The Debate Format
The Town Hall, in case you were wondering, is basically a farce:
–The questions will be culled from a group of 100 to 150 uncommitted likely voters in the audience and another one-third to come via the Internet. Brokaw selects which questions to ask from written queries submitted prior to the debate.
–The Gallup Organization makes sure the questioners reflect the demographic makeup of the nation.
–An audience member isn’t allowed to switch questions and will not be allowed a follow-up either. His or her microphone will be turned off after the question is read and a camera shot will only be shown of the person asking — not reacting.
–The moderator may not ask followups or make comments.
In essence, Tom Brokaw and his staff will be asking the questions. They’re sifting through a big group of people, and their pre-set questions, and picking the questions they like. Meanwhile, though, Brokaw and co. get to evade responsibility for the questions if people don’t like them — it was real people asking! And no followups, so if John McCain gets a question about his plan to cut Medicare and wants to give an answer about Bill Ayers, nobody can stop him.
35 Responses to “The Debate Format”
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October 7th, 2008 at 12:44 pm
Obama can and should call McCain out on any questionable comment he makes at any point over the courses of the debate, and the converse is true as well. No one can really prevent that.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:47 pm
The ABC debate had questions from the audience that were completely ridiculous. One retardo guy asked Hillary about freaking Tuzla and the bitter fat lady asked about whether Obama believed in the flag. Tom Brokaw better find people that have real questions about issues rather than “electability” questions. I can’t believe that I kind of miss Tim Russert who could be counted on as fair.
October 7th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Matt,
This election is going to be your “Hope” vote versus the “Nope” vote out there.
People don’t like having Obama rammed down their throats by a fawning media elite, and Hollywood’s A-list. People don’t like to be badgered into joining cults. Cults, even at the height of their popularity, never top the 50 percent mark. It is just human nature.
Don’t believe me, then check this out:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIiKUf9K4pU
October 7th, 2008 at 12:53 pm
Sheesh! Can we get Al back?
October 7th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Apparently Brokaw will ask follow-up questions.
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1008/A_followup_follow_up.html?showall
October 7th, 2008 at 12:59 pm
“Cults, even at the height of their popularity, never top the 50 percent mark.”
Interesting you say that, since even if this is the height of this “cult’s” popularity, it’s over 50% in almost every poll.
Odd that you would project your own somewhat misguided feelings onto the rest of the nation, many of whom feel quite differently. It seems like something a child would do.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:00 pm
Someone needs to ask McCain what he will do in the event of an Obama victory in November. McCain, Palin and their campaign have now decided to try to convince public that Obama dangerous. If Obama is truly dangerous, don’t they have a responsibility to oppose an Obama government? Will they set up a government in exile? Will they set up a shadow government like Lopez Obrador did in Mexico? Or, will they and their followers take up arms to defend our nation against this “dangerous” man? If McCain truly believes that Obama is dangerous and that he consorts with terrorists, then he must, as a patriot, take action if Obama is elected. If not, he’s either not a patriot or his claims about Obama are false, disgusting and not worthy of a candidate for the presidency of the United States.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
The Republicans don’t want an Ayers question. What are they gonna ask? “Aren’t you a terrorist?” (Well, no.) “Don’t you support terrorists?” (Well, no, again.) Basically, the Ayers issue is only vaguely potent as an insinuation. If Obama gets an Ayers question he gets to point out the facts in that maddeningly calm way he has, and the issue goes away. Obama’s chief asset is the way he wields his intelligence. With that in mind, an Ayers question is a softball.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Sheesh! Can we get Al back?
Yeah. If there’s one thing more obnoxious than a wingnut, it’s an wingnut blogwhore.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
So where do we live again? This isn’t the US I remember.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:04 pm
Al’s taking hiatus til after the election, njorl, unless it’s about ball. So we have to make do with third-stringers in the troll department.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Fuck Tom Brokaw and fuck these debates. CSPAN was showing a 1992 debate between Bush I, Clinton, and Perot. There were follow ups, honesty, facts, and most importantly, the candidates did the extreme thing by answering the questions. Bush and Rove have dumbed down our politics to the lowest levels.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
I would LOVE to see some variant of four-person policy debate.
