A hypothetical question: You are one of the moderators of the next Presidential debate. (We’re not sure if there will be one, though there surely must.) What question(s) would you most like to ask both candidates together, as well as either one separately. Since Harris hasn’t yet chosen a running mate, we’ll leave out VP questions, though if you want to say what you’d ask Vance, fire away. Be hard on them!
But here’s one question I’d ask both candidates. A version of this was asked in 2007 among the Republican Presidential candidates, with three out of the ten candidates said they didn’t “believe in evolution.” Here’s the video of that:
So here’s what I’d ask both Trump and Harris:
Do you accept that evolution is true? Why or why not?
That’s a touchstone about whether they’d accept established scientific “truth.” If you don’t buy that, then you’re oblivious to evidence. I’m sure Harris would say “yes”, but don’t know what Trump would say. But I’d also like to know if they know the evidence.
Here’s what I’d ask Trump (two questions):
You still maintain that the last Presidential election was rigged, with illegal votes counted in a way that made you lose. If you lost this time, would you still say the same thing?
(This is to determine whether he’d still foment insurrection if he lost.)
As lagniappe, I’d ask him this:
You recently said this:
“You got to get out and vote. In four years, you don’t have to vote again. We’ll have it fixed so good, you’re not going to have to vote.”
And you’re sticking by that statement. Could you explain exactly what you meant by it?
And here are two questions I’d ask Harris:
What do you think you accomplished on your own as Vice-President, as opposed to simply assenting to what Biden accomplished? I am referring to what you actually did to make America progress, as opposed to what you were supposed to do).
I thought of one more:
You are hoping that you will win the Presidency by reinstalling Roe v. Wade as the law of the land. How, exactly, would you accomplish this if at least one house of Congress was majority Republican?
Both of those questions for Harris are designed to make her think on her feet as opposed to her custom of simply repeating a question as if it were an answer.
Put your questions below. Remember, you aren’t supposed to show partisan bias here, but to draw out the candidates, for that’s what debate moderators are supposed to do.
On the island of Knights and Knaves, inhabitants are either Knights who always tell the truth, or Knaves always lie. You are on the island and you meet two people. How can you tell them apart?
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+1 A classic.
Couldn’t you ask: do you want to be tortured and murdered?. The one who says ‘no’ is the knight, the knave says ‘yes.’
Ha! Clever, if gruesome, solution!
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But the one who says yes could be a jihadist knight who will cheerfully and stoically accept both. The one who says no could be a jihadist who has become a knave in order to meet his duty to lie to the infidel even as he welcomes his own death. His nation assigns the knaves to answer such questions put by infidels. Both knights and knaves would give answers opposite to the common-sense ones that the non-jihadists knights and knaves would give. The solution lacks what is sometimes called cultural competence, the lack of which is the latest thing you can get into trouble. I’m not criticizing you for your answer lacking it, just pointing out, tongue-in-cheek, the danger that awaits at the next struggle session.
I don’t want to be pedantic but the solution to the riddle is to find a question that traps the (not yet determined) knave in a double negative and reveals his identity by forcing him to lie twice and answer No. (The knight, telling the truth twice, will answer Yes.)
Yeah, I know it’s a philosophical mind/logic problem looking for a clever solution that can’t be refuted. And as your scenario proves, it’s pretty lame. Lots of “what ifs” and no reality involved. Jihadists? OK, I talk to those people all the time? As most logic problems go, common sense might not win the pedantic war of said logic rules, but it prevails for all intents and purposes in the day-to-day world of human interaction. Occam’s razor might not be a logical solution to philosophical conundrum’s, but it works in most situations in this world; that’s what my scenario tries to exemplify.
There are other solutions that don’t assume cultural competence. You could ask “Do knaves always lie?” The knight would say “yes”, the knave would say “no”.
I have usually heard this riddle with a further constraint: the islanders respond with their own language’s words for “yes”/”no”, and you don’t know which is which. Let’s say the words are “lo” and “po”. In that case, you would have to ask a “meta” question like “If I asked you if you were a knight, would you say ‘lo’?” Irrespective of whether “lo” means “yes” or “no”, knights will answer this question “lo” and knaves will answer it “po”.
