From CNN: CNN Poll: Biden wins final presidential debate
(CNN)Joe Biden did a better job in the final debate on Thursday, according to a CNN Instant Poll of debate watchers. Overall, 53% of voters who watched the debate said that Biden won the matchup, while 39% said that President Donald Trump did.
Viewers once again said that Biden’s criticisms of Trump were largely fair (73% said they were fair, 26% unfair), and they split over whether Trump’s attacks on Biden were fair (50% said yes, 49% no).
(Featured image is “polling station” by secretlondon123 and is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0)
From October 20th, 2016:
Hillary Clinton wins third presidential debate, according to CNN / ORC poll
Report
I’m less interested in this then the fact that 40ish million voters had already cast their ballots by air time, which means the audience for this as a decisional activity is vanishing fast.Report
Were any bombs dropped? Well, as far as I can tell, no bombs were dropped.
I heard rumors before the fact about how X would happen and it would change things or Y would happen and it would change things but I woke up today that the twitters is talking about… masks, I guess.Report
the closet thing to a bomb was Trump not being a complete raving lunatic. He appeared to be in a wobbly orbit around being Presidential. Beyond that – Biden kept hammering home thoughtful points on policy, and reminded the President and the audience that the election wasn’t about his family or Trump’s family but about the continued suffering of America’s families. Or some such.Report
I’m perplexed by the idea that there even exists a “undecided” vote in any statistically significant number.
Borrowing from John Cole, its like:
Biden: “Lets have pepperoni pizza!”
Trump: “Tire rims and anthrax!”
Voter: “Hmm, decisions, decisions…”Report
I think when they say “undecided voter” they mean someone choosing between alcoholic despair and the cold embrace of the grave.Report
Undecided voters are either 1) caught between their preferred candidates behavior and their single issue or 2) people who don’t want to admit who they support because it means they have to own a position they know they will face social sanction for.Report
Mmmmm…. well it was not a burning train wreck like the first debate. I don’t think either of the candidates got off any powerful hits on each other. I thought Joe came off perfectly fine, but I’m a Democrat so I would. I don’t think this debate moves the numbers much which makes it, by default, a win for Joe on the numbers.
Meanwhile the votes are coming in and the polls haven’t tightened much yet. Tick… tock…Report
I sympathize with the position Biden (or anyone sharing the stage with Trump) is in… he’s just not a good faith interlocutor – even more so than your average politician. Pulling on all of my sales experience I couldn’t see a rhetorical way I’d deal with him in real-time. That is, without destroying my own brand. Honestly, some of the hardest and best decisions I’ve made over the years is to refuse to engage in a process I didn’t feel was in my best interest.
That said, Biden looked bad… I don’t think it matters, since people aren’t actually voting *for* Biden and I think the voters are gonna vote for who they’re gonna vote for already.
But man, Biden isn’t up to the task. He’s a talisman… keep him safely enclosed in glass and hope everything else just kinda… um, works?
I still think he’ll win (and Bigly), but if I’m wrong, I have some strong notions on what’s wrong with my model… but it isn’t the debates. The debates are just a symptom of the disease.Report
Curious to hear more about Biden looking bad. I thought he looked better than the first one: more on topic, more focused, less meandering, more alert. There was a moment where he seemed to almost physically waiver on the stage that had me panicked but it seemed to be something other than him about to fall asleep/pass out/die.Report
He’s just not sharp, nor quick witted, nor a commanding speaker… and that’s 50 yr old Biden. Now slap almost 30-years on that?… his responses were slow, unfortunately his stutter was prominent, it was clear he was losing his train of thought… odd substitutions in his retorts, like trying to set-up a ‘zinger’ around ‘Poor Boys’. Using Malarkey in an actual sentence… Constant refrain of “c’mon, Man.” His set pieces were ok if you’re rooting for him, but not in any way impressive or, if I’m honest, convincing.
Trump as a debater is bad in a whole different way, but Biden just doesn’t show well if extemporaneous entertainment is on the menu. Trump isn’t debating, he’s just live tweeting on national TV. Biden didn’t really have an answer for that… as I say, I’m not entirely sure I would either… but I’m not the standard bearer for my party.Report
As someone who routinely says malarkey, I’m offended by this.
More seriously, I don’t disagree with any of this. Which probably makes my previous comment damning with faint praise: I thought Biden looked better here than the first go around. How would you compare his performances?Report
To me the first go around was such a shitshow of Trump stomping around being Trump that we didn’t even really notice Biden.
Honestly, stopping Trump and giving Biden uninterrupted time? Probably made it worse. Uninterrupted Biden just wasn’t that impressive.
The unveiling of Biden-care was the shrug heard round the world.
True, it’s hard to debate the arguably least racist president since Abraham Lincoln… but if your bat isn’t quick enough to catch-up with Lincoln High-heat, then you’re just not ready for this game… or maybe the game has passed you by.
https://abcnews.go.com/Archives/video/lloyd-bentsens-mic-drop-moment-1988-vp-debate-58255800Report
I still think he’ll win (and Bigly), but if I’m wrong, I have some strong notions on what’s wrong with my model…
This is *EXACTLY* where I am.
