Is it OK for presidents to encourage their supporters to violently attack their critics or the opposition?

Essentially, Trump will continue to erode democratic norms, undermine democratic institutions, abuse executive power to go after opponents and protect allies, abuse executive privilege to protect himself, and increase the systematic disenfranchisement of swathes of "undesirable" Americans.

The risk is that this then:
1. Tips the balance even further in the GOP's favour, making it nigh on impossible for any sort of progressive to be elected.
2. Establishes the practices above as a norm, with future president behaving in the same way.

Anyone watching this? initial feeling is that no audience interaction is a welcome change.

Yeah, its hard to keep with it. Wallace let Trump run his mouth too much over answers but it has settled a bit. Moderator should have a mic cutter. 

Biden is ok at what he does I guess. He does look and sound a spent force. Trump is full of shit but he presents if its better and Biden is missing obvious shots (Trump said that others have made Covid Politic - Biden should jump on that) 

Amazing to think they didnt go with the Bernie for this though.

Oh God. I clicked on the link. Trump weaponises lockdown. Over to Biden
Biden literally speaks like he is chewing corpses.

God fucking save us all.

OMFG, Biden is fucking atrocious. We are fucking doomed. I'm going to bed.

I knew he was bad. I thought he was terrible. But I only saw bits and I thought it was possible he would be at or below that level of badness, not fucking smash all the records.

They fucked Bernie over for this doddering corpse who will be dead within a couple of years.

If aliens ever invade they will take out the three superpowers first.

Net win overall.

I watched half an hour of that. I can’t believe how bad Biden is at speaking. It’s not like he’s even struggling to get the thoughts out, the thoughts just don’t seem to be there.

He gets about five words into a sentence, then interrupts himself and starts saying a different sentence hat he’s remembered, sometimes he’ll interrupt himself again before he’s finished. A shambling mess.

Donald Trump came off as the smart one which is really saying something.

Apparently 60% of poll respondents thought Biden did better. 28% thought Trump. To coin an American phrase, "go figure".

http://cdn.cnn.com/cnn/2020/images/09/30/rel11a.-.debate.poll.pdf

Thanks goobs, rdave

All of what you say is “not good” that’s clear. But in my view none of what you suggest is long lasting other than supreme judge appts and other judicial appts which aren’t elected. Another guy comes in and zaps that exec order with a signature. Besides huge difference between exec order and law of the land - even the trumpy Supreme Court have struck down some of trump’s more egregious orders.

I’m sorry. But anyone who thinks that 4 years of Biden leads to a better long term future for US, compared to the (admittedly hopefully) violent reaction against 4 more years of trump, has said nothing to convince me.

Snr republicans, the strategists and the intellectuals, (they do exist) want Biden to win (as long as trump gets his nominee into the court). Long term power is what counts and a bernie-successor reaction to 8 years of trump interrupts that, risks radical things like increasing the size of the court. 4 more years of this toxic clown galvanises the left, and would even encourage the likes of crayon and monkey and Davy to vote for someone more progressive in dem primaries.

Of course this could all be bollocks and they’ll just try again with the latest clinton/Kerry/gore/clinton/obama/biden fuckalikes

hunk wrote:

You assume there will still be a functioning democracy after 8 years of Trump. I'm not convinced there will be.

I would be on this side.

Looking at trump last night summed up everything that I think is damaging about him. It's not his policies, as said these can be rolled back. It's what he creates as a society. He made a farce of a politic debate and the way he act will become the template for all GoP. We have seen it already.

But the worse bit was he failure to ask the proud boys to stand down and the resulting response from the proud boys. They feel they are being officially endorsed by the highest position in the country.

They were.

djchump wrote:

Because they are.

Yep. As vanilla and unimpressive as Biden is, he is nowhere near that.

Speaking of, I'm listening to soundbites on Irish radio at the moment and without the visual of him, Biden does come across a lot better. But visually he looks frail.