lost" now. I don't see how he can return, but there's always hope.


1 person marked this as a favorite.

I said it during the primaries, and I stand by what I said then:
If the Republicans were dreaming up the perfect debate opponent to defeat Hillary Clinton, they couldn't have hoped for someone better than Trump. For all his faults, as a candidate his strength is exactly Clinton's weakness.

At the end of the day, there are really three ways to win a general election debate (primary debates are a different kettle of fish entirely):

1. You can out-argue them on the issues.
2. You can make it a resume battle.
3. You can make the debate about personal insults.

Unfortunately for the Republicans, there is virtually no one in their party who could defeat Clinton using methods (1) or (2). On the issues, Clinton is in line with a majority of the American people. And unlike some of her primary opponents (*cough Lincoln Chafee cough*), she is actually articulate in talking about her positions.

On the resume front, the only person who ran on the Republican side who could hope to beat Clinton in a resume contest was Kasich. Marco Rubio even pointed out this fact in the primary debates ("if this election is a resume contest, then Hillary Clinton will be the next president.") And his campaign didn't go anywhere.

Hence, the only way any hypothetical Republican nominee could hope to win a debate against Clinton is with personal attacks. And if anyone can, as Bush said, "insult their way to the presidency," it's Donald Trump.

It helps him that Clinton seems more vulnerable to personal attacks than other politicians. On the one hand, unlike her husband, she isn't very good at responding to personal attacks. She'd prefer to keep the focus on policy and governing, which is what she's good at.

On the other hand, the media has been hounding after Clinton searching for any potential pseudo-scandals for a quarter century. Whitewater? There was nothing there, but the media blew it up anyways. E-mail-ghazi? I don't recall anyone going after Colin Powell for using a private email server while he was secretary of state. What's this about her health that's supposed to be a scandal? She released about the same amount of medical documentation as Romney, Obama, Kerry, and Bush did (McCain released a lot more due to serious concerns over his health, whilst Trump has released much less information). She had Pneumonia, but eight years ago, then-Senator Obama was a smoker, and no one tried to make a scandal out of that.

Whatever the reason, Clinton doesn't come across as being as "likable" as other politicians. And that leaves her more vulnerable to Trump's insults than she is to any substantive argument Kasich could have made. Trump may be a terrible candidate to run against almost any other Democrat, but he is the strongest "anti-Clinton" candidate his party could have hoped for.

Monday's debate will be well worth watching. If it goes well for Trump, we could well be looking at a President Pence. If Trump can't pull it off, then there is no Republican in the country who could ever win a debate against Hillary Clinton.

...which doesn't mean she couldn't lose the election, or win this election but lose reelection four years from now. Even if she trounces her opponent in the debates, all it takes to swing an election is for certain people to stay home on election day.


Kobold Cleaver wrote:

That's the thing: Trump can stay "on-script"...when he has a script to follow. But a debate requires reaction. Trump will struggle immensely if his strategy is to project himself as reasonable because Clinton can bait him.

Here's hoping.

Projecting reasonableness has never been part of his strategy. His base loves him FOR his unreasonableness.


Pathfinder Rulebook Subscriber

The eye thing was creepy...


4 people marked this as a favorite.

I don't usually watch the debates, but I feel like this one is probably worth it. I am unhappy at the completely different standards the candidates are being subjected to, though - we're talking about the Presidency of the United States, not picking group leaders in Kindergarten.

Praising somebody for not falling flat on their face isn't good enough, especially because other nations sure as heck aren't going to treat them the same way.

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Couple of thoughts from a political science junkie.

1) Trump's base loving his bombastic stupidity is not the same as EVERYONE ELSE loving it. Trump has a lock on most of the Republican Party, but if you're Clinton you're not targeting those people. You're looking to snap up the voters who are repulsed by Trump, and persuade them to vote for you rather than merely stay home. On a related note, it'll be interesting to see the post-election data on Republican women--I suspect more than a few of them will cancel out their husband's votes on the Presidential level.

2) Being wildly polarizing is a double-edged sword. I've seen the argument made many times in the past few months that Trump is "energizing" racists or alt-righters or whatever. That's probably true, but he also energizes the people who hate him. Black & Latinx media are shredding him daily, and you can bet that will have a significant effect on their turnout.

3) Clinton has done an excellent job of cementing the support of the Obama coalition, which won the last two presidentials by comfortable margins. The beating heart of the Democratic Party is women + POC. Dems haven't won a majority of white votes since 1964, and honestly don't need to. If they stay focused on their strengths Clinton will win handily.

4) Trump does best when he's allowed to make a conversation adversarial. He'll probably do his best to do that during the debate. How the moderators will be key, but Trump's rambling incoherence will be on full display across a broad series of policy topics. If Clinton keeps her cool and provides solid answer she'll ace this. Her trying to bait/needle him would just morph too easily into playing his game. She needs to underline her own high degree of competence and let it speak for itself.

Unfortunately I won't be able to watch the debate since I'm out of the country, but I hope y'all have fun!


CrusaderWolf wrote:


Unfortunately I won't be able to watch the debate since I'm out of the country, but I hope y'all have fun!

