I’m pleasantly surprised to see that a lot of people actually watched the Democratic debate. I didn’t think there would be so much interest, especially when it was scheduled up against some pretty compelling playoff baseball games. In fact, it set an audience record for a Democratic primary debate.
About The Author
BooMan
Martin Longman a contributing editor at the Washington Monthly. He is also the founder of Booman Tribune and Progress Pond. He has a degree in philosophy from Western Michigan University.
Not only close to twice as many as the previous highly rated Democratic primary debate but four months earlier than in the 2008 election cycle when people tuned in to see that Clinton had a challenger.
Would be interesting to know the political affiliation of the viewers. My guess is that the GOP debate viewership was bolstered by a lot of Democrats.
Impressive and encouraging.
The BET Awards were going on at the same time too…
Isn’t that special. Now I’m convinced that DWS is a witch — and not one of the good ones.
Maybe the groups who watch baseball playoffs and political debates overlap less that you might suppose. Or maybe baseball playoffs are less compelling for a lot of others. Or maybe…
Polls say Bernie Sanders ‘won’ the debate while the established media unanimously and loudly proclaim the darling of the rich and powerful the next prez, i.e., Hillary Rodham Clinton.
http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2015/10/sanders-debate-results-as-case-study-of-the-modern-versailles
-hall-of-mirrors.html
What gives?
Above I meant to link to Adam Johnson at Alternet:
http://www.alternet.org/media/bernie-won-all-focus-groups-online-polls-so-why-media-saying-hillary-w
on-debate
HRC “won” because Bernie didn’t annihilate her. Basically, Bernie must win DEVASTATINGLY to win. Otherwise she’s still ahead.
Ridiculous.
Of course, I didn’t watch. We were at a wine dinner.
Debates are a place where spin works. Whoever gets proclaimed the winner is the winner. Media want HRC to win and she was a head going in and ahead coming out.
Right, so it’s striking that the polls and focus groups decided in favor of Sanders. A bit more passion is going to be needed to avoid a coming Republican presidency. Really.
especially after one could see the moderators trying to move the focus groups, and looking surprised when a person said they liked what Sanders was saying despite the moderators pressure.
Wait 24-48 hours. Polling studies show that after a day or two of pundits declaring the winner, the same people who said x won the debate now think y did.
Yes, that wouldn’t surprise me.
I don’t agree with everything in here but a lot of is true
http://pleasecutthecrap.com/bernies-other-problem/
On the debate – based on the number of folks who watched, the overall tone and the complete lack of smart ass comments I am getting from my conservative friends I agree with many who say the winner was the Democratic Party.
I am logging in for the first time in years because of Boo’s prior post on South Carolina. I have lived here now for 10 years and most all y’all in the prior post are off on what I see happening.
Racism is a part of what is going on but only a part. I have dozens of conservative friends (it’s either that or be a hermit with no life) and the most common thread amongst them is the desire to win again along with a general hatred of Democrats, fed by years of BS from Fox News and Con Radio. So when Trump comes along and swaggers and pokes people in the eye, that’s very appealing to some of them. The friends I have who like Trump don’t really even believe the wall is possible, but they love that he makes Liberals mad. They LOVE it. Others in my circle really like Carson because he wears his religion on his sleeve, and that too makes Liberals upset. Several like Rubio because they think he might have the best chance to win next November against Hillary. Not a single one I know plans to vote for Bush in the primary, because they don’t think he can win the ‘Bush 3 vs Clinton 2’ argument.
They want to win, and they hate Liberals more than they hate people of color or even teh gays. It’s actually funny to watch and if the Democrats were better organized down here we could really play this to our advantage.
Cheers.
So what is it about liberals that they hate?
Everything they have been fed about us for the past 15+ years. We are too intellectual, we hate the military, Handouts R Us, we are the real racists, etc etc. It’s mostly utter bullshit but they believe it to be true.
Some are smarter than that, but even my smartest conservative aquaintances have some amazingly stupid ideas about what we believe and stand for as Dems.
Fox News / Roger Ailes / Con Radio have done a brilliant job of negative marketing here in the south.
