Exactly.

Trump is down huge on the scoreboard, why would he give away his last few chances and possessions to make a comeback?

Chances are he is still going to throw a pick 6, let Hillary run up the score even more, and get annihilated, but at least there's a chance of changing the tides, no matter how small that chance might be.

But like I mentioned before, I'm not even sure if he wants to be President.

This post was edited by ThatAlex on Aug 18 2016 08:14pm

Donald Trump has a lot more persuasive skills than Hillary and they would shine in a debate. Trump draws enormous crowds while Hillary has the media framing the picture to make her tiny crowds look larger. People are interesting to hear and see Trump speak, even if they don't agree with what he has to say, while many people don't like the sound of Hillary's voice. Believe me, the debates are a great opportunity for Trump and forgetting my political bias it will be great entertainment for all. If Trump can continue to frame Hillary's health as a concern and anything props up in the debates his seed of persuasion will be reinforced greatly in his favor.

Trump is an ubermensch though, and he has that WWE experience. It all depends on how much homework he is doing now and if he is taking his coaches and sages seriously finally. I don't want to get too complacent because the DNC have been ignoring black America since 2008.

*1965 sir

I'm afraid I still don't understand this logic of "Trump wants to avoid the debates". Perhaps he does, but why?
Hillary wanted to avoid debates with Sanders, we know that very well, and she had ample reason: She's a carefully staged photo op candidate and risks horrible derailment if she's taken off the prepared canned speech. She didn't want to give sanders more coverage, thats true and doesn't apply to trump, but she also knows that debates are treacherous minefields where a populist running on a message can either score points or watch her implode. She had everything to lose and nothing to gain and signed up for the bare minimum and skipped the last debate anyway

Now against Trump, why doesn't this apply even moreso? Trump did exactly that to Marco Rubio, skewered him on his robotic recitation of the script. Trump has innoculated himself to gaffes at this point, whereas Hillary has remained locked away and out of the public eye so far this campaign and shows no signs of venturing out into the limelight. That favors trump so heavily and gives him so much opportunity to tear down Hillary even before we consider her baggage that he can exploit against her. She can do what, walk in there with some preloaded zingers from the writing staff and attack his vague campaign promises that won't stick to him because they're so undefined, but he can attack her on benghazi, libya, yemen, syria, china, dprk, goldman sachs, monica, emails, kosovo snipers, etc etc. If anything, maybe trump risks getting too bogged down and offmessage by not homing in on a single point if he tries to attack her on everything at once.

Trump has won all the RNC debates handily by following that same procedure, talk the empty suit off script and then piledrive them once they're in the open. Hillary can stay withdrawn from the public sphere cloistered away for 99% of the campaign, but she can't dodge the debates.

This post was edited by Goomshill on Aug 18 2016 08:41pm

Trump has nothing to lose from the debates, the media is mistaken on this.

Trump does not want the debates to compete with the NFL for the same reason that Sanders didn't want the debates to be at inconvenient times. If Trump wins, he needs to kill the debates and people need to see. Clinton has every reason to want that not to happen.

I agree with y'all. Trump is down big right now. He has nothing to lose and everything to gain from the debates. If everything holds steady from where the election is at now, he's going to get destroyed.

How well he might do in the debates is a separate point. But Trump skipping the debates makes zero sense.

I think people's perspective on this topic is being confounded by how they perceive a candidate might do in a debate (speculation of performance) rather than considering who has something to gain and who has something to lose from the debates.

Trump's new hires are fucking terrible. Think about it for a second. He's backed by BREITBART. I hate to agree with Michael Moore, but I don't think he wants to win anymore.

He's overestimating populist support. Depending on how things go, a candidate like Trump (albeit less obnoxious) could win in 8 years. Just not today.

ah yes like that debate in Iowa when it was fucking Iowa vs Minnesotta rivalry game in Iowa City on Saturday night what a joke!