What I hope for is that at the debate Hillary pushes Trump on the tax returns. People care about taxes and they need to know if their candidates do, too.
Also, I hope she brings up the issue of how readily he has always exported jobs to China and imported Mexican workers to work for him.
And I’d like to hear something like, “Many people say that Trump University is a scam.”
What is your wish list for the debate? I’m not wishing for anything that moderators might do because I have no confidence they’ll do anything but suck.
Clarissa's Blog 
Dreidel here…
Since both candidates are going to lie throughout the 90-minute debate, my wish is that the moderator WON’T take the terrible advice being offered by liberal websites to call out any perceived lie by either candidate (in their “progressive” mindset, the websites really mean calling out Trump).
This is a debate, not an interview. If (when!) either candidate lies, it’ll be up to the other candidate to point that out. Otherwise, the debate will end up with the moderator doing most of the talking — and nobody wants that.
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“Facts are scary things!”
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It is a grievous error to suggest that Clinton and Trump are equally mendacious. Independent fact checkers have revealed that Clinton is more or less truthful while Trump lies with a frequency that’s almost astonishing. The simple fact is that there is nothing in which Trump is Clinton’s equal or superior. These are two vastly different candidates.
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“It is a grievous error to suggest that Clinton and Trump are equally mendacious. Independent fact checkers have revealed that Clinton is more or less truthful while Trump lies with a frequency that’s almost astonishing. ”
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My wishlist:
A debate moderator who won’t let himself be run over by Trump.
A mention of Trump’s enthusiastic support for the Iraq invasion, which he lies about now.
Some sort of a real-time fact check on the TV screen. A couple of networks have tried this with a lot of success. People love it. Something like ‘Trump: I never supported the Iraq war (He did).”
Do away with bullshit like real time ‘audience reactions’ charts where they do this stupid thing of hooking up people to heart rate monitors and then use that as a metric for resonance. It’s stupid and it’s useless. Instead of that, use that screen space to real-time fact checking I mentioned above. It’s much more informative to the audience. Because, let’s face it, nobody’s going to go to politifact.com the next day to find out exactly who lied and how much. Once something’s uttered on TV and there’s no instant challenge, the damage is done. TV’s a powerful medium, most people (like 90%+) still get their news from it.
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The problem is that Trump doesn’t utter anything but lies. I don’t think he’s physiologically capable of spending 3 minutes without releasing a massive whopper.
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I didn’t know about heart rate monitors. What kind of idiocy is that?
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“Otherwise, the debate will end up with the moderator doing most of the talking — and nobody wants that.”
Which is why the realtime fact checking on the screen is so much better. The moderator is not forced to interrupt the candidates, the debates run smoothly, and the audience is informed about the facts. Win win win.
Any objection to that?
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Dreridel here…
Yes, two objections:
Constant fact-checking messages on the screen would distract attention away from the two candidates who are supposed to be the center of attention. People watch the debates to see and hear the candidates and judge their behavior.
Second, both candidates are going to tell so many lies and half-truths — Trump on his support of the Iraq War, Hillary on her policy on Libya, Trump on his university, Hillary on the Clinton Foundation, Trump on his “conservative values,” Hillary on her support for freed trade and the Keystone Pipeline, etc., etc. — that if both candidates were given honest, non-partisan call-outs, the on-screen messages would be on most of the time.
Much too distracting. Just let the candidates do their job and call out each other’s falsehoods.
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Dreidel, you forgot to mention: they are both FAT!!!
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Dreidel here…
But that’s not a lie, so that wouldn’t trigger the real-time fact checker. 🙂
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I am befuddled whenever Dreidel describes Clinton as fat. Am I the only one that thinks she had an entirely average body–especially given her age??
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Dreidel here…
Multiple studies agree that about 70% of American adults are overweight (aka “fat”), so by that standard both Trump and Hillary have average American bodies.
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Dreidel: could you try leaving a comment with “dreidel” in the “name” box? I want to see if it’s back to working. When I have to moderate this manually, there is always a delay and that breaks teh flow of the conversation.
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“I am befuddled whenever Dreidel describes Clinton as fat.”