I am doing my small part my correcting these errors wherever I can but there aren’t very many of us and the BS is thick.
Cheers
Yes, that’s what I see/hear from conservatives. It’s the usual memes but said with ever more emphasis and hatred. All liberals hate the military, all liberals just want to give away free handouts to the poorz and blahs, all liberals want a free hand out themselves, all liberals are the real racists.
That’s it in a nutshell. Mostly it makes no sense, but these people, who’re addicted to Fox/Rush/Glenn, etc, have no truck with reality, and no amount of factual debunking makes the slightest bit of difference. They have been trained to believe this crap, and the cling and grasp to these false tropes no matter what.
The latest meme is how any “liberal over the age of 30 has severe mental illness.” Of course, what’s that say about people who truly suffer from mental illness? But this sort of logic doesn’t penetrate. It’s all: hate the liberals who the very cause of ALL of their many WOES (what these “woes.” What these “woes” are is beyond me. The conservatives who appear to do the loudest complaining all appear to be doing very well, thankyewverymuch, and why they are all so angry – beyond being ginned up, of course – is the big question, along with: why do they so ENJOY being constantly raging mad 100% of the time? The addiction to the negativity is what I never got.
Interesting. Thanks for the insights. I swing by some rightwing websites once in a while, and my take is pretty much what you indicate, esp the idea of hate, hate, hating horrible terrible Libruls worse than anyone or anything else. The propagandists have done their jobs well in brainwashing this portion of the population to play into the usual “divide and conquer” game.
It’s too bad, really, bc there often seems little way to communicate with conservatives of today who often seem to me to be very unhinged from reality. One sibling & spouse in my extreme rightwing fundie family finally got sick of Fox/Con Radio and turned it all off, plus they left their big The Family MegaChurch. I have been able to have some reasonable discussions with them. My other sibling (BFFs – really – with icky Ricky Santorum) is off the charts. We can only talk about basic stuff and never ever go near politics. Not worth it.
I totally don’t get the appeal of Trump, who’s a bankrupt blow-hard “entertainer,” but your explanation makes some sense, I guess, given the territory.
Of course, conservatives want to win and win big-time this election, but the irony is how they are basically eating their own. The GOP, imo, seems to be really imploding, but I don’t expect it to just disappear. But imo, the BigMoney people are putting the dollar$ behind HRC to win the show this time. She’s their gal, and the D-Team, while craven greedy cowards, is not batshit insane.
Good luck to us all.
Thanks for your observations. From one who lives in an adjacent state, it does behoove us Democrat supporting voters to pay attention. But, I’ve a bit of a different interpretation of why conservatives view their candidates as driving us liberals crazy and that being their primary motivation for supporting the Trumps and the Carsons. The sad truth is that they BELIEVE it drives us crazy because the self-same media that has driven them so far right tells them that it is so.
The fact that Erickson and other conservative pundits have now labeled Paul Ryan as a RINO illustrates how extreme the whole party has become. History will hopefully show how the GOP was “undone” by its extremely partisan media.
In addition to building a grass roots campaign that functions in both election years and not, there’s an opportunity for Democrats to make a place for the saner among them. I know that the recently energized liberal left won’t like this, but the sooner the far far right is marginalized the better for the country. This outcome could be sped up by bringing back the Fairness Doctrine. IMO, it would level the playing field vis-a-vis liberal voices versus conservative ones and just might infuse the spines of the so called mainstream media and force them to become real reporters and journalists.
The Fairness Doctrine isn’t coming back — not anytime soon and if it ever did, it would be when people have stopped looking to TV and radio for their information.
Preserving net neutrality is the only card “the people” have to play and the forces that want to steal that from our pockets are formidable.
For some time I’ve been feeling an uptick in Dem interest in the campaign. More and more I see the apathy, or Clinton fatigue waning. Not saying I hear lions roaring. But Bernie has indeed made Hillary a better candidate, they both are strong and they’re enticing Dems to unpack the apathy and join in. Feels good not to wake up in defense mode. That others were interested enough to tune in & feel good about the substance bodes well for the 2016 fight.
Yes, that wouldn’t surprise me.
My previous comment is out of place.