It's been a decade of no-shows, rules lawyering, and bad faith on the debate stage for the GOP. To the point where they forgot how to actually do the damn thing.
That's because the GOP ironically understood the science behind debates; the human response to debates is incredibly illogical. Harvard did a study and they found that debates does not have any significant effect on any group in terms of who they vote for.Â
You aren't going to change people's vote through a debate, they'll think their guy won.
So what use is it? Jazzing up your own base. You go up there with a big performance and try to convince your base that the other guy is the big bad wolf. You're not trying to convert votes You're trying to get 100% voter turnout from your own base. And for that who wins and loses doesnt matter, they'll think you won regardlessÂ
ETA people are bringing up Biden and I don't feel like responding individually. 2 things. 1. They are talking about under normal circumstances debates don't flip votes. Obviously you could imagine an extreme circumstance that would for example if your rode in nude on a donkey and flipped the audience the bird that would probably do it.Â
Biden's debate changed things because it made him seem off (or however you would like to term it). It had nothing to do with the debate itself the same effect would have been had if his own ad made him seem impaired or an interview etc. So I'm not really sure it's fair to say the debate convinced people of that, it was a whole separate thing.Â
Trump proved that by acting like a complete moron in the debates with Hillary and still won I was actually embarrassed for some of my friends as we watched. I thought he would go down in flames after that.
I watched that final debate against Clinton with a bunch of Hillary supporters. They all thought she had won. That is because they defined win incorrectly. I saw that Trump did exactly what he needed to do to win the debate - appear strong and reassure his base he would appoint conservative Supreme Court justices. I came away worried. The other Clinton supporters came away laughing at Trump. If you defined winning as giving more intellectual smart answers you of course thought Clinton won.
This is one of those things I just don't get, like when people say trumps time on the apprentice convinced people he was a good business man. I watched that show... I just didn't understand how anyone watching him could come away with the impression he's a competent person.
That's what woke me to it. She was the clear winner to anyone who listened. But his supporters weren't listening to it. At least not the words. Maybe the tone. They saw his physical dominance, the way he kept interrupting her, was allowed to to do so and how she gave him her time as victory.
While we saw it as, "Don't interrupt your enemy when he's making a mistake," as he blundered around unable to make a coherent point beyond promising to make unspecified things better in an unspecified way by unspecified means, they saw taking and holding the floor, boldly flouting rules, convention and basic manners as a show of strength they want to see in a leader.
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u/Chillow_Ufgreat 1d ago
It's been a decade of no-shows, rules lawyering, and bad faith on the debate stage for the GOP. To the point where they forgot how to actually do the damn thing.