2020 US Election (Part Two)

[Timsup2nothin]

This ‘debate’ has already given me the feeling that it's like the beginning of a Beastie Boys video.
‘I hope no bad people show up.’

Sorry. Trump might storm out before it is over, but he'll definitely show up.

 

[Sommerswerd]

It's an effective play since he isn't going to be looking good. He is basically already telegraphing that he is planning to go full elementary school recess. I expect Biden will calmly and coolly say things to his face that Trump doesn't ever here from his sycophants and accuse Biden of "disrespect for the office of the president and these proceedings" in somewhat less formal language and when Biden calls him a liar, a failure, a gross hypocrite, a joke, a fraud, and an assortment of other things that are all true Trump's bluster will be so hollowed out that the storm out might be the closest he can get to salvaging the situation.

Biden could do all those things, but I think that he will try to stay above all that, at least initially, but ultimately, to his detriment, maybe get dragged down into, as you say, grade school recess. Once he jumps into that mud, Trump will have him, because he will then be playing on Trumps field. There is no way he is going to out-namecall and out-insult Trump. And he isn't going to remember the zingers that his campaign staff comes up for him in advance, so when he tries to use them, he is going to stutter and stammer and botch the delivery.

His best play is to ignore Trump's goading and stay as "Presidential" as possible, to draw as stark a contrast as possible. At least once in the debate, at key moment, he is going to have to stand up to Trump and challenge him to an arm wrestling match or whatever and say that he is full of malarkey or whatever, but that's it. Other than that, I think Biden will stay on message and try to appear as reasonable and normal as possible.

I'm with Nancy Pelosi that Biden should have declined to debate Trump. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose.

 

[Lexicus]

A rising feeling of sickness, a faint tingling of the extremities. A sense of existential dread. Yes, another Presidential debate is upon us...

I'm with Nancy Pelosi that Biden should have declined to debate Trump. He has nothing to gain and everything to lose.

Quite.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

You aren't getting it.

It IS presidential to calmly say "you are lying here and it is no surprise since you are a liar" and continue coolly on. This is the mistake the press corps has made. They have mistaken "professionalism" to mean that they can't call a lie a lie straight in the liar's face. People want that.

 

[Lexicus]

Biden could do all those things, but I think that he will try to stay above all that, at least initially, but ultimately, to his detriment, maybe get dragged down into, as you say, grade school recess. Once he jumps into that mud, Trump will have him, because he will then be playing on Trumps field. There is no way he is going to out-namecall and out-insult Trump. And he isn't going to remember the zingers that his campaign staff comes up for him in advance, so when he tries to use them, he is going to stutter and stammer and botch the delivery.

*sense of dread intensifies* *heart starts pounding, tingling in extremities becoming more than faint*

 

[Sommerswerd]

No he will coolly list Trump's crimes, punctuated with "you are a liar," "you are a fraud," "you are a..." The things everyone from me to the press core, to the congress, and probably even to a lot of the job security slave suck ups that surround Trump knows are true and wants to say but are kept in check by "respect the office if not the man." I think Biden is waaaaaaaaay better equipped to handle that than Trump because Trump has been protected by a security team since he was six. This might be the first time in his life that someone could tell the truth about him to his face without him being able to put a stop to it.

I doubt that Biden will go this route, but something that could be effective against someone like Trump, who loves to ad-lib and shoot from the hip, is to highlight an unconscious tic, mannerism, or common word/phrase that he uses, and announce that is how you can tell that he's lying or about to tell a lie. Very similar to what Chris Christie did to Marco Rubio to make him implode in the 2016 debates. Something like saying "See folks, whenever he sniffs like that you know he is getting ready to tell a lie... There it is! Here's comes the malarkey! Yup, there it is again folks! You see that?! Another lie! There it is!"

In fact, since Chris Christie is the one who is apparently prepping Trump for the debate... I wouldn't be surprised if Trump actually uses a tactic like this to rattle Biden.

 

[Sommerswerd]

You aren't getting it.

