debate commentary

Like the slob I am, I woke up early this morning, then fell back asleep before it was 9 p.m. on the US east coast. I ended up sleeping through the entire GOP debate. Depending on which commentator you listen to or read, that may have been a good thing. A lot of people are summing the GOP debate up as what they'd predicted it would be: essentially an audition for the role of vice president. A lot of people came away with favorable impressions of Ramaswamy; DeSantis supposedly held his own but didn't particularly shine; Doug Burgum was seen by some as "the adult in the room." Mike Pence was apparently crushed by Ramaswamy's laser-specific answers to some of Pence's jabs, but many peanuts in the peanut gallery were also put off by what they felt was Ramaswamy's slickness, charm, and fast talking. I, for one, can see where Vivek is coming from: he's a nerd who's brimming with ideas, and he has the training of both a lawyer and a scientist. He's not going to appeal to the slower-minded crowd that's looking for someone comfortingly folksy, and from the beginning, I noted this as a potential problem. To the slow folks, who can't see past surface impressions, Ramaswamy looks too polished and maybe even too artificial. It's also a bit unnerving, I imagine, that Vivek seems to have an answer for everything.

In the video below, Styx offers his analysis of how the debate went. He also notes offhandedly that Trump's interview with Tucker Carlson garnered a lot more views, but it's unclear, with those viewer numbers, as to how long people remained with the interview. Some folks may have merely clicked on and clicked away. But with the unsatisfying, barely reliable stats we have, it appears the GOP debate had a viewership of 24 million, and the Trump interview got anywhere from 70 million to 100 million views. Again, this may be like comparing apples to hand grenades: the methods for tracking the debate views were undoubtedly different from those used to track the Trump-Tucker interview.

Like others, Styx also sees the GOP debate as a VP audition. He views Ramaswamy as having come out at or near the top of the field, but he has a deep mistrust of Vivek, whom he sees as a smooth talker saying the right things, but with little substance. The "little substance" charge always frustrates me because it seems as if people who make that accusation haven't bothered to listen closely to what Ramaswamy has said, nor are they giving Ramaswamy credit for having (1) done his homework and (2) come up with detailed specifics. They also forget that, after having spent four years as president, Donald Trump is now a Washington insider, and Ramaswamy is the new outsider. That said, Styx and others see Trump, the absentee, as the true winner of the GOP debate.

Here's Styx: