Not surprising. In the battle of accomplishments, Republicans are shooting blanks. In the battle of wits, Republicans are entirely unarmed. Why WOULD they subject themselves to the inevitable trouncing they’d suffer in a debate? https://t.co/98fDroK52q
— Glenn Kirschner (@glennkirschner2) April 14, 2022
… In a statement, RNC chairwoman Ronna McDaniel said the commission is “biased and has refused to enact simple and commonsense reforms to help ensure fair debates including hosting debates before voting begins and selecting moderators who have never worked for candidates on the debate stage.”
The commission was formed in 1987 as a nonprofit sponsored by both the Republican and Democratic Parties and has sponsored debates in every presidential election since 1988. The group’s co-chairs include former RNC chairman Frank Fahrenkopf…
The RNC claims it has not pulled its future nominees out of debates entirely.
The commission drew considerable ire from Trump during the 2020 campaign, with him and his campaign aides often railing about the selected moderators, the commission’s decision to hold the second debate virtually during the coronavirus pandemic and the choice to mute each candidate’s mic during the final debate after the first contest included considerable interruptions from the then-President.
Moderators were a central issue for Republicans in 2020 – especially the selection of C-SPAN’s Steve Scully to moderate what would have been the second contest.
The Trump campaign attacked Scully for working for Biden roughly four decades earlier, leading the journalist to accidentally publicly reach out on Twitter to Anthony Scaramucci, Trump’s short-lived White House communications director. When the outreach frustrated Republicans, Scully said he had been hacked, something he later admitted was not true. C-SPAN then placed Scully on “administrative leave” for lying.
The commission eventually canceled the second debate after Trump declined to attend a virtual debate despite concerns over his Covid-19 diagnosis.
The RNC has advocated for a number of changes to the commission, including adopting term limits for its board and prohibiting members from making public comments about any candidates. McDaniel, in an echo of Trump’s concerns, has also pushed for more influence on which journalists moderate general election debates, asking the commission for a “transparent criteria for selecting debate moderators that would disqualify individuals from consideration who have apparent conflicts of interest due to personal, professional, or partisan factors.”
They can’t risk pissing off He Who Shall Not Be Named — or, more importantly, TFG’s legions of angry, armed cultists — and they don’t see any plausible alternative candidates who’ll be less vulnerable in front of a half-decent moderator and a not-insane Democratic candidate. So, easy way out it is!
I always forget, which side is full of snowflakes that need safe spaces to avoid being confronted with facts they don’t like? https://t.co/II08KQgQZe
— Robert Maguire (@RobertMaguire_) April 14, 2022
debbie
I don’t think Ronna’s been good for the party. Keep it up!
The Moar You Know
They’ll never participate in a debate again.
Baud
That excludes all of Fox News.
lowtechcyclist
You mean they’re afraid to debate the guy they claim is senile? Say it ain’t so!
cope
Please, please, please have the DNC hold debates with empty chairs and pull a quadruple reverse Eastwood with a full twist
ETA: Or better yet (completely stolen from Colbert), have eight year old kids speak direct quotations from the various Republic Party participants in response to queries.
Baud
OT.
What say you, smart people?
Epic discovery, or a nothingburger?
japa21
@Baud: Based upon my vast knowledge of physics, to me it is a nothing burger, which is also what my knowledge of physics is.
SiubhanDuinne
I’ve never been persuaded that the debate moderators/panellists need to be media figures (almost always, these days, well-known television personalities). I’d prefer to see a series of issue-centric debates, with actual experts in those fields doing the questioning.
(I also realise that these exercises haven’t been proper “debates” for many decades — if, indeed, they ever were.)
JPL
Chickens have more grit than republicans. I assume Herschel will use this as an excuse to opt out of debates with Warnock. Herschel won’t debate other republicans, so why debate the democratic nominee.
Jay C
This makes little sense even by Republican standards- unless their fear is that CANNOT win any national election where they do not have unfettered control over the media presentations.
”Debates before voting starts” SRLY: what does that enemies mean?
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: It’s the issues that the republicans are afraid to debate so that would not work.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Then we go to the empty podium scenario described above. Win-win!
cope
@Baud: Non-epic but important discovery.
It implies one of three things. Either the math is wrong in predicting its mass (unlikely), the measurement is wrong (unlikely as well given the current precision of the tools) or there is something missing from the Standard Model (most likely) involving the existence of unknown particles imparting this extra mass to the W boson.
ETA: I’m not smart, I’m parroting what I have read elsewhere.
