GOP Debate
gregladen | October 29, 2015The big loser in this debate was CNBC. The network chose to not let anyone who was not a subscriber see the debate live. Then, apparently, the moderators trivialized the debate and annoyed the debaters, who then attacked CNBC and the press in general. Then, today, when we look at the news stories about the debate, there are hardly any. Nobody seems to really care what happened last night.
Another loser was Ben Carson. I've come to think of the online unofficial polls as useful to indicate overall opinions, and to show how those opinions change (we can discuss another time why this is a…
gregladen | September 17, 2015Eating your enemies is a time honored method for winning. It is rarely used by American politicians or their supporters.
Here is how you eat your enemy. I'll use a generalized example based on several events during the GOP debates.
Moderator: Mr. Trump, you've said 'bla bla bla bla'. Alternate Candidate, what do you have to say to Mr. Trump about this?
Alternate: Yada yada yada.
Donald Trump: [smiling, nodding giving thumbs up] I agree with all that.
More typically, a politician in this situation would find a way to separate themselves form Alternate Candidate, playing off the moderator…
gregladen | August 8, 2015Select one and only one. Or two if you like.
--- see down below for update ---
Megyn Kelly of FOX news went after Donald Trump, the apparent winner of the FOX-GOP Fauxbate. Donald Trump at first declared that he has no time to be politically correct. Later he proved that he does have time to be politically incorrect, when he seemed to imply that Kelly was out of sorts during the debate because she was having female problems.
This led a conservative organization to dump Trump from a keynote speakers spot. We see a crack in the armor form as Erick Erickson, who had invited Trump to…
gregladen | August 7, 2015Trump went into the GOP debate last night with a roughly 20% poll standing. Everyone will tell you to ignore polls early in this race, they never predict the outcome of a primary or a general election. That, however, is a non sequitur. We do not look at early polls to predict the distant future. We look at them to help understand the present, and to get a handle on what might happen over the next few weeks. The meaning of the polls shifts quite a bit before the first primaries, then they meaning of the polls has to be re-evaluated after every primary. At some point the re-evaluations…