This article is part of TPM Cafe, TPM’s home for opinion and news analysis.
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1335478
This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://talkingpointsmemo.com/?p=1335478
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I can’t speak for anyone else, but, personally, I woke up grateful, optimistic, and thankful to have a candidate that finally told that racist jackass to shut the fuck up.
Last night, he wasn’t trying to win me over — not trying to capture college-educated voters or people of color. He has surrendered those voting blocs a long time ago. Trump is now just trying to depress them by smearing the walls with his own fetid lies and using false equivalency to link Biden’s occasional misstep with Trump’s consistently horrible governance.
Yes, this. Perfectly said.
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Yep. It’ll be nearly, or more, than a quarter-million by Election Day.
We should all be stressing it that way. I suspect that pointing out that it’s a quarter-million deaths characterizes the scale of the tragedy more accurately and specifically for most people, than talking about it in terms of how many hundreds of thousands.
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Holy crap - people did not like HRC. The rationalizations are so old by now. Trump wasn’t the only one trying to depress the Dem votes. A Democratic machine that forced a highly polarizing and not well liked candidate did an awesome job of depressing leftist votes.
This isn’t an indictment on her politics or a statement about whether life is fair is not. It’s just a simple reminder that HRCs unfavorables were extremely high and the left still tried to ram her through into the White House.
I don’t believe that we should underestimate Trump. But there is also this almost instinctual defeatism by the left when we have to fight fire with fire and when the hand to hand combat starts.
The headlines today were “Shut up man” “Trump won’t denounce white suprematist” and “Trump turns the debate into a shit show.” Who cares if we can’t feel good about whether this debate measures up to what? Lincoln Douglas? Dole Clinton?
Trump got bloodied up last night. Biden came out fine. Quit looking for defeat in every victory just because it wasn’t pretty.
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“He managed to reduce Clinton’s turnout among Latino and Black voters, and he managed to swing Obama voters in the Midwest. All it took was 80,000 voters in a few states to change Clinton’s inevitable victory into a stunning loss.”
This was it in a nutshell.
You nailed Trump’s strategy and it (just barely) worked last time. I don’t see it working again, especially as the strategy is made known and voters are warned how to ignore it. Moreover, Biden is a strong candidate to flip back the WWC and Harris will help increase turnout in minority communities in battleground states. Biden missed an opportunity to counter Trump’s law and order jabs with something to the effect - “I chose a former AG as a running mate, it doesn’t get much more law and order than that.”
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Andy Borowitz weighs in.
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His populist mask really did slip. Not only did he sneer at Biden for attending a state school, but he sneered at the Vice President’s son. Biden shined when he defended his son and said he had had a drug problem which he had “cleaned up”, and that he was “proud of him”. He came across as a loving father. Behavior like this will not win Trump any votes with non college educated whites who are really sensitive to being sneered at. Many of them would have been glad to go to “state” schools, and many of them suffered from oxytocin addiction.
In no way did Trump do himself any favors last night.
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Exactly - Trump came off as an asshole. Biden came off as someone who knows that winning over the asshole isn’t the point - making sure everyone else sees the asshole assholing is the point. Biden isn’t a victim to Donald Trump. He’s his rival in a contest. Biden isn’t stuck in an abusive relationship with Trump. He’s willingly fighting to get the country out of an abusive relationship with Trump. And yeah, at some point that involves confronting Trump and exposing him as a liar and POS. Mission accomplished.
Biden is fine today. He’s not abused or victimized. He took on a bully and exposed him. And he just needs to keep fighting for a little while longer.
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Biden had a record night fundraising from that debate (spoiler alert: Trump didn’t). If that’s ‘depressing the vote’ that term has lost all meaning. Stop the gloomy Gus shit. This didn’t help Trump in any way with anyone that wasn’t already on his side.
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I thought I would check out this Guaranteed-to-Gloom article and I am happy that not all people fell for it.
Trump likely lost the Presidency by his performance last night and the Gloom Brigade is all over this site on just about every story, even those which are actually depicting favorable things for us.
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- [ ] You want to set Donald’s hair on fire, out there for everyone to see his hair ablaze, infer in someway that is stupid. This is one of his hot buttons
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I’m the first person on this site to call out a Democrat when they fuck up. Biden might have left a few points on the field, but he won this debate hands down and his strategy of mostly ignoring Trump and talking to the camera was far more effective than ranting and raving every time he heard something he didn’t like. If Trump understood the concept of subtlety, he might be able to do what this article is suggesting he’s doing, but he doesn’t.
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Trump didn’t have a “strategy.” He was just reacting impulsively, just as he always does. He was furious, uncontrolled and uncontrollable. This article is just another iteration of the ludicrous idea that Trump is playing 10-dimensional chess.
The interesting thing is that Trump was not sniffing during the debate. Does that mean this was un-drugged Trump? Or that he was on something different than usual?
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Well, if you follow the law of Trump projection, he got a shot in the ass this time around.
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Good point.
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I think he lost it a while back, but last night put a couple more nails in the coffin.
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Further detail: the re-election campaign is broke. They have little capacity to buy ads anymore. They have to pull stunts like last night as a substitute for regular paid campaign activity. https://www.businessinsider.com/trump-campaign-spent-1-billion-2020-election-president-politics-finance-2020-9
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This. It’s what he always does. I use “always” to mean what it says. He has never had a plan for anything.
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Are the Trump campaign funding deficiencies now measured in “Parscales?”
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Not yet, until the prosecution happens we don’t know how many zeros are in a parscale.
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