Sure Lurkalot
Moskva
Belongs in previous thread but it’s dead.
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
IIRC, the fact that David Perdue failed to show up for at least one debate with Jon Ossoff hurt him (DP) in the January 2021 runoff.
JPL
@SiubhanDuinne: I would have ads prepared with the democratic candidate on one side and a chicken on the other. Although chickens have more grit, so I do apologize to the breed.
Baud
@cope:
That’s huge.
VOR
Yep, I agree. And TFG also set the standard that you never have to release your taxes.
JWR
Federal judge said what?! Truth, that’s what.
cope
@Baud: There’s already a list of things inconsistent with the Standard Model including gravity, dark energy/dark matter, the mass of the neutrino, and the matter/antimatter asymmetry. This is just one more albeit a very interesting addition to the mix.
Another Scott
[ kermit-screaming-yayyyy-while-flailing-arms.gif ]
Here’s hoping the League of Women Voters or some similar independent group hosts debates again.
Cheers,
Scott.
BC in Illinois
The Monty Python / Republican Strategy:
VOR
My guess is they want the debates held long before voting so they have plenty of time to shove a debate loss down the memory hole.
Sure Lurkalot
@SiubhanDuinne:
You mean the know-nothing elites?
SiubhanDuinne
@JPL:
Maybe just lay in a supply of rubber chickens?
El-Man
Technically they’re not shooting blanks, it’s just that their accomplishments are terrible.
Uncle Cosmo
@Sure Lurkalot: NB Even that Schiklgruber Teppichfresser was smart enough >80 yrs ago to rechristen one of his capital ships, on the grounds that it would be not nearly the PR disaster for the Lützow to be relegated to the benthos by enemy action than if it had retained its former name – Deutschland. (You could look it up.)
Villago Delenda Est
Ronna Romney can go fuck herself with a curare infused chain saw.
Villago Delenda Est
@Baud: Hell, it excludes Villagers as well.
Villago Delenda Est
Turn the entire thing back over to the League of Women Voters and exclude all political parties from the process.
Roger Moore
@Baud:
I will have to check with my brother, the theoretical physics professor. The last time there was something like this, he had a complicated explanation for why the error in the theoretical calculation was more than people said it was, so the discrepancy was more apparent than real. I wouldn’t be surprised if something similar is true in this case.
trollhattan
Kiddo’s in beautiful Azusa, CA (gateway to Glendora) with her team at a distance track meet and it looks like a fast field. Eleven women broke the meet record for the 800, six of them broke the stadium record, and the winner was less than a second from breaking two minutes (that’s fast).
Mine’s running the 5,000 later this evening.
Fun fact: Jackie Joyner-Kersee still holds the stadium heptathlon record. She graduated in 1985!
Sure Lurkalot
@JPL:
Damn. I figured they’d coach him so that every response would be “respectfully, my opponent is a pedophile and you’re asking me a question?”
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
I never like the modern debates (post 1970s), the “moderaters” always bent over backwards to favor the republicans. Out of fear of being labeled “biased” by the republican propaganda machine they ended up being biased against Democrats.
Good riddance
Roger Moore
@Jay C:
I think that’s a complaint that early voting had started in some places before the last debate. It’s not a completely ridiculous complaint, but like everything coming from the Republicans it’s a bad faith one. They’re looking for an excuse to back out, and they’ll seize on whatever seems good.
David ? ☘The Establishment☘? Koch
PBS/BBC kicked off season two of their great series “Rise of the Nazis” this week with the invasion of the Soviet Union and it is phenomenal.
You can see it online (here)
trollhattan
Reports of explosions in the Kyiv area and all of Ukraine is on air raid alert tonight. So in the meantime, this is reported happening in mother Russia.
SpaceUnit
I’m fine with this. Debating crazy people is a waste of time.
And our MSM only cares about zingers and earth-tones.
trollhattan
@SpaceUnit:
I threw in the towel after that debate where they failed to literally or figuratively rein in Trump when he lumbered across the stage to loom over Hillary.
Worthless events.
Sure Lurkalot
Just read that Trump is planning to endorse JD Vance and there’s a big brouhaha boiling over it. Rooting for injuries, of course.
SpaceUnit
@trollhattan:
Exactly. Sharing a stage with them only hands them a fig-leaf of credibility.
wetzel
This comment system eats my rants. It disappears them sometimes. I love that. I don’t give a crap.