Nice!
+1
+1
The knights wear armour.
+1
I just thought of this :
Response : “I would ask one whether a circle is a square, then ask the other whether a square is a circle, combine those answers to negate the contradictory components in each shape to synthesize the squircle.”
[ aside : the squircle is a shape, the early iPhones used it]
“Thus, neither are Knight or Knave, but each represent parts of a greater whole which I have revealed.”
That is one way a dialectician might be identified – one programmed in dialectic.
What does that mean? Does it mean that she plans to reinstall Roe v. Wade BEFORE the election? Or is the question meant to ask how the she would go about achieving it as president? Perhaps it is the latter that is meant by the question.
Sorry, I meant that abortion seems to be the issue that Harris and other Dems think is most likely to give her an electoral advantage. My question was aimed at how, if elected, she would fulfill her promise about abortion.
What is your plan to deal with the ballooning national debt?
+1
+1. With some specificity. As in, how would you plan to reduce the national debt until it is down to X% of GDP or some other measure recommended by recognized economists.
This is the most important question and no candidate is addressing it.
As president, will you insist that Congress do its constitutional job of debating and passing (or not) enabling legislation in support of your agenda or do you see a path through the administrative state that reports to you as a better vehicle for accomplishing that?
My question:
“Is it ok to forcibly impregnate a cow and then steal her calf? Is it ok to cut off a pigs tail and then slit their throat? If not, why are you subsidizing people who do this?”
Animal rights are never brought up. Our species is so privileged that we will cry over minutia before even considering the rights of non-human animals.
+1
To both:
+++++
(paraphrasing Richard Dawkins)
In 2015, Rachel Dolezal, a white chapter president of NAACP, was vilified for identifying as Black. Some men choose to identify as women, and some women choose to identify as men.
Is anyone who identifies as black – black, and is any man who identifies as a woman – a woman?
To both
+++++
Will the US -under your administration- continue to support Israel? And why?
To both
+++++
How do you plan to contain Iran?
Yes, but although I’d also be tempted to ask Harris a version of “can you define the term ‘woman’ and explain how will this definition be used in law?” I wouldn’t ask it. I want Trump to lose, not suddenly look like the reasonable one.
I want my president to understand and acknowledge that sex in humans is binary and dimorphic – not necessarily in those terms, but close. Also, (the dimorphic and binary nature of sex) is one of the first things we learn -intuitively- as mammals. Pretending that reality is a sometimes an illusion (up to choice) is in the realm of insanity.
It’s not a temptation – at least for me it isn’t. It’s serious. I live and work on behalf of animals, denying the foundations and firewalls of millions of years of evolution and of nature is not something I can accept, I won’t – the ideology fills me with profound sadness and anger (not hate, anger).
I want my president to live in reality and understand the grave harm inflicted on children/young adults and biological (I shouldn’t have to say that) women through gender-ideology.
+100
Also, the revisions by the Biden/Harris admin to Title IX erased the distinction between sex and gender (gender-identity). Sex is now conflated with gender-identity. This is a tragedy – it dismantles women’s sex based rights in the context of Title IX. It must be reversed.
+1
+100
Well put, I fully agree
Harris seems to sincerely support Ukraine and democracies in the global fight against repugnant empires. And more or less support Israel.
Trump is clearly a traitor which IMO is even worse than a felon.
Hence voting is a no brainer
Anyway she will have to answer that defining question “what’s a woman”.
BTW – GREAT idea for a post – this should be refreshing.
To each of them: What will you do to harden our electrical grid? Please be specific. Include a time frame (when will this work begin).
I would ask Harris:
You have repeatedly lauded “equity” such that “we all end up in the same place”. Do you want all Americans to be paid the same and have exactly the same wealth, or do you accept that a level playing field and equality of opportunity can lead to very different outcomes?
My hardball nonpartisan question:
The Israeli war against Hamas has been going on for about a year now and no doubt the loss of life during this conflict is horrendous. However, the country of Israel, the only stable democracy in the Middle East is, in no doubt, waging a war of self-defense against a terrorist organization that has pledged time and time again to exterminate Jews and other Western interests, and has captured Palestinian civilians through antisemitic propaganda and utilized as human shield fodder categorized under war crimes. That Israel has done this campaign even to the extent of making an effort to minimize civilian casualties is very commendable.
