Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Let’s finish the job.

It’s easy to sit in safety and prescribe what other people should be doing.

Sitting here in limbo waiting for the dice to roll

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

Accused of treason; bitches about the ratings. I am in awe.

Come on, man.

This really is a full service blog.

The poor and middle-class pay taxes, the rich pay accountants, the wealthy pay politicians.

A democracy can’t function when people can’t distinguish facts from lies.

Is it irresponsible to speculate? It is irresponsible not to.

Nothing worth doing is easy.

Shallow, uninformed, and lacking identity

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

Happy indictment week to all who celebrate!

Do not shrug your shoulders and accept the normalization of untruths.

Battle won, war still ongoing.

Since when do we limit our critiques to things we could do better ourselves?

Proof that we need a blogger ethics panel.

Teach a man to fish, and he’ll sit in a boat all day drinking beer.

The revolution will be supervised.

A snarling mass of vitriolic jackals

A thin legal pretext to veneer over their personal religious and political desires

Within six months Twitter will be fully self-driving.

Let’s delete this post and never speak of this again.

You are here: Home / Past Elections / 2020 Elections / Late Night Post Debate Open Thread

Late Night Post Debate Open Thread

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Yeah, too sanguine, but it seems like anyone who thought Trump had a good debate… should not be trusted to know the difference between shoe polish and elephant dung. (Or to feed themselves with a fork, really.)

The Biden campaign has very deliberately not paid much attention to twitter (or, I’m assuming, other social media), but this pre-debate message was Very Online:

All five top ‘Trending Topics’ on the twitter sidebar concerned the debate, and I do mean concerned. A sample of Chris Wallace, finding himself incapable of controlling the Squatter-in-Chief:

Reader Interactions

112Comments

  1. 1.

    Mike in DC

    I do also think Biden probably just put this thing away.  The next debate isn’t until October 15th, and the third is on the 22nd.  And at this point with Trump, what you see is what you get.  He’s not going to do better even if they pump him full of xanax and drill him on the concept of “showing empathy” or “being likable”.

  4. 4.

    Burnspbesq

    Tweet of the night comes from the United Farm Workers:

    Let’s be thankful for the workers who bring us tequila after this debate.

  6. 6.

    bluehill

    I think the side-by-side comparison will sway a few “undecideds” whose opinion of Biden had up to now been shaped by facebook and twitter.

  7. 7.

    Bruce K

    Just woke up in Athens and went looking for a summary, only to find CNN calling it a “shitshow” on their home page. Everywhere else I’m looking, it sounds like the debate was a total charlie-foxtrot. Was this one of those “everybody loses” situations? Or did Biden at least manage to break even?

  8. 8.

    L85NJGT

    The nasal congestion, frequent drainage swallows, and visibly swollen sinuses – whatever he’s packing up there for “debate prep” can’t be healthy for a seventy-four year old man.

  9. 9.

    Darrin Ziliak (formerly glocksman)

    @Rina99:

    The Biden/Harris logo could be larger and IMHO the pic should be of the 2 (Trump/Biden) of them, but it’s still worth the $33+tax & shipping I just spent.

  11. 11.

    patroclus

    @Bruce K: Biden won hands down.  CNN’s instant poll had it at 60-28.  Trump was just awful, interrrupting constantly and not abiding by any time limits and he came off as an unrelenting bully who lies all the time.  Even Republicans are admitting it – it was just a terrible performance; the worst debate for any major candidate ever.  It was like Carter in 1980 times a million.  It was like how Gore was portrayed as having been sneering in 2000, but far worse.  Trump was embarrassing to the point of extreme awkwardness – just awful.

  12. 12.

    bluehill

    I was curious to see what the Trump campaign debate strategy was given how high they set the bar for Trump because of their attacks on Biden’s mental state. As with everything else, they had no strategy.

  14. 14.

    cain

    Just from how much money was raised – Joe has sealed the deal – their warchest is getting pretty big and the down tickets can ride Joe’s coattails to victory. We got a great shot, but we get out there and vote!  (and rock, and roll the bones!)

