[ExI] The Debates

[John Clark]

I'm worried about the presidential debates that will happen in less than 2
weeks. I'm worried because Hillary has to be absolutely perfect while as
long as Donald doesn't defecate on the stage he will be perceived as having
exceeded expectations. Over the last few months Trump has committed dozens
of gaffs, any one of which would have torpedoed Clinton or just about
anybody else, but Trump is held to a far more forgiving standard than
anybody else and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because he's such a rapid
fire gaff machine that it's hard to concentrate on any one blunder, before
you can think about the ridiculous thing he just said he says something
even more ridiculous. And I have hard numbers to back up what I say.

A recent poll found that 15% more people believed Trump was "more honest
and trustworthy" than Hillary Clinton. And yet we know that people are just
dead wrong about that, PolitiFact found that 56% of Hillary's statements
were flat out true and another 15% were mostly true; but with Trump only
10% of his statements were flat out true and another 18% mostly true. And
46% of Trump's statements were not just false but "pants on fire" false,
while only 6% of Hillary's were.

If Trump makes a flub in the debate, or even if he makes 10, people will
chuckle and say that's just Trump being Trump and decide to vote for him
anyway, but if Hillary makes just one mistake, or just makes an
uncomfortable statement even if it's true (especially if it's true
actually) then her campaign is dead. And so are we.

 John K Clark
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20160915/8b4dec18/attachment.html>