It IS presidential to calmly say "you are lying here and it is no surprise since you are a liar" and continue coolly on. This is the mistake the press corps has made. They have mistaken "professionalism" to mean that they can't call a lie a lie straight in the liar's face. People want that.

But I don't think its enough to just call him a liar or accuse him of lying. Trump is going to be ready for that with a "No you! You're the liar!" every time. He will say "Lie!", "Wrong!" into his mic while Biden is talking, just like he did to Hillary.

What Biden needs to do, is identify a tell, something that President Ding-Dong can't control... because he doesn't prepare, or take preparation seriously... and highlight it to the audience. That way, it won't be Biden calling Trump a liar, it will be the audience thinking it, every time he shows the tell. And because Trump is so obsessed with looking good on TV, he will then become so preoccupied with suppressing the tell, that he won't be able to concentrate on anything else. If Biden can do that, he will completely knock Trump off balance and the fact that he is unprepared will show like a neon sign.

 

[Kyriakos]

I am actually looking forward to watching lowlights from the debate.
It will be a train-wreck. I am sure Biden will manage to not stutter his way, I mean he had good exercise by being pushed through by the DNC with 1 debate and Bernie being his good-mannered friend at that.

I fear the worst.

 

[Sommerswerd]

It will be a train-wreck.

Quite

 

[Berzerker]

Without reviewing the thread I'ma take a wild guess that it is whatever you posted.

If I'm right about something are you lying?

Has Trump admitted to this? Did he not criticise Fauci for this?

Not that I know, but Fauci was recorded admitting he and the medical community were advising the government to avoid a public panic over PPEs and downplaying the efficacy of masks.

Hi,

That contradicts the facts. Yes, your right, in very early months like Feb/March Fauci, CDC etc told us masks werent needed - for the reason you said. However since April 2020 masks were recommended by the CDC, and later the month by fauci.

Howdy. Yes...and the cat was already out of the bag and states were locking down by then.

In the end of May, trump retweetet a tweet mocking Biden for wearing a mask. Just google (i cant insert links here for some reason) twitter brit Hume masks biden, and check the date of the tweet... trump retweeted this tweet one day later.

Few weeks later (in june) trump said in wsj interview some people wear masks to signal disapproval of him. Id love to provide a link here as source but i guess they suspect all links to be advertising... so just google wsj trump juneteeth, the first result should be the right one.

So yes Trump did acted right with regards to masks in February/March... but not in April - June. (The first time he wore a mask as a role model was July). Thats 3 months. So yes the democrats were right accusing him to ignore science, because he did.

The Democrats were accusing him of ignoring the science back when they were ignoring the science, the deception cost lives and it was bipartisan. As for Trump's later behavior, he's guilty too. He should have been promoting masks from the start, but he was told not to by 'the experts'.

 

[Sommerswerd]

There's another one.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Trump will stay the whole 90 minutes. (Projecting "stamina" is very important to him.) Biden will do fine. He'll move smoothly from zingers to get under Trump's skin to detailed descriptions of policy. Trump will bluster and yell and constantly talk over Biden. MSNBC will declare that Biden eviscerated Trump; Fox will claim that Trump owned Biden. Nothing of any significance will get said in the course of the whole 90 minutes. No voters will change their mind on who they intend to vote for.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

But I don't think its enough to just call him a liar or accuse him of lying. Trump is going to be ready for that with a "No you! You're the liar!" every time. He will say "Lie!", "Wrong!" into his mic while Biden is talking, just like he did to Hillary.

What Biden needs to do, is identify a tell, something that President Ding-Dong can't control... because he doesn't prepare, or take preparation seriously... and highlight it to the audience. That way, it won't be Biden calling Trump a liar, it will be the audience thinking it, every time he shows the tell. And because Trump is so obsessed with looking good on TV, he will then become so preoccupied with suppressing the tell, that he won't be able to concentrate on anything else. If Biden can do that, he will completely knock Trump off balance and the fact that he is unprepared will show like a neon sign.