  18. 18.

    guachi

    As an Arabic linguist the best part of the debate (that I missed until just a few minutes ago) was Biden dropping an “inshallah” about when Trump would release his taxes. Inshallah means “God willing” but can be used sarcastically to mean “never”.

    Biden wins the debate. Going away. Insult your opponent in a way that he doesn’t know he’s being insulted.

  20. 20.

    Amir Khalid

    I’m not much of a dessert eater anymore, but I would love to try Jeni’s salted peanut butter ice cream with chocolate flecks. Sounds yummy.

  21. 21.

    Highway Rob

    Even-the-liberal MSNBC just “fact-checked” Biden for saying violent crime went down during the Obama administration and up during the trump administration. They called it misleading because it didn’t go up -much- during the Trump administration.

    Who fact checks the fact-checkers? Fucking fuckity fuck.

  22. 22.

    LongHairedWeirdo

    There’s something strange about the universe where the most surprising thing of tonight is, I’ve learned of a new ice cream I want to try.

    So far, though, I’m pleasantly surprised that the reaction is anti-tantrum, er, anti-asshole, er, anti-Trump.

  23. 23.

    p.a.

    How will the media roll this to keep their ‘horserace’ hopes viable?  Can they?
    How can Fox/Hannity drive the meme?
    Will we see rethugs jumping off the wagon in significant numbers?

    >> Want to see the all media; national, state, local, asking rethugs anywhere, “what do you think of the pResident’s performance?”

  28. 28.

    gene108

    @Bruce K:

    Biden came out way ahead.

    Trump was being a rude callous narcissistic asshole constantly interrupting Biden and talking over him.

    Biden showed a great deal of composure and caring in the circumstances.

  30. 30.

    gene108

    @Highway Rob:

    Biden’s off by a bit on his numbers, but his point still exists in the realm of the real world as it is now.

    Trump’s spewing Russian conspiracy theories about Hunter Biden.

    I like Daniel Dale’s tweets that basically come down to “yeah, Joe made a few mistakes in what he said, but Trump just lied nonstop”, and basically refused to discuss Biden’s errors further.

  31. 31.

    Amir Khalid

    @Bruce K:

    Biden was his usual self, except more exasperated because of who he had to deal with. Trump was … well, like in those one-on-one interviews with Wallace and Jonathan Swan, only much more so. The general impression seems to be that the comparison favours Biden.

  32. 32.

    Splitting Image

    I can’t believe Trump actually said “Don’t ever use the word ‘smart’ with me.” Maybe I’m showing my age, but I immediately thought of Otto in A Fish Called Wanda. Somebody better explain to him that the London Underground is not a political movement.

  33. 33.

    gene108

    @p.a.:

    How can Fox/Hannity drive the meme?

    Biden was unprecedentedly rude to the Office of the President by calling President Trump “a clown”, and telling him “to shut up, man”.

    That seems to be the popular rage inducing issue from right-wing Twitter tonight.

  34. 34.

    L85NJGT

    @JaySinWA:

    Biden opened on his heels – I think he was taken aback by just how wired Trump was, but he got his legs and dealt with him like he would a street crazy.

  35. 35.

    Highway Rob

    @gene108: Biden was -right-. Up is up. He didn’t say “up a metric tonne,” he said up, MSNBC’s numbers said up, but MSNBC’s talking head said “misleading” anway. ARGH!

    (Ranting here because kids, wife are asleep, and shouting my disapproval in the real world would be, er, frowned upon.)

  36. 36.

    Highway Rob

    @Splitting Image: Thank you for making me look this up…

    I offer a complete and utter retraction. The imputation was totally without basis in fact, and was in no way fair comment, and was motivated purely by malice, and I deeply regret any distress that my comments may have caused you, or your family, and I hereby undertake not to repeat any such slander at any time in the future.

  37. 37.

    trollhattan

    Did I miss anything?

    Confess I parked my citizen bus and had dinner and watched a movie. The BP can’t handle live Trump any longer.

    There’s a reason Biden was the opponent Trump always feared the most. Sleep well, Donny.

  41. 41.

    trnc

    @JaySinWA: Can anyone tell me what kind of special asshole still doesn’t know which candidate to vote for, even though one candidate has a 40 year public record to look at and the other has been in the job for the last 4? Bonus for explaining how they’ll figure out in the next 5 weeks something they couldn’t figure out in the last 8 months.