I think Joe will win and he’ll hit it out of the park.
But if he doesn’t, I know exactly what I have been ignoring and otherwise undervaluing.Report
If Biden wins it may be a disaster for Democrats because they’d have to deal with impeachment questions even before he’s inaugurated, given the rate at which the Biden’s former business associates are flipping on him and turning over state’s evidence that leaves absolutely no doubt that Biden was raking in millions in bribes from a wide variety of bad actors and corrupt foreign officials. The Senate is hearing the testimony of one such business partner today. This is generally the way things go (rats turning on the big guy they were bribing) before an Illinois governor heads to court and then heads to prison.
The heat will just keep building for his removal, and not many politicians can long survive going to the mat to protect corruption and child sex abuse, sex trafficking, and the like, because it gives all the rhetorical ammunition to their opponents. “Trumpism” actually get much worse if Biden wins and isn’t removed from office. House and Senate Democrats will have to perform their own individual calculations on how to best get through it, and once a few start jumping ship, more will bow to the accumulating weight of overwhelming evidence. Some that concede the need to remove him will likely try to go the 25th Amendment route to avoid “a first” on impeachment and removal. If they do, it’s likely certain Kamala Harris will sign off on it.Report
George, do you mind if I put a marker down?
Like, you know how a handful of commenters on this site wrote a bunch of comments in 2016 saying “QUIT SAYING THAT TRUMP WILL GET ELECTED!” and so on and then, when Trump got elected, never really talked about the stuff that they believed that wasn’t true?
Because, if Biden gets elected, the stuff you’re talking about won’t happen.
More than that, it’ll be a census year and the people drawing the census will have computers. They’re going to gerrymander the ever-living hell out of the map and this will help them for one, maybe two, elections. (After that, it’ll flip back and they’ll explain “we didn’t gerrymander, unlike the Republicans in the teens!” rather than “people changed their minds about who to vote for”.)
Anyway, if Biden wins, he’ll have the house. They won’t be drawing up articles.
We’ll have to deal with headlines like “REPUBLICANS ARE DRAWING UP ARTICLES OF IMPEACHMENT!” but it’ll be similar to the articles of impeachment that got drawn up for Dumbya and Obomba. They will go nowhere.
Anyway, if Biden wins, I’m going to ask you about the things you said in this comment.
Cool?
(I hope you do better on the whole intellectual honesty front than the folks who yelled about Trump not winning in 2016.)Report
I’m focusing on the fact that the FBI already had an ongoing investigation into the Biden family’s corruption, and Hunter’s laptop leak dumped a ton of very damaging evidence into the press, which has the entire hard drive. Despite the media’s attempts to pretend otherwise, the Biden family ship is gong down and there’s no saving it. There’s no way to spin documented bribes, money laundering to evade US sanctions, shakedowns, and kickbacks when the participants in those schemes are rolling over and providing corroborating evidence.
And that goes along with the child porn, child rape aspect. Many in the press who’ve seen it say the drive shows, for example, Hunter getting naked with his 14-year old niece, and has his text messages where he complains about his brother’s wife complaining about him face-timing naked with underage girls. There’s also apparently far worse things on it. Far far worse. That’s why the laptop repair guy called the FBI, and why the FBI agent who took possession of the laptop was part of the FBI’s child sex abuse team.
To my knowledge, no politician in the modern era has survived a scandal that’s going to be this bad. Hillary was saved because she deleted all her e-mails, I’m sure knowing that she’d be in jail, or politically destroyed, if she hadn’t.
Of course the left is whistling past the grave yard, pretending there’s nothing to see and it’s no big deal. They are wrong. This is the worst political scandal I’ve seen in my lifetime, and judging by some e-mails from Jim Biden, the bribery schemes seem to go all the way to Obama.
This, what we’re hearing about now, is why Trump was impeached. That’s how panicked the Democrats were at the thought that Trump might uncover what was gong on with the Bidens. The impeachment was launched the day after the FBI took possession of Hunter’s laptop – and then sat on it. The goings on in their Ukraine affairs are so bad that they were willing to destroy the Republic to keep the secrets from getting out.
Those secrets are now falling like rain, and though they can try to block the signal, they cannot stop it because too many reporters have copies, and too many associates are flipping. For example, one of Hunter Biden’s business partners, who gave Brietbart full access to his entire Gmail account, was removed from prison and taken into FBI protective custody – so that he wouldn’t be murdered to hush him up before he could testify. That’s how serious this is.Report
1. Ruby Giuliani passed on this very story and lap top a year ago when it was initially presented to him. That he has now taken it up is mark of desperation.
2. The Wall Street Journal reporting refutes these claims.
3. Fox News reporter Jacqui Heinrich has reviewed all of Tony Bobulinski’s emails – and found nothing to impugn Joe Biden.
You are an unimaginative, intellectually lazy troll. I know you don’t care what anyone on my side of the aisle thinks of you, but you might want to be concerned that none of your usual defenders here are backing you on this.Report
Sorry, but I have seen some of the evidence, and it’s going to send people to prison. The Bidens were laundering Russian oligarch’s money to evade US sanctions. Biden’s partner, at the time, bragged that they got $200 million. Hunter Biden was paid over $2 million for doing it. And that’s just with one country.
