Is Hillary Toast?

[Cow Poke]

Haven't you figured it out yet CP? Anything that dares to disagree with dimbulb = propaganda and everything that agrees with him = absolute truth that can never be questioned. It's his world, we're just living in it.

He's an amusing fella.

[Sam]

Thanks for that Rogue.

Another way of measuring success is campaign donations, I guess:

MaryAlice Parks @maryaliceparks 2h2 hours ago
.@BernieSanders campaign says it raised more than $1.3 million in first four hours after debate began - 37,600 individual contributions

MaryAlice Parks @maryaliceparks 2h2 hours ago
More - @BernieSanders campaign says $100,000 raised in the five minutes after the debate ended and at peak ten contributions per second

Ten donations per second is nuts. A lot of people apparently were happy to put their money where their mouse-clicks are and donate their cash rather than simply voting in online polls. (I don't have comparison figures for Clinton, but offhand I'd say there's no chance her donations were anything remotely close to that)


PS. I'm thinking one possible explanation for the differences in people's views of who won, could perhaps be explained by who watched the debate vs who listened to it. Historically that difference has been quite important in different presidential debates, and is well-known to drive ratings (Roger Ailes, for example, famously constantly has Fox News on with the sound off in order to ensure that it visually looks right because that's crucial). I listened to most of the debate rather than watching it, and I suspect that the vast majority of political journalists would have done the same - as they would be busy jotting down notes, sending out tweets, writing blogs, writing articles etc. Whereas your average person would have watched it. So it's quite possible that Sanders won the debate among those who watched it, and Hillary among those who listened to it...?

I'd say that the big question for the media was whether Clinton could A) come out relatively unscathed from e-mail and Benghazi and B) dispel concerns about her ability to "project presidential". She did well enough last night on both policy and personality to do that so the media will see it as a new angle for a new news cycle (similar to Obama's performance after the VP debate).

That said and for what it's worth, PredictIt has had Clinton up since the debate ended:

Image 1444833007-001.jpg

Most importantly, I think this debate performance keeps Biden out of the race. If that's true, this was a huge win for Clinton, regardless of polls. Those three points, I think, explain why we're seeing this as an unalloyed win for Clinton in next day write-ups even if the flash polls favor Sanders.

[Mountain Man]

Those three points, I think, explain why we're seeing this as an unalloyed win for Clinton in next day write-ups even if the flash polls favor Sanders.

The mainstream media would call it a win for Clinton no matter what actually happened because they've been in the tank for her from day one and will do and say anything to push her across the presidential finish line.

[Mountain Man]

On a different note, Hillary did lay out a few whoppers that will serve as prime fodder for Republican campaign commercials.

For instance, there was this exchange:


And this one:


And finally:


http://www.breitbart.com/big-governm...ts-cnn-debate/

The mainstream media might be content to ignore these, but you can be sure that Hillary's Republican opponents won't.

[One Bad Pig]

The mainstream media would call it a win for Clinton no matter what actually happened because they've been in the tank for her from day one and will do and say anything to push her across the presidential finish line.

I dunno, Rich Galen thinks Clinton won, and he has no reason to push her. And The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza thinks she won, though it appears that he's not exactly a Clinton supporter.

[Mountain Man]

I dunno, Rich Galen thinks Clinton won, and he has no reason to push her. And The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza thinks she won, though it appears that he's not exactly a Clinton supporter.

I'm not saying that she didn't win in some sense. I was just noting that citing sources that would have said she won no matter what isn't exactly convincing.

[rogue06]

I dunno, Rich Galen thinks Clinton won, and he has no reason to push her. And The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza thinks she won, though it appears that he's not exactly a Clinton supporter.

I think that it is fair to say Hillary won largely by not losing. By not making any significant gaffes.

[Mountain Man]

I think that it is fair to say Hillary won largely by not losing. By not making any significant gaffes.

Well, that depends on who you ask. I think adopting a cow-pie eating grin and bluntly declining to answer a question about ethics could be considered a pretty big gaffe, or hypocritically declaring that Eric Snowden should face the music in light of her own scandals. Those are going to be pure gold for Republican campaign commercials.

[Cow Poke]

Well, that depends on who you ask. I think adopting a cow-pie eating grin and bluntly declining to answer a question about ethics could be considered a pretty big gaffe, or hypocritically declaring that Eric Snowden should face the music in light of her own scandals. Those are going to be pure gold for Republican campaign commercials.

I'm pretty sure that will show up in TV ads.

[One Bad Pig]

I think that it is fair to say Hillary won largely by not losing. By not making any significant gaffes.

For a front-runner, that's about the best that can be expected from a debate.

[rogue06]

Okay, I just finished watching the debate (I DVR'd it last night). One thing I noticed...

Remember how back in late July how on his MSNBC show Hardball Chris Matthews repeatedly asked the DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to explain the difference between a Socialist and a Democrat and how she hemmed and hawed and kept changing the subject strongly suggesting that she couldn't think of any? And then a couple days later when Chuck Todd gave her another shot at it on Meet the Press and she still couldn't come up with an answer?

Well, that's what kept running through my head while watching Bernie Sanders (a self-described Socialist) describe his position on an issue followed by Hillary agreeing with it but adding that Sanders didn't go far enough. Hillary, the ostensibly semi-moderate Democrat repeatedly kept trying to out-socialist the avowed socialist!