  42. 42.

    sanjeevs

    @bluehill: I think the strategy Trump’s team had was to try to peel off Sanders voters. Trump made some references to Biden not supporting M4A and Wallace asked Biden if he supported the Green New Deal to that end.

    The usual suspects (Ryan Knight, Brie Brie) etc tried to half heartedly push that.

  43. 43.

    RaflW

    Mike DeWine may have pre-program-tweeted himself into political hell tonight.

    @MikeDeWine

    A great job tonight by @realdonaldtrump! Congratulations to tonight’s sponsors @cwru and @ClevelandClinic on hosting on a great debate.

    To which I replied (among the 5.7k replies v. 1.6k likes):

    I guess Mike is Proud Boy-curious now. Not good.

    His tweet has that generic, composed in advance sound to it (the grammar error is inexcusable in that case). Sucks to be Mike. He had been respected for not being a typical GOP Covid hack. No more. His slightly shining star is #ettd’d.

  45. 45.

    Mary G

    Another former Trump administration official speaks out:

    /3 – POTUS' comments tonight fall into both the 'first-hand' and 'dangerous' category. I served at DHS as the Asst Secretary for Counterterrorism from 2018-2020. The surge of violent white nationalism happened on my watch.— Elizabeth Neumann (@NeuSummits) September 30, 2020

    /5 – I concluded after the attacks in El Paso that POTUS was complicit in the deaths of Americans for his refusal to recognize his language was in the shooter's manifesto. Tonight, he was given the opportunity to condemn White Supremacy – he refused.— Elizabeth Neumann (@NeuSummits) September 30, 2020

  47. 47.

    JaySinWA

    @JaySinWA: I watched the first 10 minutes of Luntz’s focus group after the debate. First, at that point there wasn’t much movement in decisions, and there was a weird Luntz attack on “how can you be undecided” and then when the crackhead argument came up he attacked the commenter as having not been really undecided previously because this affirmed her previous view of T. She backed down quickly, saying she was undecided until tonight.

    Almost like he paid for people to act the role of undecided and they can’t stray from it or they will lose the paycheck.

    I didn’t stick around for the win/lose debate question.

    https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/1311140612259721217?s=2

    @trnc:

    The link above may illuminate the assholes that claim to be undecided. Follow the link in the tweet if you dare.

  48. 48.

    Brachiator

    I didn’t watch the debate and the few comments I scanned said that Trump was out of control and the debate was unwatchable. So now I guess I am ready to read up on … Google’s upcoming product announcements.

    New phones and hardware Wednesday.

    I understand that Biden is going to campaign in Ohio. Smart move, perhaps. The debates don’t matter that much. It’s good if he is reaching out to the people.

  51. 51.

    Brachiator

    @patroclus: 

    Trump was just awful, interrrupting constantly and not abiding by any time limits and he came off as an unrelenting bully who lies all the time.

    So, here’s a question. Was Trump playing to his base? He may not be trying to win on the issues.

    Was he maybe trying to show that he could dominate Biden? He can’t possibly be a better man than Biden, but he can try to show that he is stronger and so more worthy.

    Note that I neither watched nor listened to the debate, nor read any commentary about it.

    I read that Trump didn’t prepare. If true (and this could be lies to lull the Democrats) he is going on rage and instinct. But this also makes him vulnerable.

    Did Biden call Trump a clown? Disdain is good. I hope that Biden calls Trump “nasty” in an upcoming debate, while mocking the shit out of him.

  52. 52.

    mrmoshpotato

    @L85NJGT:

    whatever he’s packing up there for “debate prep” can’t be healthy for a seventy-four year old man. 

    Since when is snorting rails off your daughter’s ass healthy at any age?

  57. 57.

    Brachiator

    @HumboldtBlue:

    Wow. Interesting little tidbit. I didn’t think too much of the question that Wallace was trying to ask. Too much “inside the beltway” political junkie stuff.

    The moderators should be able to shut off the microphones.

    Also I kinda wish that Biden could slap Trump upside the head.

