Well I was watching it until just now when Tv Catchup stopped working. I quite enjoyed the detailed debate about spending and tand taxing. Better thsn the woolly debates here where specifics are avoided.
US election 2012
- Thread starter savoloysam
- Start date
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
It's here, if you want to carry on.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
The annoying thing about these debates is how many sacred cows there are, cows that the candidates dare not directly criticize for fear of scaring off the scum that fund a large part of these campaigns.
Take the whole Medicare system for instance, which is both almost unimaginably corrupt (at least $60 billion lost to Medicare fraud per year according to the US DOJ, which is not surprising given that only 5% of claims are actually audited) and incredibly inefficient (it covers 10 million people less than the NHS does, pays only half of the cost of treatment, and yet costs more than twice as much as the entire NHS does to run), and which seemingly exists only to throw hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers money a year to the medical and medical insurance industries.
Any politician that is even slightly honest should be looking to get rid of it, and yet Obama and Romney only seek to tinker at the edges - and thats without dealing with a private healthcare /insurance system which costs the population of the US a couple of trillion dollars per year, doesnt cover everyone, which is almost a byword for morally repugnant behaviour by corporations, and which delivers a life expectancy below that of nearly all of the rest of the developed world.
Take the whole Medicare system for instance, which is both almost unimaginably corrupt (at least $60 billion lost to Medicare fraud per year according to the US DOJ, which is not surprising given that only 5% of claims are actually audited) and incredibly inefficient (it covers 10 million people less than the NHS does, pays only half of the cost of treatment, and yet costs more than twice as much as the entire NHS does to run), and which seemingly exists only to throw hundreds of billions of dollars of taxpayers money a year to the medical and medical insurance industries.
Any politician that is even slightly honest should be looking to get rid of it, and yet Obama and Romney only seek to tinker at the edges - and thats without dealing with a private healthcare /insurance system which costs the population of the US a couple of trillion dollars per year, doesnt cover everyone, which is almost a byword for morally repugnant behaviour by corporations, and which delivers a life expectancy below that of nearly all of the rest of the developed world.
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
Funny you mention 'specifics'. Obama just brought up the point that Romney has been keeping details quiet on just about everything every time he's been asked by the media over the months. Romney's answer was something like "well, one way might be to ... pick a number, let's say X, or Y, maybe we could do it that way, or, perhaps we could do it this way, it doesn't matter, I'm flexible, and want to work with everyone if I win to make sure this works."
Er, okay.
Er, okay.
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
The media are going to call this debate for Romney.
It's hardly going to matter. Most viewers will have turned off after just a few minutes.
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
From what I understand, the debates have little effect on anything anyway. But regardless, it's the cable news dissection afterwards that will be how the majority of people experience the debates, and they'll call it for Romney (or already are doing). It's an observation, not a declaration of "omg Romney's gonna win!!!!!!"
I saw it as an observation. I didn't see it as a declaration. My response was also an observation.
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
Romney beat the shit out of Obama unfortunately. He was on the attack & Obama stood there & smiled like a little kid like he didn't know what to say. He was nice & polite & let Romney get away with distortions. Obama didn't fight back. He better grow some balls for the next two. He didn't even bring up Romney's taped 47% comment. Unbelieveable to have ammo like that & not use it.
Is it possible that a major National Security scare/action is about to take place, neatly showing Obama to have been concerned about Presidential matters and debasing the debate to a mere distraction?
As for the ammo, could he be saving that for later debates? Winning the last debate has to be preferable to winning the first.
I'd like to think so but I don't. I don't see Obama pulling any October surprise. And I'm not sure but I think the 1st debate gets the biggest audience. It's the 1st time the two are seen side by side. This debate was about domestic policy.....the economy/jobs. The next one will be foreign policy & most voters in the US don't really give ashit about that when the economy is in trouble.
Ash Mahay
Member
I didnt expect him too after the VPs comments on the middle class. Romney would have been prepared and won the point.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
The debates don't matter unless somebody really cocks up in them.
The media were always going to call the first debate for Romney anyway, to try to maintain a dramatic narrative. They've been going on about Obama pulling ahead of Romney in polls and how Romney needs to step it up. Oh look he's stepped it up now, Obama needs to do something etc. I heard it explicitly stated on CNN at one point.
The media were always going to call the first debate for Romney anyway, to try to maintain a dramatic narrative. They've been going on about Obama pulling ahead of Romney in polls and how Romney needs to step it up. Oh look he's stepped it up now, Obama needs to do something etc. I heard it explicitly stated on CNN at one point.
The Octagon
Stop...Hammertime
Did Romney do well or just exceed everyone's low expectations? (Not that the two are necessarily different)
Pretty sure several people wouldn't have expected him to find the podium, let alone argue a point.