My point was don’t worry about debate until after the seditionists are exposed and jailed. They left the plane of debate with violence. We are still off the plane until the lawful resolution of the sedition plot. Not normal times. Democrats need to rise up stronger than Zola. This is the season for nos accusons, not debates on the podium except to ask ‘who in your state pressured the electors?’ and ‘were you involved’. Guilt or not guilt will be adjudicated on an individual basis, but also guilt attaches to the entire GOP. The party apparatus was involved. The GOP is the party of sedition until it fully accounts for how it allowed seditionists to enlist the national party in a conspiracy to overthrow the government.
lowtechcyclist
@Sure Lurkalot: Along the same lines, Ctrl-Z
coin operated
My dream debate is when Trump says something derogatory about one of the other R’s wives and they walk over and give him the Will Smith treatment.
Of course, investing in popcorn futures before said debate…
germy
Informative thread:
SiubhanDuinne
@coin operated:
I sure wish Hillary had done that during the second 2016 debate.
smith
@coin operated: If TFG is running there will be no primary debates, probably no primaries. He’ll be nominated by unanimous acclamation.
Geminid
For all Ronna McDaniel’s big talk, there still could be Presidential debates in 2024. Like I said below, the major party candidates can still agree to debate. They don’t need some commission to have a debate either. Any news network would jump at the chance to host a debate with any format the campaigns can agree on.
If the Republican candidate wants to debate Biden and Biden agrees to debate him, what can the RNC do? Revoke the nomination?
Captain C
@Sure Lurkalot: “So, Herschel, did you ever stop beating your wife?”
Citizen_X
This. How did they lose control of debates in the first place? Who thought it would be a good idea to have the parties and the networks take control of debates and turn them into circuses, anyway?
Captain C
@Citizen_X: I think it was the parties themselves. At least the Republicans were complaining that the reality-based questions had a liberal bias.
docNC
Ronna Romney
What a tool. Hanging on to her grift as tightly as she can.
Everyone is biased against her and hers…wah wah.
They can all go on Fox and talk it up. Who cares? Let the Democrats have a Q&A without a big fat guy trying to intimidate from behind, or hiding when he knows he can’t win anyway.
trollhattan
For the laffs, Trump and the slippery slope. How much again, Donny?
https://twitter.com/Acyn/status/1510410877068976130?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1510410877068976130%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fdigbysblog.net%2F
Kay
I know one of the signers quite well – Sandy Barber. She is a force to be reckoned with :)
UncleEbeneezer
A friend/colleague of mine just wrote this piece about how unwelcome outdoor spaces are for Black People :(
mrmoshpotato
Fuck these chickenshit motherfuckers. Fuck them for being too chickenshit to debate, and fuck them for the 40+ years of damage they’ve done to this country.
Brachiator
@Citizen_X:
The parties wanted this. Next question.
Raven
@wetzel: Hey, I read your two posts this morning. I’ve lived in Athens for 35 years, 23 in Normaltown so I’m pretty familiar with the things you noted. I was at Tech for a couple of years after I finished my grad work but, even though I had an apartment on Collier, I just came back here on the weekends and never really got a feel for the ATL.
docNC
@mrmoshpotato: you said what I didn’t think I could say here. Thanks
Raven
@docNC: Why wouldn’t you be able to say that here?
docNC
@Raven: I just didn’t know I could say those words without ramifications.
Raven
@docNC: This joynt is wide fuckin open!
docNC
@Raven: thanks. I appreciate that
Philbert
Do like Lincoln-Douglas debates. No moderators, just let them go back and forth 10 min at a time. No microphone for the candidate not speaking. We wish!
Feathers
Saw someone on Twitter recommending that at least one debate be replaced with a round of Jeopardy, with the categories being things the American President should know, like American history, the Constitution, world geography, etc, etc.
Sounds like a great idea to me.
Benw
I’m going to settle in for the rest of the Braves-Padres game and chill out. Resume tomorrow
dww44
@Villago Delenda Est: I’d like to see this happen and then see how the Republicans respond. If they decline this set-up they are demonstrably anti-democratic.
SFAW
@SiubhanDuinne:
No kidding. I have said here, more than once, that I wish she had turned around (when Fuckhead was stalking her) and said “Back the fuck OFF, you pedophilic asshole, or I’ll kick you into next week.”* She would have had to endure a week or two of tut-tutting from the usual suspects (FTFTFNYT, for example), but then the issue would have gone away, or maybe increased her lead.
*Acceptable substitute: “… or I’ll hit you so hard it’ll kill your whole family.”