Lol, the West Wing was total fiction. Real people don’t speak like that in real life. Those were all scripted lines. I’ve seen some highly skilled trial attorneys in my time and they’re still not even close to West Wing level.
6 Likes
Cliffs:
Lol, nobody watched, nobody cares, this debate changes nothing, and Biden is +10 with 11 days left:
7 Likes
Undecideds in ~half the state are, at least. Although some of Northeast PA might be Giants country, the same applies as that’s who my Eagles played. Western half of the state is Steelers country, my guess is the Northwest corner is Bills but I don’t know.
Your standards are wildly unreachable. The people on the West Wing are speaking contemporaneously like they have an entire writers room full of people selected for their wittiness (and extremely well compensated for being witty… to the point where you can’t go to school to join an occupation that pays half as well with any consistency) brain storming witty lines for them agonizing for hours about the best and smartest way to say stuff.
I spend a good chunk of my waking hours obsessively repeating and refining pieces of sales pitches because I’m in sales (and good at it by the way) and I’m not 5% as witty as the characters on the West Wing.
You’re living in a fantasy world, which is probably not a good way to avoid being disappointed.
Biden did really well. He got his lines in which mostly landed really well. In particular the middle class stuff, the kids being separated stuff, and COVID in general he just wrecked Trump on.
I wish he hadn’t said anything about oil, but he wasn’t even lying about it. If anything he was being insanely generous in the estimated timeline for getting off fossil fuels.
3 Likes
CNN coverage post debate was good. Tapper said Trump lied the whole time and the Hunter Biden kids stuff is the lowest/worst smears ever to be done.
2 Likes
Yeah I mean the bar was super low for both, although I don’t think it’s fair to call Biden a dotard. A lot of it is his speech impediment or his general public speaking skill. It’s never been elite.
It’s frustrating cause there are probably 30+ regs here who could leave Trump convulsing on the stage in an orange puddle of makeup and spray tan from trying to defend himself against our barrage of attacks. There were a few people in the primary who could have done that… But we got Joe instead.
On the other hand, we’re playing ball in Texas, Georgia, etc…
Yeah, the amount of good public speakers is just a very small number. Its a really tough skill.
1 Like
Yeah, you said it better than I did. People just don’t talk like that. No amount of genius allows you to always respond in the most optimal way off the cuff to everything. Obama is almost certainly genius level and one of the best public speakers of our time and he still lost a debate to Romney.
1 Like
Sure but if you offered any one of us regs the chance to parachute in, debate Joe, and govern however we wanted to if we beat him, we’d all wreck him… Even trying to defend Trump’s positions. Luckily Trump is a babbling buffoon.
Yeah I’m sure a lot of us could wreck Trump rhetorically. I’m pretty sure none of us could be ahead by double digits with 65+ voters. Biden is a very strong politician from a different time, which means he was selected on different shit than what we want. Fortunately the Boomers seem to really like him. Probably because he’s a politician molded to appeal to them.
Oops I misread your post. I actually disagree. I don’t think wrecking Joe would be that easy. If anything Joe would do better vs us than Trump. Trump is a maniac who is capable of doing god knows what on any street. He’s very hard to play against. Playing against a reg with a terrible hand (and Trumps hand, because of Trumps behavior in office, is very very bad) is easier than playing against a complete maniac. You don’t have to play the hand as well because the maniac is turbo spewing all over the place, but it’s definitely a harder task.
1 Like
I don’t doubt this is true. However, I also know that those attacks would turn off voters and would not be a good thing in a general election. People like Biden because he’s not a dick and comes off as an Everyman.
1 Like
I am a firm believer that style isn’t everything and substance matters more. Turning once again to jury trials as an example, I’ve seen shitty attorneys get demolished by better ones only to have the verdict be returned within minutes in their favor.
I agree in general but there were a few spots he did a great job getting Trump to say some awful shit, the equivalent of having him dazed on his feet, and he didn’t deliver the knockout punch.
Middle class families and immigration were two key areas.
It’s basically what Trump did to him on oil that he didn’t do to Trump on those.
“Wow, he just admitted he doesn’t care about middle class families. I mean we knew it, right? But he actually just admitted it. We can do so much better than this, America.”
“Good? Did he just say “good” about kids being separated from families? I don’t care what you think about immigration overall, we are so much better than this. Separating families is not good.”
7 Likes
I actually disagree with this. I think letting Trump get the last word, and having that word be disastrously bad, is clearly better. People remember how things start and how they end. Having the debate segment end with an absolutely disastrous statement that not even a moron needs help understanding is about as good as it gets.
I think a lot of us have a tendency to always want the last word when we’re arguing and it’s a pretty big leak. Once you’ve gotten the other person to, themselves, make your point… it’s time to shut up and let the aftertaste really simmer.
I mean if you want to get a laugh out of it the best way to respond to both of those moments is to say “I’m Joe Biden and I approve that message” or something to that effect. Something to accentuate it even further basically. Something that helps it go viral.
2 Likes
Yeah I mean strategically Trump spewed hard on everything about the pandemic, we’d do better. We would have to lie our asses off but Joe has some vulnerabilities, Trump even hit at them instinctively - just in asinine ways.
Yeah but Trump already did that. We could look downright civil while doing sinister shit like attacking his stutter by interjecting a word here or there without shouting over him - even agreeing with him could disrupt his speech. We would hit him on the crime bill more effectively, on Iraq more effectively (and tie it in to offer stuff), and on corruption more effectively (even though it’s bullshit).
It could be as simple as looking over astonished and saying “Wow.”
1 Like
or Alright then… just a shocked expression looking straight into the camera and slowly saying ‘Wow.’
Honestly though those moments don’t need help going viral. Trump god bless him is a natural showman and is very easy to make viral content out of.
1 Like
Man, after so much panicking ITT last night:
https://mobile.twitter.com/NateSilver538/status/1319700483406204933
4 Likes
Obviously it’s fiction. I said exactly that. People don’t talk like that. But they don’t have to talk like that to be equally effective. And if you’re doing a televised debate talking like that is suboptimal.
But just take the scripted stuff. Plenty of Trump and Biden’s stuff is scripted. You could easily hire some writers to come up with some canned responses and opening statements to topics that are going to come up, more or less memorize them, practice the delivery until you have it down and come up with a much better product than what you saw. And these debate topics/questions are so predictable, someone well prepared could have at least 50% of content almost completely scripted without a problem.
They obviously have the resources to do it. But the problem is that neither of them can actually retain and regurgitate that planned material convincingly. They just don’t have the brain power or ability to do it.
Also if you don’t think a highly skilled trial attorney could mop the floor with either of these guys with essentially unlimited resources to prepare at their disposal, then you haven’t seen any highly skilled trial attorneys.