- Pronouns
- he / him / his
HEM @ 6:40 PM PST: Hey hey, another day, another do-or-die moment for the remaining three Presidential tickets. Three you say? Yup, Verteger and Ervald dropped out this afternoon, endorsing Sopo and Monkey citing their low poll numbers and desire to see their second choice make it to a seemingly inevitable runoff.
I'll be joined here in a little by Calvin, and together we'll document every moment of the upcoming voice debate. Stay tuned.
HEM @ 7:01 PM PST: With the debate about to start, I'm joined by Verteger -- who just dropped out today.
Hey Vert, great to have you on the liveblog. What's it like, going from participant to spectator of the debate tonight?
Verteger: Honestly it's disappointing. Obviously, I knew the ticket was a longshot from the start, though I felt buoyed by the early encouragement. But once it became clear to me and Ervald that our election strategy was not only unlikely to be successful, but that we may spoil our next-favored candidate, we opted to pull out. On one hand, it's a weight off our shoulders, and we feel confident that Sopo will carry the torch for many of our ideas, but one the other it's disappointing not to be in contention.
HEM: Looking at the polling, what do you make of the state of the race? Sopo seems to be a slight underdog, but it's close
Verteger: It is close! As I mentioned before, I think that McEntire/Mal have a solid base of support but a low ceiling. Sopo and Lloen are similar candidates and appear to be drawing from the same pool of voters, which is the largest overall pool but split evenly between the two. I expect that M/M will make it into the runoff due to their high floor, but that the rest of the population will mostly consolidate behind whichever of Sopo or Lloen make it to the second round.
I also think that with myself and Ervald dropping from the race and backing Sopo publicly, he can make up the ground easily and maybe swing a few more voters. I think if either Sopo or Lloen outclasses the other clearly in the debate tonight, it could snowball quickly.
HEM: What issues do you think will decide the election? What are undecided voters looking for?
Verteger: Well I wish I knew - I'd probably have had better luck with my campaign if I did. I suspect that that personal relationships and reputations, as always, will decide the initial camps. Each left-over swing voter is probably going to make an independent judgement based on the ministry they are closest with. GOTV, as always, might decide the final margins.
HEM: Thank you Vert!
HEM @ 7:04 PM PST: Phew, ok here we go!!
Calvin @ 7:05 PM PST: lots of candidates are coming into this with some sort of momentum, but none are in a particularly dominant position,. so it should be interesting to see if anyone is targeted for their voters. lots of overlap between bases this time around.
HEM @ 7:06 PM PST: McEntire seems to be learning a LOT on performance this term -- basically a laundry list here
Calvin @ 7:07 PM PST: McEntire has a rather long opening, compared to Sopo, maybe trying to reset expectations and dominate from the start.
HEM @ 7:07 PM PST: Oof, McEntire cut off.
Calvin @ 7:09 PM PST: Lloen seems to managing expectations by reminding people this is his first radio debate. After Pichto's debate performance fell into the background in the VP debate, I wonder if Lloen has a similar strategy to coast, and do no damage rather than go on the attack.
HEM @ 7:10 PM PST: Summing up the opening statements:
Sopo - I am so old literally nothing can surprise me
McEntire - Listen to my laundry list of tasks accomplished this term instead of reading my lazy platform
Lloen - i have never done this before so please judge my performance on a curve
Calvin @ 7:10 PM PST: And Lloen also goes over!
Calvin @ 7:14 PM PST: McEntire attempting to make his platform appear as the "sustainable" one, taking shots at his opponents for their visions and histories. How will the others respond to his attacks? If at all?
Lloen meanwhile plays it safe, taking only about his own platform. Going out of his way to say he is not attacking Malashaan as Chief of State when critiquing the role.
HEM @ 7:15 PM PST: Sopo drawing a distinction on accountability, saying that unlike Lloen he won't try to spend time to try to motivate the Senate to hold the executive accountable.
Calvin @ 7:15 PM PST: Sopo responds with a direct shot at Lloen's plan for midterm reports presented to the Senate whether they want them or not. I don't know if Llloen will respond to it, given his strategy so far.