  62. 62.

    Ruckus

    @Brachiator:

    How could he actually prepare? That would take thought and him listening to someone helping him to prepare and not be the asshole that he is. Remember it’s been 4 yrs since he “debated” Hilary. Since then his mental issues have been getting worse, his mental ability has been getting less, and he’s 4 yrs older and his legal troubles are showing up every where. His idea that he can bully his way through life seem to be hitting a brick wall, primarily of his own making. 4 yrs ago I thought he was in the early stages of dementia. For my money I think I was right then and he’s put in those 4 years in a pressure cooker. That doesn’t help at all and tonight I think he tried to do to Joe what he did to Hilary, but it didn’t work well at all.

  72. 72.

    Eljai

    @Sister Golden Bear: Ha!  I am stealing that.  So accurate too, because as I was watching the debate tonight I felt like a bystander frozen to the sidewalk and all I could think was DON’T MAKE EYE CONTACT!

  73. 73.

    Splitting Image

    Bill Kristol had this to say:

    Well, once one gets past one’s anger and disgust and contempt for Trump and what he has wrought, there is this good news: He’s gonna lose.

    Since Bill Kristol always used to be wrong about everything, ordinarily this would be horrifying. But since Trump’s election has transreversed his brain and surgically flip-flopped his opinions and attitudes, that means he must be right about this. Right?

    This is what it’s come to. Here I am hoping that Bill Kristol has it right.

  75. 75.

    Ruckus

    @Jess:

    Worked better than it did tonight. He was a bully both times of course but that act works when the “victim” doesn’t answer back. It didn’t give him much and it didn’t work well on Hilary but then it didn’t need to. All she had to do was not react as if he stole her lunch money but that’s what she did. Joe figuratively took his lunch money back and then took trump’s lunch money and then figuratively beat the crap out of him for bullying, which made him madder and worse. IOW it didn’t work with Joe. It’s not what it looks like to people that already don’t respect him, it’s what it looks like to his supporters. And I’d bet it peeled off some of them

  78. 78.

    CaseyL

    This gave me a much-needed laugh

    Born Miserable

    @bornmiserable

    ATTENTION: If You Watched the Presidential Debate, You May Be Entitled to Financial Compensation

  79. 79.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Ruckus:

    Joe figuratively took his lunch money back and then took trump’s lunch money and then figuratively beat the crap out of him for bullying, which made him madder and worse. 

    Hahaha

  82. 82.

    piratedan

    maybe it’s just my own little bubble of middle class folks (strangely enough, a smattering of all POC) but I am seeing a whole boatload of people, dems and independents and some GOP identified folks and normally this would be a swath where someone like Trump would do well, firmly middle-class, mostly white; but our cohort are medical professionals.  It’s pretty much a consensus of “fuck that guy”.  I’m thinking that we may be seeing a repudiation of Trump reaching Mondale type of proportions…

    Maybe I’m wrong, but I’m starting to get a sense of a political seismic shifting under way where people are just ready to say fuck it, give us Biden and the opportunity to find our way back to “normal” again so we don’t have to pay attention to this shit and we can all watch The Bachelor and football once again…

  87. 87.

    Brachiator

    @Ruckus:

    For my money I think I was right then and he’s put in those 4 years in a pressure cooker.

    I think that Trump is an Orange Furball of resentment and insecurity. Aside from that I try to avoid a full mental diagnosis.

    So aside from all that, “no attention span Trump ” has probably never prepared for anything. Not even golf, where he pays flunkies to ignore his cheating.  He naturally operates on guile and bluster.

    Also, to prepare for something means that Trump would have to acknowledge that he is not a stable genius master of the universe who knows all he needs to know.

    But like I say, this makes him vulnerable. I hope Biden gets a chance to tell Trump right to his face “You’re lying again. I know you’re lying and the American people know you are lying,” after Trump tries to bullshit everyone.

    That doesn’t help at all and tonight I think he tried to do to Joe what he did to Hilary, but it didn’t work well at all.

    Good point. Trump is a one-trick pony. As I’ve noted before, it makes him vulnerable.

  90. 90.

