2016 USA Presidential election thread I: The warm-up

[Terrestrialrage]

TLDR: Ted Cruz did a mic drop, Kasich bringing his A game, Rubio getting big applause, Trump still a moron.

[Tyrath]

Ted Cruz did a mic drop? Seemed more like revealing his own insanity.

[Terrestrialrage]

Well, an extreme right wing version of a mic drop

[Salodin]

Wow, Trump wants to get rid of superpacs? That's pretty neat.

[Andalusian girls]

and meaningless. a new SCOTUS must overturn the Citizens United and Speechnow decisions

[Tyche]

They have to cut this shit to 5 people. Too many hurt butts.

[Terrestrialrage]

Kasich was doing decently until he basically said "Great drug question, but I'd like to repeat the same shit I've been saying for the last hour and a half"

[Salodin]

CNBC has officially lost control of the debate. Holy shit...

[Quicklet]

I know it's hard to do when you have to fit 10 candidates into 2 hours, but I wish moderators would fact check some of these dodges a bit harder. Debates are glorified beauty pageants right now where as long as you come off sounding like you're strong and aggressive, you win, no matter how ridiculous your statements are.

[Tyrath]

The lady has fact checked a bit. You can only do so much live.

[Quicklet]

Yeah but every time they fact check the candidates just go "Oh you biased mainstream media, why don't you talk about the ISSUES instead of attacking us?"

[Xno Kappa]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but raising the debt ceiling isn't a discussion of whether or not to borrow more money. It's to pay off the money already budgeted right?

[Tyrath]

Fuck all the other matchups. I'm down with Fiorina vs Clinton. Give it to me.

[Quicklet]

Yes. It's an artifact of how Congress used to fund their budgets. For the most part it was never used as a real political bargaining chip until the 2010 Republican House came to power -- basically it would often be tacked onto other must-pass legislation and most of the opposition could take no votes on it to look good knowing that it already had enough yes votes to pass.

[Kachiko]

Yeah but every time they fact check the candidates just go "Oh you biased mainstream media, why don't you talk about the ISSUES instead of attacking us?"

When you open the debate questions by asking the leading candidate "is this a comic book version of the President" then you've already let that media bias cat out of the bag. You can ask that question about his competency, in a non-condescending way, and it's been done in the other debates. It says a lot about CNBC's inability to host a substantive debate when the best sound-bytes are several of the candidates ripping CNBC apart on said bias.

[Quicklet]

It's easy to attack the moderators and the media when they don't have the opportunity to respond.

I just feel like we're living in this bizarro-world where facts don't matter anymore, and if any debate moderator dares to hold up a magnifiying glass to a politician's record or inconsistencies then they're "biased". Moderators are supposed to ask tough questions of candidates -- if they can't handle tough questions in a primary, how are they supposed to handle opposition research in the general?

[archibaldcrane]

Facts don't really matter when there's 14 damn candidates, no. They will somewhat later.

[Gredival]

You can't blame it all on CNBC, but if you just compare what they brought vs. what Anderson Cooper did in the Dem debate you can see the quality was lacking.

[Gredival]

Kasich is the Huntsman of this cycle. Doesn't matter what truthbombs he drops, no one is going to care because primary voters are crazy.

The GOP is reaching the point of no return where the crazies that control the primary are sending unelectables up to the general election. They already threw a bunch of 2012 Senate races that way, but now it's becoming more than a local problem.

The winning strategy for Dems is to not do that.

http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-s...d=sm_fb_maddow

[Sho]

I think Trump is gonna start declining now.