Perhaps Wasserman Schultz was right in not answering the question because in 2015 there really is no difference to speak of.

[Sam]

Okay, I just finished watching the debate (I DVR'd it last night). One thing I noticed...

Remember how back in late July how on his MSNBC show Hardball Chris Matthews repeatedly asked the DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to explain the difference between a Socialist and a Democrat and how she hemmed and hawed and kept changing the subject strongly suggesting that she couldn't think of any? And then a couple days later when Chuck Todd gave her another shot at it on Meet the Press and she still couldn't come up with an answer?

Well, that's what kept running through my head while watching Bernie Sanders (a self-described Socialist) describe his position on an issue followed by Hillary agreeing with it but adding that Sanders didn't go far enough. Hillary, the ostensibly semi-moderate Democrat repeatedly kept trying to out-socialist the avowed socialist!

Perhaps Wasserman Schultz was right in not answering the question because in 2015 there really is no difference to speak of.

That was not my impression. Clinton seemed to be saying that she was a capitalist who wanted to "save capitalism from itself," which I thought was a smart line. Sanders had trouble explaining that Democratic Socialism isn't at odds with capitalism, per se, because the former is a political ideology and the latter an economic ideology. That difficulty might exist in the nature of the question or it might be a conflation Sanders himself has made.

But Clinton's answer was clearly to the right of Sanders' answer.

[Starlight]

Okay, I just finished watching the debate (I DVR'd it last night). One thing I noticed...

Remember how back in late July how on his MSNBC show Hardball Chris Matthews repeatedly asked the DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz to explain the difference between a Socialist and a Democrat and how she hemmed and hawed and kept changing the subject strongly suggesting that she couldn't think of any? And then a couple days later when Chuck Todd gave her another shot at it on Meet the Press and she still couldn't come up with an answer?

Well, that's what kept running through my head while watching Bernie Sanders (a self-described Socialist) describe his position on an issue followed by Hillary agreeing with it but adding that Sanders didn't go far enough. Hillary, the ostensibly semi-moderate Democrat repeatedly kept trying to out-socialist the avowed socialist!

Perhaps Wasserman Schultz was right in not answering the question because in 2015 there really is no difference to speak of.

The short answer is that the entire Western world operates on a system of regulated capitalism with re-distributive processes in place. We all have "social" security etc.

Socialists don't like Sanders for his stretching the definition of "socialism" too far towards capitalism - he's not really anything close to a "socialist" in a true Marxist sense.

The problem really is just the terminology used in America isn't all that useful. "Capitalism" and "socialism" are not helpful terms, as they're too vague and inaccurate. The difference between Sanders and Hillary is that he's strengthen social programs, regulate Wall Street, and raise taxes on the rich, by slightly more than her. I don't think it's helpful to try and view that small difference through the lens of "capitalism" vs "socialism".

[Starlight]

Mountain Man has seized on some really strange non-scandals in the debate. As to be expected I supposed. (MM, I see your people managed to sabotage Paul Ryan as speaker by accusing him of being a socialist... nice job)

I found it a bit surprising that all 5 candidates wanted to see Snowden face the music. Although Sanders was quite nice about it. Hillary's statement that Snowden mishandled classified information was a little cringeworthy given what she's currently being accused of.

But worst line of the debate I thought was Hillary's "I Represented Wall Street". ~facepalm~ Not what the audience wanted to hear. In context it was both slightly better and slightly worse than it sounds, in different ways. She wasn't trying to say she was a servant of Wall St, that's just her poor choice of words. She was in fact trying to say that she ineffectually shook a finger in their general direction ("I said 'cut it out'") prior to the 2008 crash and it had no effect whatsoever because she's ineffectual.

And her other line-of-the-night was "I never took a position on Keystone until I took a position on Keystone." ~facepalm~ Yep, thanks for reminding us Hillary.


P.S. Something else which I found really interesting about the debate (which I'm sure most here will dismiss in under 1 second as 'bias' etc), was that even the worst-performing candidates on the stage actually knew what they were talking about, and talked about the issues and didn't make childish attacks on one another. It was soooo different to the Republican debate in tone and quality. Such that literally the worst Democratic candidate (eg Lincoln Chafee) would make a preferable president to any of the Republican candidates. To the last man they were more intelligent, more well-balanced, more informed, more sane than any of the 100 Republican candidates. I challenge any person who is even semi-intelligent to watch both the Democrat and Republican debates and not come away with the view that the Republican candidates are a bunch of children compared to the Democratic candidates who were a group of responsible adults with slightly different views on policy.

[Mountain Man]

Mountain Man has seized on some really strange non-scandals in the debate. As to be expected I supposed. (MM, I see your people managed to sabotage Paul Ryan as speaker by accusing him of being a socialist... nice job)

I never said they were scandals, dummy; they're just moments that will most likely come back to bite Hillary later in the campaign. In fact, you even pegged one such moment yourself, "Hillary's statement that Snowden mishandled classified information was a little cringeworthy given what she's currently being accused of," so I don't know what you're whining about.

And I'm not sure what you mean by "your people", but Ryan's undoing, as far as I've read, was his weak position on immigration and border security. I've not come across anyone accusing him of being a socialist.