The thing is that conditions have changed. Clinton couldn't get in that back and forth with him because by and large the audience thought they were both liars and the back and forth would be like calling each other pumpkins. The TRUTH hurts, whether it is shouted of said calmly and quietly. Trump calling Biden a liar won't really hurt him. At this point Trump is well aware that if Biden calls him a liar, backed up by 20,000 fact checker reports, it will have the sting of truth.

It's like the current Berzerker attempt to "no you" at me. It won't work, because he, and I, and all the regulars around here are well aware of the facts.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

Trump will stay the whole 90 minutes. (Projecting "stamina" is very important to him.) Biden will do fine. He'll move smoothly from zingers to get under Trump's skin to detailed descriptions of policy. Trump will bluster and yell and constantly talk over Biden. MSNBC will declare that Biden eviscerated Trump; Fox will claim that Trump owned Biden. Nothing of any significance will get said in the course of the whole 90 minutes. No voters will change their mind on who they intend to vote for.

This is likely accurate, though I still think Biden could coolly reduce Trump to frothing like a pig.

 

[Gori the Grey]

There's a chance of that. I'll be watching mostly for the possibility of that.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

I figure if it happens I'll see the clips. I honestly can't be bothered with ninety minutes of Trump, even if he is nominally sharing the stage.

 

[Kyriakos]

Not sure how you two are so optimistic, but personally I am not seeing this going well for Biden.

 

[Sommerswerd]

Chris Wallace says he is going to try to be "invisible" as a moderator, so I take that to mean no fact-checking Trump. That's disappointing.

 

[Takhisis]

Not a bug, a feature.

Nearly 100,000 Defective Absentee Ballots Sent to N.Y.C. Voters
A printing error has left voters scrambling for answers and could undermine their confidence in the New York City Board of Elections.

Spoiler :

Nearly 100,000 New York City voters received defective absentee ballots, election officials acknowledged on Tuesday, a massive glitch that raised doubts about the city’s ability to handle a pandemic-era presidential election with millions of mail-in ballots expected.

The problems were mostly confined to Brooklyn, where voters registered outrage and confusion after seeing that their ballots had mismatched names and addresses on the outer and inner mail-back envelopes.

Mayor Bill de Blasio, who does not control the board, called its most recent failure “appalling.”

“I don’t know how many times we’re going to see the same thing happen at the Board of Elections and be surprised,” he said.

The faulty ballots come as President Trump has made repeated baseless challenges to the accuracy and integrity of mail-in voting; by Monday evening, Mr. Trump had shared four news articles on Twitter describing the absentee ballot issues in New York.

The problems in New York are yet another blemish for the New York City Board of Elections, which is run by a board of Democrats and Republicans, and has a long history of mismanaging elections.

Michael Ryan, the board’s executive director, blamed the problem on the board’s vendor, Phoenix Graphics, a commercial printing company based in Rochester, N.Y., which was hired to mail out ballots in Brooklyn and Queens.

The foul-up was briefly addressed on Tuesday at a Board of Elections meeting, as Mr. Ryan, a Democrat, said the error was limited to “one print run.” He said the vendor would bear the cost of sending out new ballots to all potentially affected voters.

“It is essential that confidence be established in this process and that we make certain that all of the voters who potentially have a problem have a full and fair opportunity to remedy that problem,” Mr. Ryan said.

Officials also encouraged voters to email or call a hotline if they received an erroneous ballot. But phone lines already appear to be jammed: Two voters who called on Monday reported being 65th and “80-something” in line.

Merrily Rosso, who lives in the Bushwick neighborhood of Brooklyn, received an absentee ballot on Monday with a stranger’s name on it. She looked him up and discovered that he lived nearby. Concerned, she called the Brooklyn Board of Elections twice. The first time, they hung up. The second time, they let the phone ring.

So she called the New York City Board of Elections. There were roughly 80 callers ahead of her in line. She hung up.

Rich Rotondo, a resident of the Cobble Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn who works as a project manager for the city, said that he and his partner got ballots with the wrong information on them.

Curious if their neighbors were having a similar experience, they stopped someone who lives in their building and asked him to open his absentee ballot.