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My wish is that we don’t hear anything about the stupid emails or the benign Clinton Foundation. Is that too much to hope for?
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“My wish is that we don’t hear anything about the stupid emails or the benign Clinton Foundation.”
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aka nothing unfavorable to my candidate.. geesh. purely ridiculous. is comical tho 🙂
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Nobody minds unfavorable. We mind only what’s boring. Life is too short to waste on things that have already been discussed ad nauseam.
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‘aka nothing unfavorable to my candidate.. geesh. purely ridiculous. is comical tho”
I don’t mind unfavorable. As Clarissa says, I mind boring. I also mind irrelevant. There is nothing particularly shocking or newsworthy about either story.
I return to the point that there is nothing equal about these politicians. Trump openly appeals to the KKK/neo-Nazis, has rape allegations in his background, gleefully pronounces that “bombing the shit out of them” is foreign policy, plans to destroy the Iran agreement, wants to criminalize women for having abortions, has an economic “plan” that would plunge us in catastrophe while ensuring his rich buddies get a few more tax breaks, wants to start a trade ward with China. (I could go on and on.)
By comparison, Clinton wasn’t a careful enough steward of e-mails? Maybe she paid attention to some donors to her legitimately helpful charitable organization? Come on. Clinton’s “scandals” are so dumb and entirely fanned if not invented by a media eager to display themselves as balanced.
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I know many unfavorable things about Clinton. I’m not a wide-eyed enthusiast who has appointed her to the role of the Perfect Mommy. Once she’s inaugurated, I will be blogging about everything she does wrong, just like I did with Obama. But the stupid emails or the charity or Bill’s sex life are not going to be among the things I’ll write about because they are boring and irrelevant.
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Glad to oblige — here you go.
Actually, Clarissa, YOU’RE the one who brought up Hillary’s weight in this thread. (“Dreidel, you forgot to mention: they are both FAT!!!”) Everybody on this website feels free to take jibes at Trump’s physical appearance — and at all the Republicans during the primaries — so why isn’t Hillary fair game?
Do I have an issue with fatness? Actually, I’ve been tall and scrawny all my life, and that’s fine with me. At my age I can eat all I want, anytime I’m hungry, no dietary restrictions at all, and my belt size never changes.
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“At my age I can eat all I want, anytime I’m hungry, no dietary restrictions at all, and my belt size never changes.”
But hey, the comment got posted. Yay!
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Yes, you have no idea how traumatic it is to be able to eat like a glutton and not suffer the consequences. Obviously, undeserved thin privilege!
Somehow, my psyche survives the horror! 🙂
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Dreidel here…
Clarissa, I just posted a “Dreidel” comment four minutes ago (at 2:46 Arizona time).
This “anonymous” comment is being posted at 2:51. Let me know which one you get first. Thanks.
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Sorry, I got distracted but they are now both here.
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So did the “Dreidel” vs. “anomymous” label make any difference with my above comments, or did WordPress treat both posts the same?
IF labeling my posts “Dreidel” doesn’t slow them down compared to “anonymous,”
I can just go back to using “Dreidel” all the time — which method do you recommend, Clarissa?
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Never mind — my last post appeared instantly, so the question is answered!
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Good! It was one of those temporary glitches.
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http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/lists/people/comparing-hillary-clinton-donald-trump-truth-o-met/
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Oh thank you! Yes, it’s that one. Let’s trust the numbers, at least.
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“Trump and Clinton lie equally.”
-Shameless pieces of shit everywhere.
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Anybody notice how PolitiFact’s “Who Lies More” list runs in a direct line from the most conservative Republicans at the top to liberal Democrats at the most “progressive” Democrats at the bottom (the one exception is “J Bush”)?
That says a bit about PolitiFact’s bias, doesn’t it?
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Or it could just be that they lie a lot. Like, there’s this whole GOP industry based solely upon grifting that has no equivalent in the democratic party. Gold buybacks, reverse mortgages, ‘survival’ doomsday bunkers, lifelock, the list goes on.
The business model of your party is preying upon its own base.
‘Death panels!’