You won't be able to watch the stream feed?

Silver Crusade

Pathfinder Lost Omens, Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

I meant live, it won't even start until 4am here.


CrusaderWolf wrote:
I meant live, it won't even start until 4am here.

Ouch!


1 person marked this as a favorite.

What oogs me out is that it's being promoted as bombastically and as intelligently as a WWE event, not a political debate. I expect to see Richard Dawson as emcee.


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Treppa wrote:
What oogs me out is that it's being promoted as bombastically and as intelligently as a WWE event, not a political debate. I expect to see Richard Dawson as emcee.

I kinda expect Vince McMahon to be in the audience, goading Trump to kayfabe it up.

Silver Crusade

Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:
Treppa wrote:
What oogs me out is that it's being promoted as bombastically and as intelligently as a WWE event, not a political debate. I expect to see Richard Dawson as emcee.
I kinda expect Vince McMahon to be in the audience, goading Trump to kayfabe it up.

And then Clinton powerbombs him.


4 people marked this as a favorite.

The real question is, will the moderators fact-check?

Silver Crusade

1 person marked this as a favorite.
Kobold Cleaver wrote:
The real question is, will the moderators fact-check?

And not have two sets of questions, one for elementary students and one for presidential candidates?


Rysky wrote:
Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:
Treppa wrote:
What oogs me out is that it's being promoted as bombastically and as intelligently as a WWE event, not a political debate. I expect to see Richard Dawson as emcee.
I kinda expect Vince McMahon to be in the audience, goading Trump to kayfabe it up.
And then Clinton powerbombs him.

If this were in Fox's cinematic X-Men/Deadpool universe, Trump's verbal diarrhea of toxic sexism would be the stressor catalyst that finally activates Clinton's X-genes... and she manifests Scott Summers eyebeams that blows the Trumpernaut through the wall.


This is trouble. This could be game.


Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:
Treppa wrote:
What oogs me out is that it's being promoted as bombastically and as intelligently as a WWE event, not a political debate. I expect to see Richard Dawson as emcee.
I kinda expect Vince McMahon to be in the audience, goading Trump to kayfabe it up.

Just as long as it's not Vince Foster!


My hope is that the moderators will fact check Trump every time he makes a factual mistake, which will be often. My hope is that only Trump's hardcore followers will continue to support him after the debates, because it will reveal that he has no clue about even the basic concepts of the Constitution and what a President can actually do. I have to have faith in the humanity of most Americans...I have to...


1 person marked this as a favorite.
Farael the Fallen wrote:
My hope is that the moderators will fact check Trump every time he makes a factual mistake, which will be often.

Hope is a beautiful thing.


Farael the Fallen wrote:
My hope is that the moderators will fact check Trump every time he makes a factual mistake, which will be often.

Dude, there's only 90 minutes total. Ain't nobody got that much time to correct that many mistakes, ignorance, half-truths, and flat-out lies.

Kobold Cleaver wrote:
Hope is a beautiful thing.

{continues to grind teeth in frustration}


On the bright side, I think Clinton's been studying up on the likely issues so she can correct him herself... but I really do hope she's able to spend most of her time highlighting actual policy positions.


Rednal wrote:
On the bright side, I think Clinton's been studying up on the likely issues so she can correct him herself... but I really do hope she's able to spend most of her time highlighting actual policy positions.

Clinton knows the issues. I hope she's been spending her prep time practicing against his style.


If she pulls a "There you go again" type of thing, she could crush him. 90 minutes with every 3rd minute being "there you go again, because [stuff]" could do the trick.


Screw all this noise, transhumanist party for the win!

*party popper*

...

Anybody else there?

(This is an actual thing, by the way.)


Rednal wrote:
On the bright side, I think Clinton's been studying up on the likely issues so she can correct him herself... but I really do hope she's able to spend most of her time highlighting actual policy positions.

Every moment she uses to fact-check Trump is a moment she loses to sell her policies and vision, a moment to convince undecideds that she can be trusted... which is likely part of Trump's campaign's plan. >:(


Pillbug Toenibbler wrote:
Rednal wrote:
On the bright side, I think Clinton's been studying up on the likely issues so she can correct him herself... but I really do hope she's able to spend most of her time highlighting actual policy positions.
Every moment she uses to fact-check Trump is a moment she loses to sell her policies and vision, a moment to convince undecideds that she can be trusted... which is likely part of Trump's campaign's plan. >:(

I suspect casually dismissive is the best tone - the equivalent of "there you go again". And then move on to sell her policy.


Rednal wrote:
On the bright side, I think Clinton's been studying up on the likely issues so she can correct him herself... but I really do hope she's able to spend most of her time highlighting actual policy positions.

Incompetent as his adversaries were, they occasionally tried to call him on his lies in the primary.

He called them liars. No mods spoke up. They moved on.

1 to 50 of 1,228 << first < prev | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | next > last >>
Community / Forums / Gamer Life / Off-Topic Discussions / The Clinton vs. Trump Debates Talkback! All Messageboards

Want to post a reply? Sign in.