HEM @ 7:16 PM PST: McEntire throwing his first elbow here on the executive confirmation of his "specialists", but I'm not sure if the Senate confirmation is a particularly sharp contrast
Calvin @ 7:19 PM PST: It seems we have a fight on our hands about executive deputies. If this is the big conflict maybe this debate will be a snoozefest. Is this what people are voting on?
HEM @ 7:20 PM PST: Yeah, especially between Sopo and McEntire if the only degree of separation is Senate confirmation I'm not sure that exchange was really meaningful. Neither McEntire or Sopo really had great answers on why these roles should exist, but also nobody made it seem like a big deal.
HEM @ 7:22 PM PST: Someone needs to put a timer on CSP's question, I really struggled to follow what he was asking there.
Calvin @ 7:23 PM PST: This question could be big, talking about FA visibility but Lloenflys doesn't seem to want to make waves on this issue for whatever reason. He's speaking on eggshells despite his opponent's running mate serving as the current Chief of State.
HEM @ 7:25 PM PST:
McEntire "I hear criticism of Region of the Week, but frankly I reject it."
Lloen: "First off, I wasn't criticizing region of the week.
McEntire: "How do you explain FA better to members?"
Lloen: "I don't know."
two big oofs here for me.
Calvin @ 7:26 PM PST: McEntire turns the question to Region of the Week, and Lloen again refuses to make a direct attack on a large issue that people have been talking about. Really baffled he's turning down these easy opportunities.
HEM @ 7:27 PM PST: Oh wow, Sopo bringing out the big guns talking about how McEntire wasn't in the ROTW server and Mal hasn't posted in it. McEntire seems genuinely knocked off balance there, didn't hear a good explanation.
Calvin @ 7:28 PM PST: Sopo is trying to breathe life into this question by calling out McEntire and Malashaan for not posting in the Region of the Week server, if they care about the program so much. McEntire immediately replies that he's been too busy running the domestic side of the government. Not a great look for the candidate supporting Council of Coordination to say that he doesn't have to care about what the FA government is up to, especially since Culture was so involved in this particular project.
Verteger @ 7:28 PM PST: If McEntire's reason for not being involved with ROTW was that it was too much work to get involved, why would he become President if it's inherently a more involved role?
HEM @ 7:30 PST: CSP's questions have as many parts as an AP Free Response Question.
HEM @ 7:31 PST: i don't know why they always seem to ask this question about 'Why did you pick your VP' in debates, it's so boring
Calvin @ 7:34 PM PST: summary of vp selection:
mcentire - malashaan can be hands-off with the best of them.
sopo - monkey makes me laugh and is ready to take my job when i don't want it anymore.
Lloen - pichtonia can tell me who everyone is at the foreign affairs meetings.
HEM @ 7:35 PM PST: Take a shot every time someone says "Region of the Week"
Calvin @ 7:39 PM PST: Lloen is very defensive whenever Region of the Week gets brought up. He couches whatever he says in so many qualifications. It's hard to know what exactly he is pushing back against when he is pushing back the whole time, but maybe I'm missing something.
HEM @ 7:40 PM PST: yay a question on Independence!
Anonymous @ 7:42 PM PST: we actually did more this week than we did last week with a movie night added, and in general I have seen comparable activity to kantrias week
Calvin @ 7:45 PM PST: Sopo makes a good point about Independence that seems obvious, but can't be overstated: Europeia is not exclusively raider, and we do work well with defenders, too.
Lloen answers this question on columns by saying columns all need to be active every two weeks. Given the lack of output from a number of columns this term I wonder if a Lloen administration would restructure what columns we have in place, or if they are fine cutting out the foreign affairs ones.
Calvin @ 7:50 PM PST: McEntire gives an answer on the Navy that doesn't really do much to show what he knows because he asks a few questions in his answer that don't really seem to be getting at anything. I don't quite understand what his point is.
HEM @ 7:52 PM PST: Sopo doesn't do a good job selling welcome wagon as different than mentorship. For what it's worth though, i just feel like people keep saying there's nothing our government can do to integrate people and the crowd cheers
Calvin @ 7:53 PM PST: Sopo gives a bad answer here on his Welcoming Wagon. "Yes, my program is also Discord Buddies, but Discord Buddies has failed, and mine will not fail."
