Despite going head-to-head with Monday Night Football, the 9 p.m. debate is expected to be one of the most-watched in history.
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The role of the debate moderator has, in and of itself, become a hotly debated subject in the wake of Matt Lauer’s much maligned performance at the Commander in Chief forum in NY on September 8, where he interviewed Clinton and Trump, back-to-back. All of the word-vomit spewing from Trump’s mouth nearly makes Clinton look like the golden candidate. And it’s a sore spot for Republicans going back to 2012, when CNN’s Candy Crowley fact-checked Mitt Romney’s claim that President Obama had not immediately called the attack on the US compound in Benghazi an “act of terror”.
“Ideally, you’d love the topics to focus on what’s important”. Tellingly, 35 percent don’t know or have no opinion. Campaign communications advisor Jason Miller says that they made a $15 million ad buy on Friday, but the AP notes that “media buyers and services such as Kantar Media didn’t immediately see evidence of that”.
The decision was the latest play in a freaky bit of gamesmanship between the Clinton and Trump campaigns over the debate.
Trump has yet to receive a major endorsement in the general election cycle but did win some support in the primaries.
But Americans should not vote for the Democrat Clinton simply because the alternative is Trump, the paper argued.
“He did not have the political background, he didn’t have the money, he had a lot of structural disadvantages, and he used the debates to level the playing field”, said Aaron Kall, director of debate at the University of MI and editor and co-author of the e-book Debating the Donald. “I can’t tell you“, he said. “I just think that’s who he is”.
Who will moderate the debate?
The jabs have come even Clinton surrogates such as former Pennsylvania governor Ed Rendell, who this week said he’d like to see Clinton “smile more” in the debate.
“I will fight to make sure every single African American child in this country is fully included in the American dream”. Clinton’s campaign has tried to capitalize on those comments, including with a new ad that features images of adolescent girls looking at their reflections as audio of Trump’s comments play. Smith doubts that Johnson will poll high enough to be given that coveted spot in the two debates after the upcoming one. Moderators should give the other candidate a chance to rebut an obvious falsehood, but Schieffer thinks that “if he (or she) doesn’t, then you should step in”. The debate will run 90 minutes straight with no commercial breaks, meaning Holt and both candidates have their work cut out for them. Political scientists Robert Erikson and Christopher Wlezien conducted a 2012 study on the subject.
Clinton and Obama engaged in one of their fiercest exchanges in January 2008, an episode that shows the risks of a drawn-out fight.
Examples of first-debate stumbles are many. “After that people may get exhausted of them”.
According to Saturday’s poll, Trump’s fortunes rest on his core supporters, white men who lack a four-year college degree, an economically stressed and socially and politically conservative group. “He’s such a polarizing figure that if he somehow does something surprising or incredibly effective, it could maybe change the dynamics of the race”, he said.
Viewing: The debate will be aired live on C-SPAN, ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC, as well as all cable news channels including CNN, Fox News and MSNBC among others.
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Alexandria Hentschel is a freshman worldwide studies major and an off-campus news writer for Cedars.
