Biden started off pretty well in that he wasn't making obvious gaffes, didn't forget where he was, and seemed to be on his game. He looked old, however, and I noticed towards the last 30 minutes or so, he seemed to be getting tired. He began stuttering more than usual. Trump definitely appeared to have more energy.
I think it was a good thing that Trump did not interrupt, and the muted microphone idea was not really a problem.
Any criticism I might have of the moderator, Kristin Welker, would be nit-picking. She was better than I expected. The Hunter Biden issue deserved more attention, however. Had it been one of Trump's sons, you can bet that the moderator would have included it in the questioning and had follow-ups. It was up to Trump to raise the issue. He did, and Biden failed to effectively rebut it. Biden's bringing up the character issue boomeranged on him. He also hurt himself with his answers on fracking and oil.
The question format was such that Trump would have to look for a chance to bring up the Hunter Biden scandal. The references to character did just that, and Trump scored several points. Welker, to her credit, then asked Biden to address the issue-although she did not ask follow-ups. Biden's basic response was that he never took any money from any foreign sources. There was no defense offered as to his son's reported laptop or the emails contained therein.
After the debate, I watched the reactions on NBC, ABC, and the Hannity show on Fox. Naturally, Fox declared Trump the winner while NBC and ABC declared Biden the winner. However, I did note that on NBC, both Chuck Todd and Andrea Mitchell were very disingenuous about the Hunter Biden issue. Their line was that unless you were following the story on Fox, most viewers were probably wondering what the references to Hunter Biden were all about. What that points out to me is that their own viewers obviously were in the dark about it because they were not reporting it! Hopefully, he stirred his followers to think about the subject and research it. Over on ABC, George Stephanopoulos, in referring to the story, used the words, "unverified", "misleading" and "false".
Do I think Trump won the debate? Yes, but like everybody else, I am biased. I wanted him to win just as the media wanted Biden to win.
I think that conversations about who "won" a debate is silly in the first place. It's not like there's some objective scoring system.
ReplyDeleteThe only way to objectively decide this sort of a thing is if we could see how many people were swayed from one side to the other, or from undecided to another side. Whoever wins the most converts is therefore the winner.
Otherwise, people are just deciding before it even starts who won, and their guy could throw up and pass out, and they'd say that he started with an attention getter and made a dramatic exit.
Debates are more performance art than anything. Somebody could be a fantastic debater and tell nothing but lies, and somebody could stink at debating and speak nothing but truth.
We put too much importance on these shows.
Agreed. The worst part is seeing how the media spins it. They are as bad as the political hacks.
ReplyDelete