Pretty sure several people wouldn't have expected him to find the podium, let alone argue a point.
Ash Mahay
Member
The USA has always been massively divided which makes the very existance of the two party system there such a strange affair & is a reason why swing voters can be so significant in their elections.
Ash Mahay
Member
Forgetting political sides & dealing just with performances Id say Romney won with an average and forgetable performance.
agricola
a genuine importer of owls
elbows
Well-Known Member
I suppose the classic modern example was that first Bush debate against Kerry, where Bush somehow managed to come across as being even more stupid than usual, to the extent that people speculated that he was being fed answers by a wire or was on some kind of drug, or had suffered some kind of brain injury.
And it still didnt make any difference in the end, although thats perhaps in part down to recovering somewhat in the latter debates.
One likely parallel between that and this years debates is that the pressure is now on for Obama to perform at the next one, there will be an expectation that he will be a different Obama next time, and if he fails again then he'll have the weight of media pulling unhelpfully against him. I still dont want to overstate how much of a difference this makes, obviously there are a range of other factors and plenty of reasons for people not to vote Romney.
If I were a conspiraloon, I'd think that guys like Hedges were hired by the neocons to demoralize the opposition. I can't see how anyone can look back at the Bush V Gore election & say it doesn't matter much who wins. If Gore had won (well, he did really) I doubt the Iraq invasion would have happened. It matters very much who wins.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
I've just come back from the US, and they've been playing some of the classic moments seen as having ruined a candidate - Bush Snr looking at his watch during audience questions, for instance. (They also include Romney offering Rick Perry a $10,000 bet during a debate in the selection campaign, though that didn't hurt him at the time - it's the sort of thing that could be brought up now though.) All they seem to want to look at, though, is "soundbite" errors, things which are easily pointed to as specific reasons after a candidate fails. If they succeed, their gaffes won't be mentioned. I'm not convinced that this stuff is anywhere near as important as the press would have us believe.
US news TV at the moment is incredibly, incredibly dull btw, as one might imagine.
Meltingpot
Living in our pools we soon forget about the sea
As I recall, Bush Snr. lost to Bill Clinton not because of the debate but because; 1 / the US economy was in bad shape in 1992, and he had no clear plan for fixing it, and probably more importantly 2 / Ross Perot got 19% of the total, mostly from conservative voters and thus splitting the Republican vote.
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
Well quite. Candidates might come out of debates looking bad due to a gaffe, and it might harm their image slightly, but there is a lot more to winning an election than that.
Also, it's worth remembering that early voting has already started in the US anyway, and a lot of people are taking it up this year it seems (though again the media may be exaggerating this).
FridgeMagnet
Administrator
"There's nothing wrong with picking the lesser of two evils - you end up with less evil"
The issue is when people pick a side and actually believe that they will solve problems and address issues that they clearly won't. It's rational to vote Democrat because you want to try to preserve access to birth control or some level of Medicare/aid. Assuming that that's also going to result in fair pay and social justice etc isn't.
dylans
overlord of all acorns
We can all second guess history but your claim that a Gore President wouldn't have gone into Iraq is questionable. Here in the UK, remember, it was a Labour government that eagerly joined the rush to war.
To be honest. If I was in the US i would probably hold my nose and vote Obama but only because the alternative is just too horrific to contemplate but lets not kid ourselves that there is much in it or that the last 4 years have been anything but another bonanza for Corporate America and Empire and one paid for by working people. Or that the next 4 is going to be much different even with Obama in the White House.
I do believe this however. If there is to be a real opposition to the corporate criminals who really run the US then that opposition will have to be built on the streets and workplaces far away from the pantomime of who sits in the White House.
Hedges again
Vintage Paw
dead stare and computer glare
Apathy towards voting - "what does it matter, it won't change anything, they're all the same" - is a completely understandable feeling, because as you say, the big stuff beyond the culture wars - like corporatism and corruption and poverty and the rest of it that goes along with the embracing of an all-encompassing capitalism - doesn't change to any significant degree because both parties have the same interests as each other in that regard. But, while "they're all the same" is a recognition, on some kind of level, of that, that's where it stops, and people sit around and wait for the mythical candidate who will do something to change it.
Occupy might not be a remarkably effective tool or movement as it stands, but I think it's interesting in how it's encouraging people to blame capital itself (well, to greater or lesser degrees - for some it's just a few bad people in a few important jobs on Wall Street; for others it's the way the system is run in its entirety; and then there's everyone falling somewhere on the spectrum in between), rather than just blaming the guy who's in the White House or a particular party. I'm not entirely sure anything will come of it as a movement in its own right, but I can't help thinking it's better it exists than it doesn't, because it's encouraging a bit more critical thinking, greater engagement, and might actually radicalise a few people along the way.
Similar threads