Will you as President continue to support our ally Israel with its goal to eliminate Hamas as a political power?
Also, will you defund UNWRA, a major funder of terrorist activity in the Gaza Strip and crack down protestors who have proven antisemitic prejudices AND ties to Islamic terrorist organizations?
Finally, will you take a harder stance against Iran and other sponsors of terrorism in this conflict?
Trump would respond with a long gibbering spew of word salad. It would emphasize his having had an election stolen from him. There would be insults in the response. Maybe something about batteries and sharks or how he has no idea who that woman is.
I have not yet looked at the questions up there. But here are two questions.
Trump: You had said that you would pardon those who have been charged during the Jan. 6 insurrection. Do you still intend to do that if elected?
Harris: Under what circumstances will you increase security at our southern border?
+1
One more hardball relevant question if I may:
In the United States Constitution, the 1st Amendment contains the establishment clause, which states the freedom to worship AND the forbiddance to establish a state religion for this nation. Over the years, religious fervor has seeped into politics especially Christianity in the right-aligning parties and the rise of sympathies towards Islamic extremism on the far-left as evidenced by recent campus protests.
Will you as President respect that fine boundary between church and state and prevent your fellow constituents from establishing a state religion and reduce religious biases in politics?
A quibble on the First Amendment. It says nothing about “worship,” although there was a concentrated effort during the Obama Administrations to present it in such a constrained form. “Free exercise of religion” includes worship, but it can include much, much more. It is this “much more” portion that can, but need not necessarily, remain in tension with Congress “mak[ing] no law respecting an establishment of religion.”
Do you believe we are in Cold War II with China? If so, what is our long term strategy to win?
Do support public education? What policies would you implement to strengthen public education? What is the alternative to public education if you don’t want to strengthen it?
I would want to apply this question from K-12 through University.
President Trump and Vice President Harris, many believe the COVID pandemic to be the most significant public health event since the influenza pandemic of 1918. The potential for an even more calamitous pandemic looms large, and our federal, state, and private agencies will need to draw upon lessons learned from the COVID pandemic response. Yet, we have not pursued a rigorous, national-level evaluation of our successes and failures during that response. Will each of you commit to working with Congress to appoint, as was done after 9/11, a bipartisan and independent commission charged with reviewing all facets of the federal response?
As a follow-up question, and in the spirit of bipartisanship, consider that the pandemic overlapped each of your administrations. Could each of you name two aspects of the response by your respective administrations that, in retrospect, you believe might have been in error? Correspondingly, can you name one or two aspects of the other Administration’s response that you find praiseworthy?
— To Trump:
In addition to Jerry’s question on whether he’d accept the election outcome, I’d ask him if he’d consider unequivocally withdrawing his support for extreme anti-abortion laws.
Also: You (Trump) have claimed that tariffs on imports from China are paid by the Chinese. Explain exactly how this works, because otherwise it’s understood that it’s in fact US consumers who pay for those tariffs in higher prices for Chinese products.
— To Harris:
Do you think that different outcomes between various ethnic groups and between men and women are incontrovertible evidence of discrimination?
Do you think so-called gender-affirmation surgery should be allowed in minors?
Do you think we should provide free housing, food, and medical attention to border crossers for as long as they claim to need it, regardless of their circumstances, immigration status, and numbers?
To both candidates: When was the last time you went shopping at Walmart? When was the last time you shopped at a non-boutique mom and pop store? If the answer is a while ago, how do you expect to understand how the bottom 50% live when you never visit these stores.
+100
You still maintain that the last Presidential election was rigged, with illegal votes counted in a way that made you lose. If you lost this time, would you still say the same thing?
I know this is not the point of asking the question, but we do already know the answer to that question. Tr*mp is already talking about how the election is going to be rigged. He’s already laid the foundation for the next insurrection.
I probably would not ask this question, but I dearly would love to:
If someone believes that about two thousand years ago an angel came to a young girl called Mary/Maryam and foretold a divine birth, do you think they will be able to handle the evidence about serious questions that arise around national and international politics?