I watched the debate last night, and the Hawks versus Coyotes game. NHL officiating is getting bad. So, since I watched both, I really didn't watch any spin from the moderators. In general, I thought Bernie did a good job, but Hillary also scored a couple of points, particularly on foreign policy. Nonetheless, I thought Bernie made a couple of mistakes that are going to give Hillary a chance to him on some things.
In the midst of a section on foreign policy, Bernie reached for the "I didn't vote to go to Iraq". It wasn't the right context to drop that in, and I personally thought it fell kinda flat. I think the reality is this, you can have a general policy direction you want to go, but you need to have flexibility to evaluate short term opportunities to get something useful done. If a chance opens to pull out of Afghanistan, I think we absolutely need to take that opportunity. Making the sand glow? That's just silly. still, Bernie didn't elaborate this message, and Hillary, more or less, did.
In regard to Wall Street, Bernie simply would not let that go and I generally didn't have a problem with that. He made a comment though, "The Wall Street model, I believe, is built on fraud". After watching what happened with triple AAA shit pile mortgages, I think there is more than a little truth here. The average person is not going to understand the sheer level of risk that just one trader can take. If it blows up, they basically walk away. Is that fraud? Not entirely, but neither is it really honest in my opinion.
Hillary whined about being attacked for taking money from Goldman, and I really don't have much sympathy for her. She said it's time to end the "artful smear" that Bernie is committing by linking her to Wall Street, and that was kind of a cop out. 600k for a speech is a shit ton of money for a family living on less than 100k, and she wants us to believe that Goldman is not hoping for some return on that. She was asked if she will release transcripts from these speeches, and she dodged. I'd like to see em.
It was the lowest-rated debate of the 2016 election cycle by far, according to preliminary Nielsen data. The debate had a 3.3 household rating in Nielsen's metered markets.
ReplyDeleteThe prior low was a 6.0 household rating for ABC's Democratic debate on the Saturday night before Christmas.
Related: Clinton accuses Sanders of 'artful smear'
MSNBC's debate was a late addition to the lineup, originally announced just over a week ago and not officially sanctioned by the Democratic National Committee until this week. But the channel heavily promoted the debate on Wednesday and Thursday.
The ratings results may suggest some measure of debate fatigue among viewers. MSNBC may have also faced structural disadvantages because it is generally lower-rated than Fox News or CNN.
For comparison's sake, the previous most recent Democratic debate, televised by MSNBC's sister channel NBC in January, had a 7.2 household rating.
That debate was on a broadcast network, which has a wider reach than a cable news channel. But up until now, in this Donald Trump-fueled election season, cable debates have out-rated broadcast debates.
The most recent GOP debate, a Trump-free match-up on the Fox News Channel, had an 8.4 household rating, and that was considered underwhelming by Fox and GOP debate standards.
Actual viewership totals for Thursday's debate will be released later in the day on Friday.
She got booed for the artful smear comment too. To me, it's fair game. The people she is allegedly promising to fight for will get 600k for anything in one shot except maybe winning the lottery. Low ratings or not, it was a pretty substantive debate. They kinda threw it together at the last minute and nobody was really sure Sanders would be there until probably about a day before.
DeleteJust curious, what are your thoughts William on the Cruz tweet saying Carson was dropping out?
All a sidebar max.
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