HEM @ 7:55 PM PST: Lloen: "there's nothing we can do to keep members here -- and this debate proves it"
HEM @ 7:57 PM PST: Seriously though, I think Lloen probably won't get hit too hard for saying we don't have an integration problem because Europeia is riding high again. But the story of the past few years should be that we have trouble getting members and keeping them around -- and it almost killed us off. I think he's wrong.
Calvin @ 7:58 PM PST: McEntire does a very good job hammering Sopo on this question, and gets some points for it. It's a little odd because his mentor program is also rather similar to Discord Buddies, and even has a similar name to Sopo's program, but it seems to have worked out for him to go on the attack.
HEM @ 7:59 PM PST: A nod to the chat in Mixlr, Kuramia seems to be acting the Olde Delaware of this election, with the key difference that she doesn't seem to be pushing any agenda and just defending her turf as FA Councilor // whatever other opinions she has.
Calvin @ 8:00 PM PST: Lloen answers this question by referencing something that most people aren't familiar with, but frames it in a way that it honestly doesn't sound that important. McEntire says his biggest failure is not running for President sooner. LAME. Sopo acknowledges he has a lot of failures and is probably the most honest on this question naming something related to the Presidency and in recent memory.
HEM @ 8:03 PM PST:
"things get too specific." -- McEntire
"we will have a plan to do something." -- McEntire
Verteger @ 8:05 PM PST: Lloen's strategy seems to be "Let Sopo and McEntire fight it out and hopefully no one will notice me"
Calvin @ 8:06 PM PST: This is a strange issue. Probably too into the weeds for everyone not running for President. Why is there debate about how specific our platforms are?
HEM @ 8:09 PM PST: I'm exhausted. I wish this question had more context because in the abstract I'm not sure why it matters and why "both" wouldn't be the answer otherwise.
Calvin @ 8:10 PM PST: I hope there's some big fight in the last few minutes here, I'm kinda tuning out on this question about events and participants.
HEM @ 8:11 PM PST: *That moment Lloen realizes he can't remember any Presidents*
HEM @ 8:12 PM PST: recap of what past president the candidates want to emulate:
Lloen: "sopo because I can't remember any others"
Sopo: "HEM because I was VP then and vote for me!"
McEntire: "Writinglegend because I looked at the comments chat and that's who everyone is talking about"
Calvin @ 8:15 PM PST: All right, closing statements time, guess we give our final thoughts. Can I say it was boring? I don't know how much of this debate really touched on anything that will matter over the next week. A lot of questions allowed for the opportunity for clashing, but the attacks really only happened on the questions that nobody cares about.
HEM @ 8:18 PM PST: closing statement recap:
Lloen - this debate has me questioning if i even want to deal with you morons so vote for who you want
McEntire - I know my platform is riddled with ideas of things we already do but i really need this government paycheck to support my emerging Luluaroe stay at home business so take a chance
Sopo - i'm having trouble reading my handwriting on this boring statement I clearly wrote in advance
Calvin @ 8:21 PM PST: If I had to pick a winner, I suppose it's Sopo, given how he seemed the most prepared to scrap, and those are the moments that people likely will remember, but he also attracted the most heat in the comments from Kuramia, and maybe that turns against him in the coming days, so we'll see what happens. Lloen's strategy of refusing every opportunity to attack made him very forgettable. Meanwhile, McEntire also got some hits in, but also had some weird moments, particularly on the Navy question that made his overall performance a little wobbly.
HEM @ 8:24 PM PST: I think the other candidates were able to poke at McEntire's weak spots a little bit better than vice versa, and when he was knocked off balance it sometimes showed in his voice. In contrast, when McEntire hit Lloen on how he'd do a better job keeping citizens looped in on FA and Lleon literally said, "I don't know" -- he said it with such a cool and calm demeanor that I think it passed over everyone how...bizarre that was?
Overall, McEntire was a polling leader who needed to expand his base and I don't think he will based on this debate -- but it's so close, I doubt it's a knockout. Sopo and Lloen probably had similar performances with Sopo erring on the side of being more aggressive and Lloen preferring to sit back and coast. I think it will greatly depend on what you're looking for in a leader in how you will interpret which of the two of them won.
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