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Also funny to note that Jeb Bush is right alongside Sanders and Clinton in the rankings. No wonder he got his ass kicked in the primaries.
‘We don’t like your kind around here’. 😀
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What connection do ANY of these commercial enterprises have with either political party? (Don’t claim that their advertisements on Fox prove anything. ALL of the cable news channels run the same ads — often at the same time, as a little channel surfing will demonstrate.)
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Independent.. nice, so out of 24 people 3 of the 4 most honest are all democrats. hilarious. very independent.
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Oh, you need a safe space from reality too?
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Trump should not go out with his racist rants about Muslims and blacks like he’s doing all the time in his rallies. He should insist more and more about “crooked Hillary” , “emails” and “pay to play” to depict Clinton as much corrupt as possible.
Completely off-topic, Clarissa: do you know a short article/essay about 3rd wave feminism?
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Google “third-wave feminism,” and you’ll find a thousand articles from every viewpoint possible.
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pay for play, I should have said…
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“What connection do ANY of these commercial enterprises have with either political party?”
http://mediamatters.org/blog/2015/01/26/the-conservative-movement-is-infected-with-scam/202272
http://www.politico.com/story/2015/01/super-pac-scams-114581_full.html?print
http://thebaffler.com/salvos/the-long-con
“Mike Huckabee sold out his fans to a quack doctor, conspiracy theorists, and financial fraudsters.”
“Subscribers to CNN analyst Newt Gingrich’s email list have received supposed insider information about cancer “cures,” the Illuminati, “Obama’s ‘Secret Mistress,'” a “weird” Social Security “trick,” and Fort Knox being “empty.”
Haha, this is your party. Like I said, anyone who believes Trump and Clinton lie equally is too chickenshit to face reality or just a shameless piece of shit.
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Well, I can’t rebut a reasoned, mature statement like that, so I guess you win! 🙂
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Yeah, you were clearly holding your own when we posted data. It’s just the ‘shit’ word that threw you off.
lol @ U 😀
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I kind of want Trump to utterly lose his shit and make himself look like an idiot. But who knows what would happen then? There’s a certain American demographic that loves that crap. It could be Jerry Springer all over again.
I really hope that Hillary gets some zingers in on Trump about his lies and stupidity.
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Of course, being a foaming-at-the-mouth loon, Jerry Springer was the elected Democratic mayor of a major city.
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If you’ve ever watched Jerry Springer, you’d know that it was his guests, not him, who were foaming at the mouth. Or more likely drooling with their below 60-something IQ levels
I also don’t think that every Democrat is a perfect picture of ethos and stoicism, but I do think that Clinton is more suitable for the presidency. I hope she shines in the debates.
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It’s now been proven that many of Springer’s “guests” were hired actors playing a role.
In any case, most of the vocal clowns in Hollywood are Democrats. The political minority are referred to as “intelligent.”
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“This Politifacts ranking of liars is baloney! The media is so biased against us.”
“By the way, can you please not fact-check my candidate during the debates?”
So funny that only republicans are shitting their pants at the very idea of fact-checking. Why? It’s a mystery!
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Clinton should do the fact-checking during the debate and the media should do it after the debate.
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All this talk about lies and facts is all very good and nice, but mostly irrelevant.
The bulk of the evidence is that presidential elections are mostly a barometer of the nation’s collective mood. Do they want more of what they’ve had for the last four or eight years or is it time to change the guard? Of course this is not always clear cut and there is often a lot of ambivalence on both sides as in 2000.
Overall Clinton is gambling that the former option is true, that the public would be happy with another four years of Obama-ish policies (and maybe some neocon military interventions thrown in – when has that never worked out well?)
But if that were the case, then she wouldn’t have had a serious challenger in the primaries, especially one who was criticizing Obama from the left. As I keep saying the emerging number one issue in the US (as in Europe) is global vs local (Sanders was such a threat to Clinton because he’s firmly a localist).
All that said…. Clinton’s best chance is to make Trump seem…. non-presidential.
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I think it’s worse than that. People simply want to be entertained and will support the candidate who is the most fun.
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