I read many of your posts, my friends, concerning the battling town halls which took place tonight. The advice of most of you was to skip the session with the sitting president — or at least watch the responses of his competition first. While I do understand your thoughts — I did do it the other way.
First, as I feared, the sitting president’s responses were overly aggressive, combative, and generally misleading (to say the least). I did think, though, it was an opportunity to see if there were anything within him that could cobble together answers not made of the usual playbook loop in his repertoire when posed by a reporter “not among his usual fawning sycophants” –– there was not.
Second, I do believe in giving some time to both sides — and so I felt it was important to watch both — if only to have proper information.
Finally, I needed to end on a hopeful note — so of course, I ended with Joe Biden’s appearance — which was calm, positive, and thoughtful.
No change of mind from my camp — but I gave them both a shot.
(NB: The cameras did not linger on the MSNBC simulcast, so I don’t know what happened at the end of that town hall, but on ABC, they showed that candidate Biden stayed on for at least another half hour to answer questions from and chat with those who had come to the broadcast — microphones off, and mask on.)