    Brachiator

    @Mike in DC:

    And at this point with Trump, what you see is what you get. He’s not going to do better even if they pump him full of xanax and drill him on the concept of “showing empathy” or “being likable”.

    I don’t think that Trump’s base want him to show empathy or be likable toward anybody other than them.  He feeds on their anger and resentment at his rallies, and they love his silly antics.

    Biden has the integrity and empathy thing down. I think that he has to emphasize to the fence-sitters that he will help them, and help solve their problems.

    He needs to undermine Trump. He needs to vividly remind people that unemployment was dropping and wages rising before Trump. He needs to promise that he will deal with the pandemic and fire up the economy again and he won’t need tricks, lies, and bullshit.

  93. 93.

    Betty Cracker

    @Shalimar: Maybe she was digging her nails into his hand? Would explain the weird jerking. Honest to Pete, I want these people to go away. Forever. He never will, not until the blessed day he drops dead. But maybe she’ll do us the courtesy of disappearing from public view.

  95. 95.

    Chyron HR

    The fact that “The Left” thinks Trump scored a stunning victory last night explains a lot about why they lost the 2016 and 2020 primaries by such overwhelming margins.

  97. 97.

    Bruce K

    @James E Powell: What’s Cleveland got to do with it? (Sorry, still trying to get my brain into gear, and I don’t even have the excuse of traumatic psychic injury from the debates.)

    Aside: just realized there’s a good analogy to answer the people who say that Biden shouldn’t have been the candidate, that Bernie would have energized the populace, et cetera ad nauseum.

    Let’s say your doctor tells you that you’ve got cancer, but the good news is that they spotted it soon enough that with medical treatment, it can be beaten. Now, let’s say that coming out of the doctor’s office, someone decides to stab you in the guts with a steak knife.

    It makes sense to put the cancer treatment on the back burner until you’ve dealt with the stab wound, doesn’t it? And the doctor mending your stab wound may not be the same doctor you’ll want treating your cancer.

    (I think it’s very fair to compare Donald Trump to a knife in the guts of America, right?)

  99. 99.

    Shalimar

    @Betty Cracker: I don’t really hate her.  Yeah, she’s pretty clearly horrible in private.  But I grew up around a lot of rich people. She’s horrible in a banal way.  There are thousands just like her.  He’s the one who is like the dozen worst people you ever met all in one body.

  104. 104.

    David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch

    538 says disagreement on whether earth is flat or round leads to no clear answer

  105. 105.

    Gvg

    @Matt McIrvin: They don’t know how to measure this…whatever. By conventional standards both sides did lose this debate, but this was a different thing and the measures we use for other debates weren’t getting any positive readings.
    it looks like as this sinks in, people are just having the reaction of really wanting Trump to go away so the normal people can hear themselves discuss. Imagine if we had earthquake monitors all set up to get readings, but we had a huge unexpected air pollution event instead. Maybe it should be a sporting event scoreboard instead of earthquake…

  107. 107.

    Elizabelle

    @HumboldtBlue: 

    That one underscores what a dreadful moderator Chris Wallace was. He just let Trump steamroll them and not allow Biden to answer.

    Cut his mike! (Mic, whatever.)

  110. 110.

    Chris Johnson

    @mrmoshpotato: ‘dirtbag left’ do NOT count as left.

    They’re Russian trolls. They’re literally the same people as 4chan /pol/. Take it from someone who was dirtbag-left-curious for a while: when they started demanding that everybody scorn ‘Russiagate’ while themselves being obvious Russian trolls, I was fuckin’ out of there and not looking back.

    All you really have to know about them is that their very worst enemy was not Biden, but Liz Warren. They’re Russkis, they’re an op like QAnon is.

  111. 111.

    Uncle Cosmo

    @Bruce K: An abomination – especially since the comics it was based on were brilliant.

    (My first exposure to Howard was in the dealer’s room of Balticon somewhere in the 70s. I flipped open the cover of the comic on top: He was wandering down a cityscape of H. saps in sportjacket & tie with a cigar in his winghand & a disgusted look on his face. Caption: I came back to Cleveland to nurse an old memory, and discovered the patient had died.

    Instant fan.)

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