Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders (& others) finally face off - Polidicks

like you said it was his first debate I think he might do better on his 2nd,.

[QUOTE=person11;48909325]How you measure debate performance is entirely subjective. Media pundits like performance, so they liked how confident, aggressive, and quick witted she was. They did not like it when Bernie was not paying attention (Pardon me?), barely looked at the other candidates, blanked a few times on foreign policy, and was ganged up on for offering a poor explanation (rural state!!) for his pro-gun votes. He did not seem ready to debate at all. The public cares more about the substance of what people say and eager supporters of any candidate are more likely to think their candidate won, since the candidates say things the supporters like. One can also measure it by donations (Bernie says he made $1.4 million the night of the debate) or by scientific poll movement in the next week. Will the number of undecided voters go down? Will any candidate's standing change? The point of everything I've been saying is, as a Bernie supporter, that the media has a point about Clinton and Bernie's respective performances during the debate, and that the online polls, no matter what they say, are unscientific, as the Slate article said.[/QUOTE] So they're docking points purely because he didn't perform as well as they assumed he would during his first televised debate? And they're handing it over to Hillary just because she had prepared for the obviously tough questions that they were going to ask her?

[QUOTE=Glitchman;48916778]Bernie didn't stand out as much as his supporters wanted him to. IMO it's still a dumb move to compare the US to countries like Norway and Denmark due to the sheer population difference[/QUOTE] why? our social security policy is identical to all other western countries income maintenance plans, we have many similar welfare programs to european countries, we have free primary education like all other western countries, theres no fundimental difference between norway's programs and the US's programs that would prevent them from working here, just because norway's population is small doesn't mean a similar system cannot work on a larger population.

[QUOTE=Zero-Point;48917142]So they're docking points purely because he didn't perform as well as they assumed he would during his first televised debate? And they're handing it over to Hillary just because she had prepared for the obviously tough questions that they were going to ask her?[/QUOTE] Exactly yes. Bernie showed off about not preparing for the debate and paid for it. Hillary anticipated all the toughest questions against her and anticipated her opponent's weakness (the fact he always says the same thing and voted against the Brady bill helps). That sounds like grounds to declare someone "won".

[QUOTE=person11;48917872]Exactly yes. Bernie showed off about not preparing for the debate and paid for it. Hillary anticipated all the toughest questions against her and anticipated her opponent's weakness (the fact he always says the same thing and voted against the Brady bill helps). That sounds like grounds to declare someone "won".[/QUOTE] It seems pointless to continuously point out that someone performed well in a debate when the public's opinion shows that their performance had little effect on winning their support. It doesn't matter if Bernie was bumbling about like Columbo up there, if what he said appealed to the people, then that's the important thing to think about because it says more about their chances of winning a popular vote.

[QUOTE=Glitchman;48916778]IMO it's still a dumb move to compare the US to countries like Norway and Denmark due to the sheer population difference.[/QUOTE] Similar policies are practiced in populous countries like France, Germany and Japan. Is there any evidence to suggest the population difference is of any relevance at all? I think the cultural difference is the bigger problem. Americans are conditioned to believe in meritocratic capitalism despite recent disillusionment with Wall Street and big corporations; do people even [i]want[/i] this kind of reform? Even if the masses supported social democratic institutions there's no political party representing them; even Sanders is "a democrat in name only", although he has eerily similar views to the Democratic Party on certain issues. [QUOTE=Glitchman;48916778]He keeps focusing on climate change and wall street; while these are huge things it does not show his abilities to lead a country's foreign policy and relations[/QUOTE] And look what US foreign policy accomplished during the last 40 years: anti-Americanism rife in all parts of the world, large groups of Islamic fundamentalists in the Middle-East and a polarized world with the West pitted against Russia and China on the global stage. Hillary and the Republicans would continue down this exact same line. I'm not confident Sanders would actually change anything, but at least he's talking about these issues.

True. Debate performance does not matter if it does not affect polls. This debate could easily lead to more support for Sanders despite his performance - the substance of what he said could take hold. He's never been a flowery speaker anyway, he just says things that are completely true. So far, there are no post-debate scientific polls out as far as I know. I can't wait to see them. [editline]16th October 2015[/editline] [url]http://www.politico.com/story/2015/10/poll-nh-214885[/url] Hillary is up post-debate in NH, but this is just one poll.