Presidential Debate #3

Pundits are going wild…

What tact should each side take, and will it move voters?

I figure Wallace will bring up latest - quid pro quo & undercover tapes

Trump should spend the entire time talking about Wikileaks and corruption. He won’t, he’ll talk about how much money he has, but that’s what he should do.

Clinton should hammer the sex scandals and just coast otherwise.

I don’t see a shift in votes at all.

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I agree, I think most people have made up their minds at this point.

Trump MAYBE has ground to game if he stays on the issues, but I doubt that will happen.

I’m also curious how Chris Wallace handles it. He was very fact base and fair during the GOP primary debate, which challenged Trump on his policy-lite answers (the classic “your numbers just don’t add up, sir” was memorable for me)

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I think Wallace will be the best moderator we’ve seen in several presidential debate seasons

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I would be downright astonished if policy gets talked about at all during this debate

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^All of this.

Trump’s best chance is actually twofold, IMO:

  1. go after Hillary hard on WikiLeaks, emails, and corruption.

  2. show a semblance of a human side.

Trump already has the “Lock Her Up!” voters and the Obama haters mostly locked up. What he (and many of his supporters) don’t seem to understand is that’s not enough to win the election. He has to pick up at least a few of the “moderate” voters. Not all of them, but a few. There are plenty of rich-white-soccer-moms in the suburbs of Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, etc who all hate Hillary because they think she’s a shrew and she’s an extension of Obama, and if he can give them an out, they’re just dying to take it. To date he has shown an unwillingness or inability to reach that type of person.

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I’m looking forward to the entertainment. This is one of those times when I’m relieved that the status quo is gridlock, and Presidents have a very difficult time changing international policy. Or domestic policy for that matter. I’m still impressed that the public seems to think that the POTUS has some sort of combined legislative and judicial power.

I think Trump had about a month-long window immediately after he sealed the nomination to shift gears and try to appeal to the more moderate masses. That ship has sailed. I think that he firmly believes that anyone who doesn’t agree with him is a loser and he has no interest in convincing them otherwise if they don’t take him for what he is.

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Is anyone actually excited about this shit show? I don’t know of anything that can be said tonight that will swing a single voter.

Nope. Doubt I’ll watch.

I don’t see anything changing. Trump’s only hope is that the confidence of Hillary winning or leading is so hyped that people don’t bother voting thinking it’s already over.

In the California primary, the AP reported that Hillary was the winner a day before the vote was held. The resulting voter turnout was 28% lower than in 2008.

Other than a video surfacing showing Hillary punching a puppy in the face while on her way to do a back alley arms deal with ISIS, I think she has this locked up.

I actually think Hillary will take the tact to talk almost exclusively about policy. I think she gets that this is the closing argument, and she wants the last word from the debate to claim the ground of being the issue-driven candidate.

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I have decided that I would rather slam my dick with a hammer then watch this debate between the two worst people in America.
Fuck it, I’ll hit the balls too, before I watch this nightmare unfold. The thought that one of these two will be the president of the United States of America makes me want to hurl.

Assassination, heart attack, impeachment, are all acceptable to me.
There is no way I will wake up on election day happy. One will be meh, the other will be …

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The POTUS does, not only do they appoint a large number of judges(300+ by Obama) they can use Executive Orders to effectively make law when congress doesn’t want to.

Now these laws and judges can be removed or changed but doing so requires some semblance of function from other bodies of government.

And that will act as a prime example of what I’m talking about. There is a vast difference between appointing a judge, who will decide numerous cases of the course of his/her career (most of which will never be political or controversial), and deciding specific cases.

Me too. I checked out on this election from the get go knowing it will be a complete debacle.

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Just because Obama (or any other POTUS) doesn’t “[decide] specific cases” doesn’t mean he doesn’t have extensive judicial power. 300+ judges leaning one way can make for powerful change regardless of whether 90% of their cases are not directly political. Plus, controlling who gets nominated for SCOTUS is vital to the political environment.

x2 Boehner a snake but agree with him here -Hillary appointments could lurch this country away from centre/to the left for the next 20 +years…

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Actually, it means exactly that he doesn’t have judicial power. There is a difference between the power granted under Articles II and III of the U.S. Constitution. The exact delineation has been moved and refined over the years by the acts of specific POTUS and decisions of the SCOTUS (particularly famous are Andrew Jackson’s refusal to enforce Worcester v. Georgia (of course that is an example of executive power) and the decision in Marbury v. Madison), but the powers you describe are decidely distinct. That is not to say that I disagree with your point more generally on the power of appointment, which obviously involves the power to influence the direction of the court, but it is easy to exaggerate the extent of that influence. Justices are appointed for life, and they don’t always behave as expected once appointed.

I go back to my original statement regarding gridlock and my allusion to professional bureaucracy. These are the only way I can sleep at night knowing that our next president will either be a sociopath or a buffoon.

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