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Real Presidential Debates
slithytove writes "As many of us are aware, the presidential debates are currently controlled by an organization called the Commision on Presidential Debates. As anyone who's seen a presidential debate recently could guess, the CPD does just what our two major parties want: exclude third parties and impose rules that make the event more of a joint press conference than a debate. Non-establishment candidates Michael Badnarik and David Cobb will be having an actual debate this Thursday. After debating each other, they will be rebutting the points Bush and Kerry make in their pseudo-debate. Free Market News will be streaming it and providing a download afterwards."
Can we spread DVDs recorded off the stream around? Anything these two have to say is bound to be much more open and interesting than what the oligopolists have to say.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
How long has this American flag background been on the Politics section? I only noticed today. Does this exclude discussion of non-American politics?
Random is the New Order.
Get real now. Ralph Nader is registering 1 percent in the polls. He is more worthy of being in the debates than these two clowns.
Hardly anybody knows who Badnarik and Cobb are, why they hell should they be in the major leagues? Maybe if they ran a better campaign, got the names on the ballots, and polled better than 0%, they would be on prime time. As it is, I have no problem excluding any yahoo from the debate just because they think they belong.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
Anyone who has read my posts can quickly guess I am a republican, but this "debate" process really turns my stomach. Practiced questions, scripted answers, attempts at "humor", and no outside candidates is unacceptable. We need these third, 4th, 5th etc party candidates pushing the mainstream runners to answer questions they don't want to answer. On paper Bush and Kerry are both so equally horrible that it is impossible to distinguish between them. Putting a strong third party runner in there with them with unscripted questions is exactly what we need to see what they really are. It amazes me they are both (Bush and Kerry) so fearful of getting a question they aren't ready for or being upstaged by someone actually in touch with true American feelings that they are their debate-fixing group make it impossible to find out anything that resembles the truth.
... we have got to get a strong third party in place and soon to push the political mountain or we are going to watch these two parties merge into one uncontrollable monster.
I've said it many times
Knightfall
What the debates need is someone who will ask the candidates what they actually mean when they say some pleasantly patriotic abstraction:
"They hate our freedom"?
Define precisely who "they" are and what is meant by "freedom" and then provide a precisely reasoned argument why it is that they would "hate" it.
(Nobody wants to be the first candidate to say, "Now this isn't what I signed up for.")
Of course, that would probably run afoul of their agreement to moderate the debate: http://www.theolympian.com/home/news/20040923/tops tories/151247.shtml.
I want to see hard questions asked. Let the candidates ask each other questions. Have fact-checkers on hand.
I want to see Bush and Kerry squirm a little bit. A president's job is to run a country, yet the forum we set up for them to perform is as safe and predictable as possible.
Sigh... Something unpredictable would be nice. I always feel like I know what the next thing out of their mouths is going to be.
Yeah, the only interesting thing that is allowed are hypothetical questions. One I would ask Bush would be:
What would you call two people that under an investigation that require all of the following to be true in order to participate in that investigation? 1) That the two people must be allowed to testify jointly 2) That they would not be required to take an oath before testifying; 3) That the testimony would not be recorded electronically or transcribed, and that the only record would be notes taken by one of the commission staffers; and finally 4) That these notes would not be made public.
For those that don't know these were the requirements posed by Bush and Cheney in order to participate in the investigation of the largest attack on our nation within our borders.
Feel free to draw your own conclusions and vote accordingly.
Really, it ha sbeen the rule ever since the Nixon-Kennedy debates. All the radio listeners thought Nixon did better, but all the TV viewers thought Kennedy did better - largely because of appearances and style.
Don't blame style over substance on the candidate's handlers. The candidate's advisors and aides are only trying to make him appealing to the public.
It is the public that looks for style over substance. If the public was interested in listening to a 3 hour long debate on the merits of a privitized social security system then that's what the debates would be about.
Um... they didn't have to testify at all - due to separation of powers. Since this wasn't an impeachment hearing (at least not yet) or independent council investigation, the congress has no business investigating the office of the president. All of the stipulations you mention were specifically put in place to change the tone of the interview from being one of investigators investigating the president, to one of two equal branches of government having a dialogue. I think Bush also released some sort of statement saying to the effect that his meeting with the committee was not to be the basis of any future precedent.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
"Where would you suggest they set the limit?"
I don't have a number to suggest, but having it set that high will eventually bite them in the ass. Winning the presidency requires a majority of the electoral votes, not simply a plurality. Maine and Nebraska currently have per-district election of presidential electors, and hopefully Colorado will be following suit this year; it's only a matter of time before the country in general drops the winner-takes-all mechanism from Electoral College elections like we have already done with House elections (yes, "once upon a time...").
With that being said, in the House of Representatives the Republican Party has a majority with just under 52% of the seats, and in the Senate they have 51% even. From 2001 until 2003, no party had a majority in the Senate (there was a Democrat plurality, but that was it).
With party politics being as neck-and-neck as it is today, how long do you think it will be before no candidate wins a majority of the electoral votes? It may yet even happens this year, and when it does happen whoever comes in third is very important, no matter what kind of gap is between second and third, because three is the number of candidates presented to Congress.
Run for President, or convince someone you admire to run for President.
That fact that you didn't even consider this option -- or worse, think it is an absurd idea -- is a sad reflection on our current politicians-for-life trend.
Ironically, the word ironically is often used incorrectly.
The debates, even as they exist today, DO matter:
-- Scripted or not, you will see the TWO significant candidates' opposing point of views presented by the candidates themselves.
-- You will see which team has their shit together the most in a really fucking scary public display. If you somehow don't believe the debates scare the crap out of presidential candidates, you haven't been there. In 2000, Gore lost to Bush in a major way on this alone (I supported Gore before the debates).
-- This is an important way for the candidates to address truly important issues (issues important to the majority of Americans) without resorting to the name-calling and mud-slinging of ad campaigns. I do care about who lied about what and when, but eventually we have to get down to the important issues depending on this election.
The bottom line is if you watch Bush or Kerry and pay more attention to Bush's "vacant eyes" or Kerry's "botox-injected face", these debates will never matter to you, and I along with most other Americans hope you don't cast your ignorant vote...
PS: you are now listed as a foe, because no person of sound mind can also be a republican, and I don't like people who are not of sound mind.
I guess you'd better list me as a foe since I'm a Republican as well. BTW, I registered as a Republican back in 2000 to support Sen. McCain. I also joined the College Republicans, where its members were planning on voting for Bush by default. I've talked them into giving Sen. McCain a chance and they agreed to join me to hear him speak when he has planning to come to town.
I also had many friends who were in the College Democrats that were Bradley supports. Bradley was my second choice so I organized a bipartisan effort between the College Republicans and Democrats (wasn't too hard since most of us were moderats) for on-campus voter registration drive. Sadly, both McCain and Bradley lost the primaries, and no, I did not vote for either Bush or Gore.
I'm not planning on voting for Bush this year, but I may end up voting for Kerrey as "lesser of two evils" depending on what he says on the debate.
Personally, I think that no person of sound mind can also sterotype so blantly, but just disagreeing with me doesn't necessarily make you wrong (although I reserve the right to disagree), and thus will not have you or anyone else on my foe list. Life's too short to be closed minded, IMHO.
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