Oct 8, 2020 -- 7:56AM, politicspunter wrote:

Post-debate CNN poll: Harris seen as winner in a contest that matched expectationshttps://edition.cnn.com/2020/10/07/politics/mike-pence-kamala-harris-vice-presidential-debate-poll/index.html

Admittedly I had a hard time following it closely but, did not think harris won at all, neither shone, harris was too defensive, didn't go on the offence enough, came across bad optically, with her body language, she was annoying and unlikable at times, and her good moments were ok but lackluster. pence was like a calm robot, re-assuring some trump supporters  I think, he did attack her record of district attorney without any defense coming back from harris, he was annoying in his efforts to dodge questions but harris's and the mod's failure to press him on that came across as very amateurish and a missed opportunity and he got of the hook. her "I'm talking" shtick looked stupid and she ended up with more speaking time, and would of been more suited to debating trump. CNN basically went with the "she's a black woman so she can't go on the attack" narrative immediately post debate, seemed like they were offering that as a platitude to why she couldn't clearly win.
on the other hand harris did fine, she didn't need to do much attacking given biden's lead so that could of factored into her performance and made it more low key with less risks and emotional arguments.

Oct 8, 2020 -- 10:10AM, DanielKoellerer wrote:

Biden +9.5 538Biden +9.7 RCP He's gonna need one hell of a polling error . Clinton was up by 4.6% (RCP average) on the 8th October 2016. She won the popular vote by 2.1%, so a 2.5% polling error. Trump is going to need a 7-7.5% polling error if these polls don't close up (they may extend!)

Agree but it’s actually a lot worse for Trump now than those numbers and the comparison imply, because that was a volatile race with lots of swings and lots of undecided and third party voters. A very plausible case can be made that the polls were correct but there was a late shift of undecided voters to Trump (or a bunch of undecideds who were always Trump voters but didn’t fess up, although that’s less likely for several reasons) that they couldn’t have been expected to pick up. Those people don’t exist in anything like the same numbers to break Trump this time, even if a reasom emerges (like Clinton’s emails did at the last minute) to make them.

Oct 8, 2020 -- 2:30PM, edy wrote:

Never underestimate Trump's and The Republican's resolve and abolity to suppress the vote or downright cheat.

Problem for Trump is, among many other problems, that attempts to stoke up his base and to a lesser extent to suppress the vote just make him more unpopular with everyone else and motivates them all the more to vote him out. It’s a losing game. As for cheating, I’m sure they’ll try but there’s only so much traction they’re likely to get if they’re miles behind.

Oct 8, 2020 -- 2:30PM, edy wrote:

Never underestimate Trump's and The Republican's resolve and abolity to suppress the vote or downright cheat.

Yeah, did you see the debates and the moderators in favour of the democratic candidates?

Oct 8, 2020 -- 3:31PM, winningthought wrote:

Ok, well good luck with that

The number of folks that are not members of the Republican party has fallen dramatically since the 90s. The number of "independents" are higher than ever but a growing number of them are former Republican party members.