Biden Aced His Town Hall Meeting, Trump Did Not

[kpete]

Jonathan Bernstein: “Donald Trump is lucky that presidential elections aren’t decided by televised town-hall meetings. If they were, after his effort on ABC on Tuesday and Joe Biden’s on CNN Thursday, Trump would be lucky to clear 100 electoral votes. It’s not that Biden was all that great — he was fine, but nothing special. It’s that Trump was that bad, and in ways that made his opponent look even better.”

“The secret of these events, in which candidates answer questions directly from voters, is that they’re easy. For one thing, voters tend to ask policy questions, not process ones, and they’re usually pretty straightforward — what are you going to do about such-and-such? Normal politicians can easily anticipate the topics, and usually have a prepared riff or a five-point plan to address them. Biden did some of that Thursday night. He’s not great at it, not nearly as strong as (for example) Senator Elizabeth Warren is. But he’s good enough. And he’s usually excellent at taking advantage of the other opportunity the format provides, which is to show the ability to connect with voters and empathize with them.”

“Trump is barely able to do either of these things. He did manage to demonstrate empathy a couple of times on Tuesday, but unfortunately in one case he misunderstood the questioner and thought that her mother had died from the pandemic when in fact she had died of cancer. Most of the time, though, he didn’t bother. It’s not just that he didn’t get emotional. He didn’t seem to be listening to the questions.”

MORE:
https://politicalwire.com/2020/09/18/biden-aced-his-town-hall-meeting-trump-did-not/
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-09-18/joe-biden-aced-the-town-hall-why-didn-t-donald-trump

[Beakybird]

1. How about he told the truth and the anus lied!

Yeah, the media should give Biden one or two brownie points for answering the questions while telling the truth.

[Johnny2X2X]

2. He did well enough

He was over prepared IMO as he had rehearsed all of his answers and when he started answering he wanted to hit all the key points and sometimes rambled from one point to the next, and that's OK. He comes across as genuine and prepared. He was too energetic at times and needed to slow down.

It was certainly a better performance than Trump, but not Joe's best effort as he struggled at times.

Republicans will seize on a few of his rambling bits as proof he had a bad night, but it was a good night for him and he especially came across as forceful and full of energy having stood the whole hour and 20 minutes.