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comment by kleinbl00
kleinbl00  ·  2961 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Why Donald Trump may have won the first Presidential Debate

Wow. Chill the fuck out, cowboy. Nowhere did I say that you supported Trump, nor "put words in your mouth." I said that your argument was facile, and that you wanted your argument to be true. Devil's advocacy? Don't care. My point is you didn't make your point. Which is very much the position you took in the article - you titled it "Why Donald Trump may have won the first Presidential Debate." One assumes the argument you're making is that Donald Trump may have won the first presidential debate. My position is that you have not successfully argued that Donald Trump may have won the first presidential debate.

Are we clear on this? Is it now abundantly obvious that I don't give the first fuck where your ideology lies, but where your arguments are made?

Great. Let's move on. Because the bulk of your argument above is that voters are disenfranchised, not that voters are energized. Here's a quote:

    He's gambling that he can mobilize enough of the 63.7% who stayed home to win the election by presenting himself as the clever outsider who can tear down a broken system. If he succeeds in that, this election will be quite winnable for him.

Okay, he's trying for that. The argument you need to make, therefore, is that his performance thus far is doing that. Which it is not. Previously, by the way, you defined "disruption" thusly:

    Another word for this strategy is “disruption,” and it’s a long-standing and effective campaign tactic. For example, Karl Rove specialized in campaigns that would attack an opponent’s strengths rather than their weaknesses, on the grounds that somebody was prepared to defend their weaknesses, but would be taken by surprise if they had to justify their strengths. Donald Trump’s campaign, in which he is constantly sending up flak attacking the political establishment, is all about disruption.

That's very different from

    "Disruption" in this context means forcing your opponents to abandon their own ground and try to compete with you on yours in such a way where they lose if they don't.

So shall we debate whether Trump is making Hillary compete on her strengths? Or shall we debate whether Trump is making Hillary abandon her strengths to compete on Trump's? Because those definitions are polar opposites and you've used both.

Don't get me wrong - I welcome the discussion. And I'm interested to hear your thoughts. But if you're going to post them where I can reply to them, I shall reply to them and if I see weakness in your arguments, I will point them out. So far you've argued that Trump won the debate because he didn't debate and people will vote for him for president because he's unpresidential. When discussing Trump's "disruption" you chose an example that more closely mirrored the Democratic National Convention than Trump's behavior or policy and when you were questioned on that you redefined "disruption" to mean the opposite of what you initially asserted.

Hectoring me and resorting to condescension does not resolve this rhetorical shortcoming.





Robert_B_Marks  ·  2961 days ago  ·  link  ·  

"Nowhere did I say that you supported Trump, nor "put words in your mouth.""

You know what? You kind of did - you took a straight-up exploration of strategic messaging with a number of nuanced pointed and reduced it to "the winning strategy for political office is to play up one's unsuitability for public office." I've been strawmanned before - I didn't like it then, and I don't like it now. If you want to damn me, then do it for what I said, not a caricature of what I said.

That said, you're right - there are a couple of things you said that I interpreted in the worst possible manner. So, I do owe you an apology, and it is offered gladly. That further said, I think you're wrong, and the evidence you're using is outdated - the article is from May, and this is now September, further Trump has actually closed the gap between him and Clinton in a number of polls (source: http://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2016/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_clinton-5491.html#polls).

Either way, clearly it's time for both of us to back away from each other, so I'm done replying to you. Please do not take this as a demand to stop commenting or discussing in this thread - I simply won't be replying to you anymore.

kleinbl00  ·  2960 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Apology accepted. Thank you. I'll leave you with this, however:

Your argument remains unmade. That Trump is closing in the polls in no way indicates that he is energizing formerly-reticent voters. I did a quick scan for research that backs up that allegation and I find none.

On the other hand.