By DEXTER DUGGAN
PHOENIX — While there’ll be a different format for the next presidential debate on October 15 in Miami, using townhall-style questions, the first faceoff on September 29 in Cleveland drew attention for getting out of hand.
Still, there was a substantial amount of information conveyed amid the verbal assaults and crosstalk. I filled more than 15 pages of a steno notepad during the 95-minute tussle that I watched during a viewing party after I received a media invitation to attend at Republican headquarters here.
Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden showed he could be on his feet for more than 90 minutes without resurrecting some of his numerous serious errors including that, for instance, he’s running for the Senate, or his son was U.S. attorney general, or telling voters to their face that they’re full of excrement. Did doctors give him some, um, extra vitamins?
Had most viewers already made their decision and watched the first debate just out of curiosity?
Intriguingly, Telemundo said two-thirds of its Spanish-speaking viewers thought Trump won, while only one-third thought Biden won.
How come? New York Post conservative columnist Miranda Devine posted her explanation on September 30: “After all, if you’ve lived through a socialist dictatorship or MS-13 tyranny, you appreciate a tough leader to protect you.”
The Forbes site said CNN said its margin was “‘about the same’ as the results breakdown in 2016, when 62 percent of voters said Hillary Clinton won the debate, while 27 percent said Trump did.” Clinton, of course, went on to lose the Electoral College significantly.
However, the CNN site showed the Biden-Trump results for debate-watchers were weighted to Democrats, with 39 percent of respondents identifying with that party, only 25 percent with Republicans, and 36 percent as independents or non-partisans, less than the 40 percent they’re regarded as representing in the general population.
If Trump supporters on September 29 looked for a blustery brawler who stands up for them, they got that. If some Biden backers were hoping for a “moderate,” he may have fooled them in that direction while signaling his base to keep quiet for now — at least for as long as it takes to sucker voters.
Still, Biden must have left his core partisans fuming when he carefully avoided echoing their fundamental calls for packing the Supreme Court, embracing the Green New Deal, attacking Supreme Court Catholic nominee Amy Coney Barrett, or mandating completely government-run health care.
The conservative Daily Caller site noted that after a Biden campaign official moaned that the day hadn’t yet arrived when orthodox religious people can be kept off the Supreme Court, the Biden campaign put her under wraps.
The Daily Caller posted an article September 29 saying, “Biden campaign Deputy Data Director Nikitha Rai criticized Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett’s religious views in a Twitter conversation…with Brookings Institute Senior Fellow Shadi Hamid.”
When Hamid told her that such views also are common with other religious people, Rai said, “True. I’d heavily prefer views like that not be elevated to Scotus, but unfortunately our current culture is relatively intolerant. It will be awhile before those types of beliefs are so taboo that they’re disqualifiers.”
Pro-abortion Biden claims to be a “devout Catholic.” His campaign quickly shielded Rai from inquiries about her remarks, the Daily Caller said.
Coincidentally, Catholic News Agency posted on September 29 that in a recent interview, canon-law specialist Raymond Leo Cardinal Burke said abortion-supporting Catholic politicians including Biden should not receive the Eucharist.
CNA said Burke said he wasn’t making a statement about recommending any candidate for office, but spoke “simply to state that a Catholic may not support abortion in any shape or form because it is one of the most grievous sins against human life, and has always been considered to be intrinsically evil and therefore to in any way support the act is a mortal sin.”
Biden makes a show of his supposed piety. However, the CNA article said Burke said Biden “has not only been actively supporting procured abortion in our country but has announced publicly in his campaign that he intends to make the practice of procured abortion available to everyone in the widest possible form and to repeal the restrictions on this practice which have been put in place.”
On a different topic: Just after the presidential debate, many major-media outlets again undercut their credibility by bannering that Trump did not accept moderator Chris Wallace’s invitation to criticize white supremacists — even though Trump did so.
Contrarian columnist Jason Whitlock thought it remarkable that while Wallace failed to demand that Biden denounce left-wing, anti-Trump extremists like Black Lives Matter and Antifa that spent the summer wreaking havoc across the nation, the moderator asked if Trump “tonight” would “condemn white supremacists and militia groups” who are responsible for only a tiny fraction of the unrest.
In part, the president replied, “Sure, I’m prepared to do it, but I would say almost everything I see is from the left wing, not from the right wing. I’m willing to do anything, I want to see peace.”
The Washington Examiner posted on September 30, “Wallace pressed Trump forcefully to condemn white supremacists a total of six times…but did not once ask former Vice President Joe Biden to condemn violence from Antifa or Black Lives Matter. BLM was mentioned only once, when Wallace asked Biden if he supports the group, which Biden acknowledged that he does.”
One reaction among conservatives to the debate was that Trump should have let Biden keep talking and expose himself more instead of jumping in to interrupt.
Conservative critics often noted that Fox News’ moderator Wallace seemed more on Biden’s side and intervened to help the Democrat nominee.
New York Post columnist Michael Goodwin, frequently a supporter of Trump, posted on September 30: “Frankly, I was surprised at Trump’s approach. It was an example of all tactics and no strategy. He interrupted even when Biden was stumbling, which had the effect of letting Biden off the hook and out of the rhetorical weeds.”
Noah Rothman, associate editor of Commentary magazine and a Trump critic, began his observations by noting Biden’s mendacity, the first of which was Joe’s patently false claim that “the Obama economy was ‘booming’ in 2016, but it was not.”
