Kerry said on the Daily Show that Bush has never lost a debate. That's pretty much true. The other guys will talk about issues. Bush will say enough coached material to sound like he has more knowledge than people expected him to have, and that ends up looking good for him. The rest of the debate comes down to Bush talking 'plain talk', almost mocking his opponents complex views on important issues with phrases like 'fuzzy math.' He never explained the actual numbers or how the math was wrong, he just said that, and sounded down to earth, while making the other guy look like a fuddy duddy who couldn't see the basiscs of the issues at hand. The average person watching the debates and especially just the clips from the debates shown on news shows doesn't follow the issues that closely themselves. When Bush talks about just the basics of the issues like this he connects to people who don't study the more complex aspects. Bush then ends up coming away as an affable guy who makes people feel good. It's easy to think Bush knows nothing about the issues, and for his opponent to get think that by discussing the issues in a educated knowledgeable way that he will win. I see a lot of people pulling for Kerry excited about the debates because they think that Kerry's superior grasp of the details and intricacies of issues will make it easy for him to wipe the floor with Bush. Sadly those details dont' matter to the average voter(especially the undecided). What Kerry needs to do is establish ahead of time that a debate shouldn't be about the guy who has the most folksy approach, and down home feel to politics. He needs to make it very clear that a President shouldn't necessarily be the guy you want to have a back yard cook out with. Somehow he needs to influence people to expect more from a candidate and not to be disarmed 'down to earth' or 'common man' talk. That way if Kerry can set the guidelines for a what the winner should be able to do it helps him. The second most important thing Kerry needs to do is talk about his plans for the future in as an inspiring way as possible. The majority of the country isn't happy with the way the nation is going, but they don't know or don't like Kerry. There is a void there of people who want to change the direction the country is headed in. What Kerry has to do is convince them he has a better plan, with real ideas. The third thing Kerry has to do is pick from the President's long list of mistakes, bad policies, felonies committed by whitehouse staff, etc. and hammer him on only one or two of those. Be ready with more, but don't overwhelm the barely interested public with the whole list. Pick a few that can sound the most detrimental, and stick to those. Get the spin-meisters out there after the debates to sell those points on news shows. Also Kerry needs to counter attacks made on him like flip-flops. I saw him do this for the first time the other day. It was very effective. A person at a townhall type meeting asked Kerry about flip flops. Kerry made the point that it's a label that the GOP wants to stick on him, and that if it's repeated often enough people will start to believe it and ask about it. Kerry then said he's confused by what the Bush people mean when they say flip flop. He asked, If being against a homeland security department, and then after the idea became popular deciding to creat one a flip flop? He asked if being against the 9/11 commission, and then changing once the idea became popular a flip flop? Is saying Condi Rice won't testify, and then once public pressure became too great, having her testify a flip flop? Is saying that you would fund No Child Left Behind and then not doing so a flip flop? It was very effective, and he needs more of that. For many people on this board who follow the issues, Kerry will probably win by their standards, but the average person who watches the debate or just sees clips from it on the news shows, hears talk around the proverbial water cooler will have a different criteria to judge the winner or loser. Those are the people that Kerry needs to win over to his side too. This will be a hard debate for Kerry, but he does stand a chance.
I think the debates will be a big plus for Kerry. Unlike Gore (or Dean), i think he can debate effectively without coming off as too negative. Always seemed like Gore could never get the right balance.
If Bush shows up with his shoes tied and is able to string together two complete sentences, the media will hail it as a major victory for the "plain-spoken" Bush. That's the new standard we have for world leaders, evidently. It happened in 2000, and it'll happen in 2004. If Kerry's waiting for the debates to fight back, he's making a big mistake. Unless Bush craps his pants on stage and starts snacking, there's no way Kerry can win.
My prediction: After the debates, Kerry supporters will claim victory for their man and Bush supporters will claim victory for their man. Very few if any opinions will change either way.
The debates don't matter. The conventions don't matter. The Bush machine is too strong. It's hopeless. America is doomed to another four years of this corrupt leadership, then Jeb takes over. The fact that this race is close at all says a lot about the collective intelligence of "average Americans." Anyone with half a brain should see that Bush needs to go, yet here he is on an unstoppable path to victory. I just can't express how disappointed I am in this country.
Why do your Rocket-related posts sound so eerily similar to your political posts? As Bill Murray said in Groundhog Day, "Gosh, you're an upbeat lady."
The debates, which ever way they swing will be the deciding factor of this election. If Kerry wants to win, he has to knock Bush out everytime he faces him. When he says Bush has won every debate he's been in he's just setting him up for the blow he plans to deliver. A lot of people have supported Kerry because they thought his war record would be a big plus, I always thought he could win because of his debating. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/election/september96/kerry_weld_9-19.html
Truth is, I was feeling pretty good about Kerry's chances the first few weeks after the convention. But to see that the bloody disgusting swift boat ads have hurt Kerry in the polls has shown me that the majority of Americans- not all, just most- are too gullible to make the right decision in November. I just don't understand how so many people keep falling for this crap.
Would you like some cheese with your whine? Doomed is not the word I'd use. We'd be blessed to have another four more years of Bush, despite his faults. And your little hate-filled smear against those on the right that goes "anyone with half a brain" is utterly ridiculous. Hopefully more of your ilk will assume your posture and just concede. America would be a much better place.
