Don’t care; didn’t ask.
Idk man, I kinda think it’s exactly the problem. I don’t understand spending a large portion of your life thinking about politics and concluding that the way to go is to not engage the opposition, not try to persuade people, not steadfastly argue for your position in any venue that you can.
It’s like people think that doing politics means dunking from the comfort of your own bubble in order to farm likes. No one says that convincing others is easy especially in this climate, but it’s literally the only way that any of this works.
This sounds correct but the language “any venue” is transparently wrong in the real world. The premise that any conversation is productive doesn’t just risk you wasting a lot of time arguing with people that have absolutely no intention of engaging in good faith, but this instinct to cooperativeness is easily weaponized by bad actors to not just waste your time, but to mislead.
I’ll say it again - if you’re spending time thinking about politics in 2023 and you don’t understand the way that misinformation goblins weaponize your good instincts to accumulate followers and make the world a worse place, then I just don’t know what to tell you. This is as fundamental a political concept as any other right now.
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I’m sorry, but persuadable Rogan listeners are like persuadable Ohio diner patrons. Maybe a science person could win one or two of them by over shouting a bunch of homophobic slurs at Rogan, it’s still not a valuable use of any serious adult’s time.
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Ok but the actual real world 2023 result of your thought process is that conservatives/misinformation agents are delivering their message to millions of people on Rogan while leftists/socialists are proselytizing to the 5000 subscribers of The Nation. This is not a successful approach.
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One theory is that US elections are more about maximizing turnout on your side rather than appealing to swing voters, so your effort is most efficiently doesn’t trying to convince people on your side to vote rather than not vote vs trying to sway undecided voters.
Yea good thing the left doesn’t spend the other half of their time viciously antagonizing people on their own side 
This is correct but if you’re going to fight the trends that doesn’t mean you just send random representatives of truth into the arena with people like Joe Rogan how have been honing their bullshit skills for years and years and watch them get obliterated and feed the beast. A whole separate ecosystem of online discourse about the truth is probably needed. That’s a lot of work! But if you are losing a war because they other side has tanks and you have slingshots, you don’t send your guys out one after enough to shoot pebbles at their tank and get murdered. You need to build some fucking tanks.
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Or you can just not get obliterated? This guy has been on MSNBC a million times and written multiple books on the topic. I’m sorry but if you are scared you can’t hold your own in a 1 on 1 debate even with a somewhat adversarial moderator, maybe some self-reflection is in order.
One Dem problem is that it is a center-left coalition and appealing to one part of its coalition may cause the other side to stay home. By default, the side that wins more elections is going to seem antagonistic to the other side, just by merely existing. There’s no unifying narrative for centrists and liberals and leftists. The default is going to be some sort of establishment liberalism that is going to be very dissatisfying for those on the left with strong anti-establishmentarian feelings.
The facts don’t determine who wins a public debate.
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Well I’m not just talking about the facts but about how good you are at delivering your message
I agree that it’s a good idea for a properly prepared and skilled arguer/debater/etc. to go in and kick the shit out of a conservative debater for all to see. I may be wrong about this guy’s chances, but I think that you need a particular skill set. You need to be able and willing to call him stupid and make fun of him for being too dumb to understand real science and laugh at him for being a moron, etc. etc. etc. AND on top of that you need to make sure he won’t just turn off your mic and then lie if you are ahead. Rogan is not a trustworthy debater so I’m highly skeptical.
Anyway, I concede absolutely that there is a time and a place for getting the right people in the right “debates” with right wing misinformation goblins. But it is SUPER tricky and most people that are skilled at their technocratic jobs are not skilled at navigating the pitfalls. But if this guy is, or if anyone is, I’m behind them 100%.
This matters a lot, of course. The point it that it should not matter at all, particularly in cases such as the one being discussed here.
In the debate between Messrs. Bullshit Conspiracy Lunatic, Esquire and Factual Scientific Viewpoint, M.D., the first guy should not have a shot of winning the contest solely because the second guy “isn’t all that good at delivering his message.” Especially when the debate topic is “Vaccines - Should These Be A Thing?”
Some of this is part of it, having the right amount of confidence and personality. Donald Trump and Andrew Tate recently went on CNN and BBC and absolutely mauled the “hostile” moderators that were put in front of them. I think people on the left need to sharpen those skills that we’ve abandoned.
Right - this is where I think we’re really mostly agreeing while seeming to disagree, just because the edge cases aren’t representative. “Antivaxxer on Joe Fucking Rogan” is almost the most extreme case of Bad Faith Conservative Misinformation Troll, so of course conclusions aren’t generalizable.
The left needs to stop platforming sexual predators, actually.
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But then they’ll accuse of being partisan! Oh no!
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Right, Republicans never say “How can we reach out to the vast majority of pro-vaccine voters out there?”, they just triple down on Trumpism. It’s the center-left that has this weird fixation on winning over vanishingly small sets of swing voters.
If you’re a basic government functionary, a better use of your time is to just go on NPR and reinforce how important vaccination is in a boring, adult way. Those are the actual persuadable listeners!