Maybe ask 6 questions in the form of “what should we do about XYZ?” 3-min plan by Prez candidate, followed by cross by oppo VP, 3 min speech by other prez, another cross, 2-min VP affirm rebuttal, 2-min VP oppo rebuttal.
Change it up so each ticket gets affirmative/negative turns, and the both P/VP candidate handles the constructive/rebuttal speeches.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
This is absurd. If they’re interested in having the questioners reflect the demographic makeup of the nation, they shouldn’t have them be undecided. If they want undecided voters, they should be reflective of the demographic makeup of undecided voters, not the whole electorate. In what sense is an undecided Black voter representative of the Black electorate as a whole?
October 7th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Fuck Tom Brokaw and fuck these debates. CSPAN was showing a 1992 debate between Bush I, Clinton, and Perot. There were follow ups, honesty, facts, and most importantly, the candidates did the extreme thing by answering the questions.
And they realized that it hurt the Republican candidate (and, by extension, any less-than-top-notch politician) so much that they were going to make sure never to do it again.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:18 pm
Al’s taking hiatus til after the election, njorl, unless it’s about ball. So we have to make do with third-stringers in the troll department.
Yup. This election sucks. It’s basically ruined political blogging. Hopefully everything will get back to normal after Obama is inaugurated.
October 7th, 2008 at 1:36 pm
Wow, questions from the internet! That is so hip! I love how the debates are really connecting with younger voters like me through use of the internets! Will the questions come from Prodigy message boards or usenet forums?
October 7th, 2008 at 2:23 pm
Like the VP debate this debate format favors the GOP. During the VP debate, Palin told Sen. Biden and moderator Gwen Ifill that she was going to answer the question she wants to answer. Due to the format, Ifill as moderator was unable to challenge Palin’s assertion that she was in charge of the questions being asked.
The townhall format isn’t unusual, but does one thing that the PBS moderators did not do: it allows the audience to ask questions about non-topical issues like Ayres, Rev. Wright and prayer in school. Issues that do nothing to address the current situation of two failing wars an economy in the tank and an environment that rapidly deteriorating.
NBC News, like the obscene ABC News democratic debate which spent the first half of the debate fielding questions about flag pins and associations, is not above dragging the debate to the level of these non-topical issues.
I hope as moderator of Meet the Press, Tom Brokaw understands that his role as debate moderator is more important than his role as new maker.
October 7th, 2008 at 2:31 pm
Shorter Jason: People should not be able to ask questions on issues that I don’t want to hear about.
October 7th, 2008 at 5:23 pm
So, McCain is going down in the polls.
So the next debate is rigged in his favor, with an asshole like Brokaw asking the questions, softball ones for McCain, smears for Obama.
And Matt still doesn’t comprehend that the Powers That Be are working to get McCain elected.
What will it take, Matt? What will it take?
October 7th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
It’s good to see that MattY is shocked – shocked! – that the “debates” are rigged.
MattY’s readers should ask themselves what exactly MattY has proposed as a way to improve the debates. The answer is: nothing.
I’d be very surprised to learn that MattY isn’t familiar with this proposal, since I linked to it at The Atlantic and probably here several times. In fact, both The Atlantic and ThinkProgress would only have to spend around $10,000 to put on a debate like that.
But, for some reason they haven’t. Why haven’t they? Is it that they just want to whine about the situation at the same time as they in effect profit from the situation?
October 7th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Howard Beale should moderate.
October 7th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Wiley says, “Howard Beale should moderate”. Beg to differ. Howard Beale should RUN. Jennifer Beals should moderate.
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