Another thing that Kerry has to worry about the debates is the spin afterwards. The GOP are masters at this spin. Look how they've portrayed Kerry on defense and his senate record. It doesn't matter that what they've said are lies that have been disproven. I posted an article in another thread that shows that Cheney wanted to cut all the systems that Kerry mentioned plus even more, but he was stopped by the congress. The GOP charge that Kerry voted to cut 1.5 billion in intel spending after the first WTC is a LIE. That 1.5 Billion was for an airforce spy satellite that was scrapped. Kerry didn't vote to cut intel spending, but to get the money that wasn't used for that spy satellite back. That's called watching our money, trying to wipe out govt. waste. Yet the GOP doesn't portray it this way. And I think the image the GOP puts out there has stuck. So it's another obstacle Kerry will have to overcome once the debates start. Should he win the debate, he has to be ready to combat GOP spin and dishonesty. They are good at it.
Talk about spins. You guys in here have have already spun every possible scenario to be able to have something to place a possible Kerry loss on.
It isn't spin just reasons why the debate will be hard for Kerry. He himself said Bush has never lost debate. I was merely talking about the reasons why it will be hard for kerry. A lot of people seem to feel Kerry will wipe the floor with Bush, because he has knowledge and facts on his side. Sadly debates don't always come down to knowledge and facts. As the campaign has already shown us, knowledge and facts may not even define the candidate if the other side gets there first.
This election is the classic confrontation between emotion and intellect. Fear Factor versus C-Span. America will get the leadership it deserves. So it goes. And the crappiest part is I can't even vote for Ralph Nader in Texas now.
Well it seems like he's trying like hell to get them... Commission on Debates Rejects Prompt Signing of Campaigns' Accord on the Events By JODI WILGOREN WASHINGTON, Sept. 21 - The Commission on Presidential Debates told the Bush and Kerry campaigns Tuesday that it could not accede to their unusual request that it sign by Wednesday their 32-page agreement detailing parameters for the debates. First of all, the commission said, it has to determine which candidates have enough support in the polls to qualify for the debates, which it does not plan to do until Friday. Regardless of the timing, the new requirement that the independent commission as well as the four journalists selected to moderate the debates sign onto the pact between the two candidates has made some people involved in the process uncomfortable. The memorandum of understanding negotiated by the campaigns also includes an unusual level of prescriptions, particularly over the town-hall-style debate scheduled for Oct. 8, which some say undermines the idea of a voter-driven discussion. It states several times that audience participation, outside the forum questioners, is prohibited, and calls for visible timing lights, so viewers will know if someone is filibustering. "The interesting thing here is the lengths they go to to restrict the questioning at the town hall," said Martin Plissner, a debate expert and former CBS News political director. "It makes the whole process look kind of ridiculous. It will have to be extremely mechanical." The agreement includes four pages of provisions - up from one in 2000 - about the town-hall-style debate, including a requirement that the moderator, Charles Gibson, present to the campaigns by Oct. 1 a question-selection method. Mr. Gibson is to ensure that the audience members pose equal numbers of questions on foreign policy, domestic security and other domestic issues; alternate the candidates to whom their queries are directed; and not alter their pre-selected questions on the fly. Instead of the "uncommitted" voters typically invited to such events, the auditorium is to be filled with those identified by the Gallup polling organization as leaning toward but not firmly committed to Mr. Bush and Mr. Kerry, and Mr. Gibson would have to call on the same number of people from each side. "If any audience member poses a question or makes a statement that is in any material way different than the question that the audience member earlier submitted to the moderator for review, the moderator will cut off the questioner and advise the audience that such nonreviewed questions are not permitted," the agreement reads. The men who negotiated the agreement, James A. Baker III for Mr. Bush and Vernon Jordan for Mr. Kerry, did not return telephone calls Tuesday. But several people involved in the debate discussions said most of these details were demanded by the Republicans. "None of this really matters," said Christine Anderson, a spokeswoman for Mr. Kerry's debate-negotiation team. "What matters are the issues that are going to be discussed, the questions George Bush needs to answer, the plans we're going to lay for the future. The rest is all details." One new detail that Democrats involved in the process say was the Bush team's idea is having the commission and the moderators sign the document. Before, just the two campaigns signed. "At this point in time, we're not sure we will sign the agreement," said Frank J. Fahrenkopf, who has been the Republican co-chairman of the commission since its inception in 1987. "We've never done it before. It really is an agreement between the two parties." Several of the journalists scheduled to moderate the debate expressed uncertainty about signing, which the agreement says they must do seven days before their scheduled debate "in order to evidence his or her understanding and acceptance of, and agreement to, the provisions hereof," or else the campaigns will pick someone else. "I don't think that news people like the idea of signing onto documents negotiated by politicians,'' said Thomas E. Mann, a scholar at the Brookings Institution with expertise in debates. Mark Wallace, Mr. Bush's deputy campaign manager, said such signatures were necessary because of the more detailed guidelines set out for the forum and the other debates. "If you're going to have those real rules, I think you have to have the buy in from the moderators," Mr. Wallace said. "If they're going to be moderators to a presidential debate, it makes sense that they uphold the rules." On Friday, the commission will determine which candidates meet its threshold of 15 percent support in five polls to qualify for the debates. President Bush and Mr. Kerry would clearly qualify; left on the sidelines would be the independent candidate Ralph Nader, whose poll numbers have been under 5 percent. After that, the commission said in a news release, it "will be pleased to finalize with the invited candidates debate ground rules and other technical matters," but will be "guided by its goal of providing the American people with informative debates." Among the topics likely to come up are the timing lights. In previous debates, only the candidates and the moderators could see the lights signaling they had run out of time, but the Bush campaign pushed to have the lights visible to the audience and accompanied with audible cues, perhaps because of Mr. Kerry's penchant for long answers. "The candidates are going to end up looking like game show hosts," one debate expert said. http://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/22/politics/campaign/22debates.html