“And he opened it up and his was wrong,” Mr. Rotondo said. “Nobody has the right one.”

Michael Weiss, a musician who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn, said the ballot mailed to his partner had someone else’s name on it. He walked it over to the person listed on the ballot.

“She opened her mail to find another neighbor’s ballot in her envelope, which I took and hand delivered to him around the corner. Of course he also received someone else’s ballot in the mail,” Mr. Weiss said.

Phoenix Graphics, a family-owned firm that prides itself on its “ability to deliver a high-quality product on time and within budget,” has worked with the city Board of Elections since at least 2010, according to city records, including during the June primaries. The company’s $4.6 million no-bid contract — which the board awarded under an emergency procurement in June — lasts through the end of the year.

Sal DeBiase, the company’s president and chief executive, did not reply to multiple requests for comment.

Wrong ballots signed by voters will be invalid. Voters who unwittingly sign erroneous ballots will still be able to vote — via a second ballot, or in person, according to Sarah Steiner, an elections lawyer. She added that in-person votes cancel a voter’s absentee ballot.

“I’m worried because anything that confuses voters at this point or makes them leery of voting or suspicious of the process is damaging to democracy,” Ms. Steiner said.

Douglas Kellner, co-chair of the New York State Board of Elections, said he had received reports of the problems in the city, as well as far more isolated problems in Nassau County, where he is aware of only three affected ballots.

“The downside of introducing widespread absentee balloting is that, once the Boards of Elections start contracting out the process of mailing, then they lose quality control and direct supervision of what goes on,” Mr. Kellner, a Democrat, said in an interview. “This is a good example of the problem.”

Melissa DeRosa, the secretary to Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, criticized the Board of Elections during a news conference on Tuesday: “To say that we’re troubled by this is the understatement of the year.”

The printing error comes on the heels of a June primary election that was riddled with problems in New York.

Overwhelmed by an avalanche of mail-in ballots — 40 percent of voters sent absentee ballots compared with just 4 percent in previous years — election officials spent more than a month counting ballots in some closely watched congressional races.

Tens of thousands of absentee ballots, especially in Brooklyn, were also disqualified because of technical issues like missing postmarks, a missing signature or an improperly sealed envelope.

State officials have taken some steps to address those problems ahead of the November election, implementing new reforms to allow voters to fix errors with their ballots and expanding options for voters to physically drop off their absentee ballots at early polling sites and election offices.

Officials are also encouraging people to vote in person at early poll sites, which open statewide on Oct. 24 and are expected to have shorter lines than Election Day poll sites, to avoid overwhelming the Postal Service and election boards with mail-in ballots.

State election officials are expecting more than five million absentee ballots in the presidential election, or four times the number received in June, and some have already warned that results might not be known until early December.

“I’m disappointed to say the least,” said Matt Eylenberg, a resident of the Boerum Hill neighborhood of Brooklyn who got the wrong ballot on Monday. “There’s so much stress around this election, as I’m very sure you are aware. They’re really testing the mettle of absentee voting, for sure, and it’s not a good start.”

Some voters have also expressed frustration about postage.

While the executive order that expanded mail-in voting for the June primaries required election boards to provide prepaid postage on ballot envelopes, there are no such requirements for the general election. This time around, voters in New York City must apply their own postage before mailing their ballots.

The ballot contains other errors, too. It instructs voters to “mark the oval to the left” of their choice, even though the ovals are actually above candidates’ names. There has also been some confusion surrounding a misleading label printed on mail-in ballots that reads: “OFFICIAL ABSENTEE MILITARY BALLOT.”

On Monday, the Board of Elections clarified that all absentee ballots, regardless of whether the voter was in the military, included that label, and that the ballot was correct.

 

[AmazonQueen]

Not sure how you two are so optimistic, but personally I am not seeing this going well for Biden.

Win the actual election, Biden for all his faults can manage that (he just won't be very effective afterwards),
Cope with the voterigging and legal shenanigans that Trump will employ I'm not so sure about.