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One thing is for sure: the American people lost tonight because this debate was terrible.
CNN host Jake Tapper said in his assessment and probably described the situation accurately. So far, the campaign has not focused on high-quality political debates, but on populist messages, personalization, and regular insults to each other, and that was no different at sunrise today. The first presidential debate continued in the spirit of the negative campaign and was completely different from previous campaigns in terms of mood and structure. The candidates did not adhere at all to the established rules, fluttered in the debate, reacted angrily to the suggestions of others, with insults.
There were almost no political problems when one party tried to talk about it, the other diverted the debate towards personalization.
The above was typical of Trump, but Biden was also often angry, and he too cut a selection of insults at Trump’s head – words that were unthinkable in the previous presidential debate. Discussion was extremely low on all quick comments, but it must be added that this is not surprising given the earlier stage of the campaign. The Portfolio reported live on the debate, detailed developments can be found in our article below:
According to a quick CNN poll, 60% of debate viewers saw Bident and 28% Trump as winners, but it must be added that 39% of those surveyed in the CNN poll were Democrats and only 25% Republicans. . According to a CBS poll, Biden won by 48% and Trumpra only 41% said they won the debate. Most of the participants in the CBS poll said they were generally disappointed with the parties, and many said the discussion was simply annoying. Readers of nj.com, on the other hand, said Trump was better: 51% thought so, 49% thought Bident was better.
Clearly Trump dominated, but that didn’t necessarily turn into an advantage
Looking at the characteristics of the two politicians, analysts expected US President Donald Trump to dominate the debate over Biden, who had little debating skills. mez Clearly this was the case, Donald Trump was much more powerful and active in the debate, but contrary to expectations, it did not necessarily turn in his favor.
Trump did not use his good debating skills to convince voters of his aptitude, nor did he use his doubts about the suitability of Joe Biden; most of his speeches were unnecessary insults, while he did not send a clear message.
From the first minute on, the president relied on his interjections (often loudly) to destabilize and upset Bident, who performed poorly in pre-election debates, and this was a visibly successful strategy in the first third of the election. debate. Trump, for example, made comments even before Biden began speaking, after a question from the moderator asking the Democratic candidate to state his position, for example, he immediately addressed Biden:
Good luck with that!
In the first half of the debate, Trump also launched some of the accusations we often hear from him during the campaign, such as that Democrats are increasingly shifting to the left and He also tried to use the adjective “socialist” on Biden, all in the form of screaming.. However, Trump was a bit more restrained in the debate than in the campaign so far, for example, at the beginning of the event he called his opponent Joe friendly and thanked him for his participation, and he was never called “Sleepy Joe”, a Democratic candidate. . my tone turned to nothing after about a minute). VIt was predictable that Trump would be more restrained than in previous campaign events, but surprisingly he ignored the questioning of Biden’s brainpower, a common element before him. This only happened when Biden started to impersonate as well, Trump then angrily replied:
He even forgot the name of his own constituency. Don’t tell me who is smart because that can’t be said about you at all.
The president also repeatedly attacked Bident’s son, Hunter Biden, for his business in China and Ukraine after Biden made the mistake of mentioning his son for the first time in the debate. Trump, on the other hand, spoke surprisingly little about China, although he clearly could have dominated the debate in this field.
Regarding his policy statements, it is not very possible to evaluate the president because he has made few policy statements. As for his economic policy, his claim was exhausted in the sense that he did more than any previous president and was in excellent shape before the crisis., and transferred responsibility for the coronavirus to China (calling the epidemic a plague of China).
Overall, although Trump dominated the debate, he cannot be called a winner. Your regular voters certainly like your militant rhetoric, but your personal comments, your general demeanor in debate (when, for example, you did not allow the moderator to ask questions, or responded defiantly, thoughtlessly, and irritably to a posed question) can make make agitated voters feel insecure. We thought about this mainly because Trump’s statements were tangled, contradictory and it is difficult to determine his position in one area after another; this was not the case in 2016.
Trump’s specific comments were without content, his dominance seemed sterile, he didn’t hit the high balls, his claims were lost in thin air.
However, it still had clearly successful moments in the debate, but it also required the mistakes of Joe Biden. The Democratic opponent, for example, failed to keep Trump’s fiscal issues on the debate agenda, with virtually no unpleasant questions for Trump about it. Trump’s targeted attempts at insecurity have also paid off on several occasions: on one occasion, for example, when he asked Bident to name a law enforcement agency to back him up, Biden listened quietly. The argument that repeatedly answered Biden’s questions also seemed effective: He claims that Biden has been in national politics for more than 40 years, so he has no right to hold Trump accountable for 4 years. Biden was unable to respond effectively to this repeated statement.
Biden still performed surprisingly well
Former Vice President Obama has performed poorly in the pre-election debates, and unpleasant comments are very common in him, and he is not infrequently confused with his own statement. So it was in the deck that he could not take effective action against Trump in today’s debate. In comparison, Biden was a positive surprise and his campaign team apparently prepared him well for debate. This is not to say that the Democratic candidate was dominant, but we could not see in him his previous mistakes, he was determined compared to himself a few months ago and had a response to most of Trump’s insults. To be precise, it can be said that it is surprising, but Biden did not perform that badly, because the performance of the former vice president cannot be described as good either.
Certainly, his campaign staff advised Biden to take a moderate stance against Trump and try to focus on political messages, contrary to the president’s style. Biden consciously tried to emphasize Trump’s insufficiencyThat was the president’s strategy, laughing out loud at his main statements and insults or shaking his head with a smile.
Part of that strategy may have been that Biden brought up most of the president’s flashy statements that Trumpon had previously been held responsible for, trying to make his opponent unfit.
He mentioned, for example, that Trump had previously said that an intravenous disinfectant should be used against the coronavirus, or that the president said that an atomic bomb should be dropped on hurricanes. Trump was prepared for this, either denying the above statements or classifying them as sarcasm.
Unlike Trump, he was prepared for his policy statements and was able to say some of them. He mentioned, for example, his proposal to promote the purchase of American products, his climate protection plans, his tax proposals; we couldn’t hear such plans from Trump. Biden often used the method of speaking to voters by looking at the camera, while Trump dealt almost exclusively with his opponent at all times.
Biden, on the other hand, cannot be called a winner either, because he made a number of mistakes: he did not use high balls, for example, he could not clearly master the topics that were good for him (for example, coronavirus), and more than once lost his head. On one of these occasions, when it came to his son, he raised his voice and pointed a finger at Trump, the kind of attitude he hadn’t had before. This determination is not even an error, but it has had a series of manifestations that have significantly lowered the standard of the debate:
- once, for example, he called Trump an explicit liar,
- and on other occasions he titled it “clown”.
- but the sign “Putin’s Pinscher” was also pronounced,
- and once nailed him as the worst president of the United States to date.
Overall, Biden exceeded expectations and, although he was pushed into the background against Trump, the difference between the two was not as significant as might have been expected, and over time the balance of power became more balanced, Bident became increasingly less unsure about Trump’s regular interjections. In political terms, we think that Biden has won the debate, but it is hardly possible to judge a debate from a political point of view where 80% of the debate time has been compromised by insults, interjections, baseless accusations and his fervent rebuttal.
Cover image: Getty Images
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