With Burisma, the money not paid directly to the Biden’s (and a Burisma person has testified in Ukrainian court that they paid Joe directly for getting the prosecutor fired), was laundered through an investment fund whose largest stockholder was Obama’s National Security Advisor.
There is now tons of information pouring out, and Biden partners are flipping and provide testimony to directly tie the Biden’s to the illegal schemes.
No matter how much the press wants to bury it, the Republicans control the Senate, and no matter what happens in the election, they will control the Senate until January. They are going to put everyone under oath, probably including Joe Biden himself, in what is basically a repeat of the Watergate hearings – this time with added child rape, and subpoenaed bank records of wire transfers.
Do you think Mitch somehow wouldn’t do that? Heck yes he’s going to do it. They’re already doing it. If Biden wins, he’ll be a lame duck by inauguration day. His reputation is already being destroyed abroad, because foreign reporters aren’t all in the tank for the Democrats, and they love a giant political scandal, especially one involving Americans. If nothing else, it lets all those foreign leaders say “Ha! At least we’re not as corrupt as the America’s leader! Can you believe he was running a money-laundering operation for the Russians?!”
Perhaps a more interesting question is how much more evidence will directly implicate Obama in the bribery and extortion schemes, and whether that $50 million Netflix payout he and Michelle got to be “producers” was, in fact, a lump-sum payout of foreign money, much of it probably Russian and Chinese, from the deals they were cutting for themselves.Report
Hee hee this is some quality Kentucky brand horseshit even by your standards George, well done! Joe Biden and the Obamas at the center of a nefarious international child prostitution and money laundering ring. All of this revealed when Hunter Biden flew from California to Delaware to drop off a laptop to a blind repair guy who never the less recognized him even though his magnetic super ring erased the stores security footate, gave it to the FBI and happened to have the attorney for America’s mayor on speed dial and sent him copies of the hard drive too, all of course missing anything that could validate the contents veracity of course. Heheh, Qanon eat your heart out.Report
Well considering that Fox News reported over the weekend that they couldn’t find any illegality in tony Bobulinski’s emails, I’d say the latest non story remains a non-story.
https://www.foxnews.com/politics/hunter-biden-tony-bobulinski-joe-biden-unanswered-questionsReport
So we went from it being a “made-up hoax”, to “Russian disinformation”, to “it’s not illegal”, in what, a week?
Where will we be on Thursday with this non-story?Report
Same as now. It’s political hit job based on info hacked by russians that is both an empty sack and aimed at Biden’s son who, i have to admit, few of us are voting for.Report
Ah yes. “Russia, Russia, Russia.”
Are you covering your ears, and saying LaLaLa?Report
“All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.”Report
George, that’s great. And if something in the ballpark of this happens, believe me: I will bug the people who are mocking you right now and ask them for explanations.
But if this doesn’t happen… well, I’m going to come back to this.
Cool?Report
I thought Biden looked better than the first debate personally but his age remains one of the things about him that I most keenly regret. If lightning strikes twice and Trump somehow pulls it out with the voters (legitimately) then I’d assume Biden’s age will be the factor. I don’t think that is likely at all but it wouldn’t flabbergast me.Report
As an aside, the CNN data listed in the poll also had Mondale crushing Reagan by 19 and Dukakis crushing Bush by 9.Report
I didn’t see the debate. But here’s my assessment of how presidential debates usually go when one candidate is an incumbent:
1st debate: the challenger wins decisively.
2nd debate: the incumbent wins, but the challenger was strong overall.
3rd debate: the incumbent wins decisively.
That seemed to be the pattern in 2012 and 2004. There’s a lot to mutatis while we’re mutandis’ing–especially b/c there are only two debates this time and things are very different today–but it wouldn’t surprise me if Mr. Trump did better than Biden.Report
So since Trump cancelled debate #2 where do you think the second debate falls?Report
Savannah Guthrie tried to dominate the second debate, but failed, while Joe was off chatting with a self-licking ice cream cone.Report
Heheh, you and your imagination George. I’m glad the righties did so much bar lowering for Joe. His relatively meh performance would have landed worse if the right wingers hadn’t pushed this senility line so self destructively.Report
I suspect he did a little better and in that way “won,” as much as he was capable of “winning.” Winning in this sense would mean, energize some supporters to make the effort to vote who might otherwise have stayed home. Perhaps also winning means making Trump opponents a little too complacent and maybe staying home. Would that type of “winning” be enough to ensure an electoral victory? I hope not.
I lied when I say I didn’t watch the 2nd debate. We tuned in and watched it for about a minute before turning it off. (Neither my spouse or I can tolerate listening too much to Mr. Trump.) That said, for the one minute or so I saw, Trump’s subdued manner seemed to make him seem to me less unqualified than he seemed during the one minute I saw of the first debate.Report
I mean, yes, compared to his performance in the first debate Trump was Cicero in comparison.Report