TirithRR wrote:
Listening to a couple news reports, a few were saying that Carly Fiorina "won" that debate. I found that a bit surprising. Maybe I wasn't paying attention at key moments? Cause she seemed pretty lack luster, something about a family member with a drug problem, a few attacks on Trump about his bankruptcies, but that's nothing new or really all that "win" worthy. And attacking Trump because he said something stupid is like shooting fish in a barrel...
She did surprisingly well, but again I think that's because most people aren't that familiar with her. And, of course, because she is just that much massively more educated on political issues (and can speak about them well) than the other two "outsiders", Trump and Carson. I don't think that translated to "winning the debate" though. Everyone else (who wasn't one of the aforementioned outsiders) was also able to speak intelligently about a variety of political issues, especially foreign policy (where Carson and Trump just seemed lost). So it's not like she stood out among them. We just expect longish term politicians to know this stuff, and expect an outsider to not.
Oh. Christie also looked pretty good. Forgot to mention that. He was far more engaged than last time around, and got some good points in. I'm still pretty sure that the US just wont elect a fat man to be president. Although I noticed that he's either looking slimmer, or he was very clever in his clothes choices, since he didn't look nearly so obese while at the podium compared to how he usually looks.
As to the idea of holding all primaries in a few weeks, as mentioned, that just wont work. It's actually a good thing to have a longish process. You want to give the voters time to make as informed a choice as possible. Also, as a couple people have mentioned, it's a money thing. Based on how candidates do in early primaries affects donations to their campaigns (that whole momentum thing). If you had all the primary votes in a short amount of time, only those with big up front money behind them could have any chance of winning. And this would minimize the degree to which the voters actually have a say in things versus the money people. With a longer primary season, the voters influence the money. In a really short season, it's entirely the other way around.
Edited, Sep 18th 2015 5:14pm by gbaji