Instigator / Pro

nmvarco

1536

rating

debates

55.26%

won

Topic

#2035

THBT: DONALD TRUMP will beat JOE BIDEN in the 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

Status

Finished

The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.

Winner & statistics

Better arguments

Better sources

Better legibility

Better conduct

After 5 votes and with 34 points ahead, the winner is...

nmvarco

Tags

Politics

Parameters

Publication date: 05.20.2020 02:15AM
Last updated date: 01.05.2021 12:46AM
Type: Standard
Number of rounds: 4
Time for argument: One week
Max argument characters: 10,000
Voting period: One month
Point system: Multiple criterions
Voting system: Open

Contender / Con

charlielikespolitics

1474

rating

debates

0.0%

won

Description

PRO = nmvarco = DONALD TRUMP will beat JOE BIDEN in the 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION
CON = charlielikespolitics = JOE BIDEN will beat DONALD TRUMP in the 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

R1: PRO presents opening arguments, CON presents opening arguments
R2: PRO presents counters and any new arguments, CON presents counters and any new arguments
R3: PRO presents counters, CON presents counters

Round 1

nmvarco

05.26.2020 11:50PM

Pro

I will be waiving the first round due to the fact that I meant for this to be a three round debate. CON and I have talked about this and agreed this is the best decision, so CON shall be waiving the first round as well.

charlielikespolitics

05.27.2020 03:44AM

Con

Yes.

Round 2

nmvarco

06.03.2020 12:55AM

Pro

PRO = nmvarco = DONALD TRUMP will beat JOE BIDEN in the 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

CON = charlielikespolitics = JOE BIDEN will beat DONALD TRUMP in the 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

THBT: DONALD TRUMP will beat JOE BIDEN in the 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION

DEFINITIONS

DONALD TRUMP [DT] “(born June 14, 1946) is the 45th and current president of the United States. Before entering politics, he was a businessman and television personality.” [1]

to BEAT [transitive verb] is “to win against; to defeat or overcome; to do better than, outdo, or excel (someone) in a particular, competitive event.” [2]

JOE BIDEN [JB] “(born November 20, 1942) is an American politician who served as the 47th vice president of the United States from 2009 to 2017 and represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate from 1973 to 2009. A member of the Democratic Party, Biden is the presumptive Democratic nominee for president in the 2020 election. He unsuccessfully sought the Democratic presidential nomination in 1988 and in 2008.” [3]

the 2020 PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION [2020 PE] “is scheduled for Tuesday, November 3, 2020. It will be the 59th quadrennial presidential election. Voters will select presidential electors who in turn will vote on December 14, 2020, to either elect a new president and vice president or reelect the incumbents Donald Trump and Mike Pence respectively. The series of presidential primary elections and caucuses are being held from February to August 2020. This nominating process is an indirect election, where voters cast ballots selecting a slate of delegates to a political party's nominating convention, who then in turn elect their party's nominees for president and vice president. The election will occur simultaneously alongside elections for the House of Representatives, Senate, and various state and local-level elections.

Donald Trump, the 45th and incumbent president, has launched a re-election campaign for the Republican primaries; several state Republican Party organizations have cancelled their primaries in a show of support for his candidacy. Trump became the presumptive Republican nominee on March 17, 2020, after securing a majority of pledged delegates. 29 major candidates launched campaigns for the Democratic nomination, which became the largest field of candidates for any political party in the post-reform period of American politics. Former Vice President Joe Biden became the presumptive Democratic nominee when Senator Bernie Sanders, the last other major candidate in the Democratic primary, suspended his campaign on April 8, 2020. The winner of the 2020 presidential election is scheduled to be inaugurated on January 20, 2021.

Biden and Trump are respectively the oldest and second-oldest major party presumptive nominees in U.S. history; and if Biden is elected and inaugurated, he will also become the oldest serving president. Biden is the first former vice president to become the presumptive nominee of any major political parties in the United States since 1984, in which the Democratic Party nominated former Vice President Walter Mondale.” [4]

OPENING STATEMENTS

PRO thanks CON for accepting this debate. PRO’s interpretation of his own thesis makes it clear that the BURDEN of PROOF is SHARED.

WHY?

Both PRO and CON must prove that their chosen candidate will win.
There is no status quo among presidential elections; they can fluctuate.
Neither PRO nor CON will be claiming anything extraordinary, as there are two possibilities for the outcomes of this election.

RESOLVED: BURDEN of PROOF is SHARED.

ARG 1.1: DT IS MORE LIKELY TO WIN THE ELECTION THAN JB

Donald Trump is more likely to win the election than Joe Biden.

RealClearPolitics places JB 5.9 points above DT as of May 31, 2020 [5].

On May 31, 2016, Hillary Clinton was polling 5.2 points above DT [6].
On November 7, 2016, one day before the election, Clinton was still polling 5.3 points above DT [6].
Yet, Trump was elected president the next day.
HuffPost said that “Our model of the polls suggests Clinton was very likely leading. (In >99% of simulations, Clinton led Trump.)”
This statistics are eerily similar to the ones being projected.

Why did this happen? Many reasons.

“...people who turned out to vote looked very different from voters in other recent elections. Most polls rely on data gathered from people identified by a variety of factors as "likely voters." If the actual voters this year look substantially different than in previous years – not entirely unreasonable given how unusual this election has been – then these models will do poorly. If there are high levels of undercoverage where not all people are accurately represented in survey samples, or if there are particular kinds of systematic nonresponse to poll questions, this effectively misrepresents the electorate as well…” [7]
This trend is likely to continue with the rise of social media. The 2016 election was the first presidential election that was influenced by social media, and while many people vote, many more people see Twitter.

Trump has implanted himself into every American’s head through repeated controversy. During his 2016 campaign, he made wacky claims that soon cemented themselves into people’s brains. Trump creates so much controversy that by the time the media is outraged about one thing, he does another. Unlike Howard Dean [8], who’s “I Have a Scream” speech decimated his political campaign, Trump has generated so much controversy that he is practically immune to it. A quite recent example is his tweets during the George Floyd riots.

On May 29, with the media already quite normalized with the usually malicious intent of his tweets, Trump tweeted that “when the looting starts, the shooting starts,” while referring to the George Floyd riots taking place in Minneapolis.
On May 2, after a photo op in front of St. John’s Church across from the white house, Trump tweeted that there had been “no problems” with protestors the night before, even though protestors had reportedly been tear gassed to make way for Trump’s photo op. If any other president had been reported as doing this, there would have been another protest.

CONCLUSION:

THE POLLS ARE WRONG.
EVERYONE KNOWS WHO DT IS.
DT IS IMMUNE TO CONTROVERSY.

THEREFORE, DT WILL BEAT JB IN THE 2020 PE.

ADDENDUM

Joe Biden is immersed in controversy.
His "you ain't black" comment ought to have stirred up controversy among black voters.
Die-hard #MeTooers and feminists as well as anti-establishments don't like him over the Tara Reade case.

SOURCES

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Trump

[2] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/beat#Verb

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election

[5] https://www.realclearpolitics.com/epolls/2020/president/us/general_election_trump_vs_biden-6247.html#polls

[6] https://elections.huffingtonpost.com/pollster/2016-general-election-trump-vs-clinton

[7] https://www.usnews.com/opinion/op-ed/articles/2016-11-10/why-the-polls-got-donald-trumps-2016-win-wrong

[8] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howard_Dean

charlielikespolitics

06.10.2020 12:55AM

Con