This wasn’t a Biden lie that required deep research to expose. It openly contradicted people’s real-life experience. “We gave him a booming economy. He blew it,” Biden boasted, as if he thought his audience was idiots. Later, again, Biden apparently thought he could get away with the blatant lie that the terrorist group Antifa “is an idea, it’s not an organization.”
And when Trump accurately pointed out Biden is on a video plainly calling military members “stupid bastards,” the Democrat dared to say, ignoring the direct evidence, “I did not say that.”
The Wall Street Journal posted on September 29: “No one expected a Lincoln-Douglas debate, but did it have to be a World Wrestling Entertainment bout? Which may be unfair to the wrestlers, who are more presidential than either Donald Trump or Joe Biden sounded in their first debate. . . .
“The event was a spectacle of insults, interruptions, endless crosstalk, exaggerations and flat-out lies even by the lying standards of current U.S. politics,” the Journal editorial added.
Declining to identify a source because of a request for anonymity, the Associated Press reported on September 30 that one format change being discussed for October 15 was giving “the moderator the ability to cut off the microphone of one of the debate participants while his opponent is talking.”
Borderline Unwatchable
The Wanderer asked four of its sources what they’d like to see different at the next two presidential debates, and whether they thought Wallace could have done a better job at getting control.
National conservative commentator Quin Hillyer said: “There is nothing a moderator can do on his own to keep better control of a debate in which at least one of the contestants is a flagrantly rude rule-breaker. The entire debate was a fiasco — from Biden, because he dodged so many questions and lied in answering others, and from Trump, because he acted like a fifth-grade delinquent on amphetamines.
“The solution is to allow no free-form give-and-take, and to let the microphone be on only for the candidate whose turn it is to speak,” Hillyer said.
Victor Joecks, an opinion columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, said: “It was borderline unwatchable. President Donald Trump made a strategic mistake in not letting Joe Biden talk more. Biden’s whole campaign is based on not telling the American public what his positions are. Trump should have pushed Biden to detail his positions and then stopped talking unless it was to point out that Biden didn’t answer the question.
“Wallace should have done less interrupting. In a free-flowing format, he wasn’t supposed to be the third debater,” Joecks added. “I think a more traditional format where the candidates have clearly defined blocks of time to answer and respond might produce a more watchable debate.”
Conservative Republican political consultant Constantin Querard said: “Hard to pin the candidate behavior on the moderator at any of these debates. Eight or 12 years ago you could have, because the candidates already were behaving better and wouldn’t want to be seen as out of control, but neither Trump nor Biden wanted to be stopped for long stretches of the debate and there really isn’t anything a moderator can do.
“Wallace did get control for much of the middle portions by reminding them that they agreed to allow two-minute answers,” Querard said.
“The winner of the debate was likely the liquor industry, because I don’t imagine too many people got through 90 minutes of that without the application of at least medicinal quantities of liquid courage,” he said. ”The loser was undecided voters, who would have had to be paying very close attention to hear Biden proclaim that the Green New Deal would pay for itself, shortly before saying that he didn’t support the Green New Deal.
“Or to hear the greatest moment of differentiation where Trump spoke of NYC (and really all of America) and said they want to reopen and save their businesses, and Biden disagreed and said they wanted safety instead,” he said. “But how many undecided voters stuck around long enough and were able to hear those points made through the non-stop sound of both candidates speaking over each other?
“Voters want to watch a debate and walk away with an informed sense of ‘Candidate X is my next president,’ and that’s not possible if neither looks, sounds, or acts presidential,” Querard said. “If you’re undecided at this point in the race, you’re not an ideologue, you’re feeling your way to your decision more than you are thinking your way to it.
“So I hope President Trump looks, sounds, and acts like the president at the next debate, because he has the record to run on if he does so,” he said. “I’d also like Trump to allow Biden to stumble, instead of bailing him out by talking over him. The longer Biden speaks without stopping to rest, the worse he does. So it is likely in Trump’s best interest to let Biden go on and on.”
Utter Chaos
Virginian Mary Ann Kreitzer, who runs Les Femmes – The Truth blog, told The Wanderer: “Where to begin? It was utter chaos and I don’t think either candidate came out looking very good. Biden dodged many questions, like whether he would pack the Supreme Court. He mugged to the camera. Trump has a strong record, but he didn’t present it very well.
“Chris Wallace was awful, especially on race relations. He asked Trump loaded no-win questions. Didn’t do that to Biden. No surprise really; Wallace has been a Democrat for two decades. . . . He kept correcting Trump like a schoolboy, but pretty much ignored Biden’s interruptions and name-calling and gave Biden extra time,” Kreitzer said.
“The biggest loser in the debate was Chris Wallace. I used to consider him a professional; the debate dispelled that notion big-time,” she said.
“In the next debate I hope President Trump will stay on-message. I’d like to see less name-calling and ad-hominem attacks. Biden was the worst offender there, calling Trump ‘a clown,’ ‘Putin’s puppy,’ and ‘the worst president in history,’ and saying, ‘Shut up, man’ and making snide asides,” Kreitzer said. “Biden’s mugging and laughing (with Chris Wallace joining in) was nauseating.
“I did wonder if the makeup manipulators were at work like in the Nixon-Kennedy debates as well,” she said. “Biden looked cool (well-powdered). Trump looked sweaty and flushed.”
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