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For Tonight's Debate... [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2024-09-10  

...I’m going to go with my new practice of providing extended quotes, because some readers might not have a good sense of what Trump actually sounds like when talking policy...

Michelle Goldberg: Honestly this question kind of infuriates me, because it assumes that what matters about tonight is some contest of policy positions, which is absurd. The media, I realize, has collectively decided that we’re going to treat Trump like a normal political candidate, and while that might be the right call in terms of preserving our journalistic institutions — though I’m genuinely unsure — it obscures the stakes. In this debate, the only thing that matters is whether Harris wins. It’s a cliché to say it, but she’s all that’s standing between us and autocracy.

Patrick Healy: Heading into tonight’s debate, what do you want to hear or learn from the candidates?

The Gish gallop (/ˈɡɪʃ ˈɡæləp/) is a rhetorical technique in which a person in a debate attempts to overwhelm an opponent by presenting an excessive number of arguments, with no regard for their accuracy or strength, with a rapidity that makes it impossible for the opponent to address them in the time available. Gish galloping prioritizes the quantity of the galloper's arguments at the expense of their quality.

Origin of the term

The term "Gish gallop" was coined in 1994 by the anthropologist Eugenie Scottwho named it for the American creationist Duane Gish, dubbed the technique's "most avid practitioner".[1]

Strategy

During a typical Gish gallop, the galloper confronts an opponent with a rapid series of specious arguments, half-truths, misrepresentations and outright lies, making it impossible for the opponent to refute all of them within the format of the debate.[2] Each point raised by the Gish galloper takes considerably longer to refute than to assert. The technique wastes an opponent's time and may cast doubt on the opponent's debating ability for an audience unfamiliar with the technique, especially if no independent fact-checking is involved, or if the audience has limited knowledge of the topics.[3]

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2024/9/10/2269270/-For-Tonight-s-Debate?pm_campaign=front_page&pm_source=more_community&pm_medium=web

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