To play on the title of Big Joe Turner’s iconic hit song Shake, Rattle and Roll, the Democratic Debate could more properly be called Fake, Prattle and Droll. Although I didn’t have a stop watch in hand during the Democratic debate, it certainly seemed as if the Univision moderators concerned themselves with trying to enforce [...]
Like the GOP candidates discussing climate change, I readily admit I am not a scientist. I understand entropy to mean the dispersal of energy, and that’s exactly what we saw in Saturday’s GOP debate. Just when I thought the Republicans may have learned something about argument in the last debate, Saturday’s GOP matchup proved me wrong. [...]
If past debates are any indication, the upcoming Republican debate will witness neither the civility nor the discussion of issues evident in Thursday’s Democratic Debate. Let’s first look at areas of agreement, then who won on issues of clash and finally how effective the moderators were. The candidates agreed on the role the federal government [...]
As the most recent Democratic debate proved, the Republicans have no monopoly on pandering to a base. While they congenially agreed on a number of issues, the big three differentiators they chose to highlight were Wall Street influence, healthcare and gun control. 1) Wall Street Reform When faced with the charge that Clinton was too [...]
Looking forward to some confrontation in what was otherwise predicted to be a dull exchange in the most recent Democratic debate, viewers watched to see how Clinton and Sanders would handle what some in the punditocracy have begun calling “datagate.” Those hoping for heated moments were disappointed as Sanders quickly explained and apologized for what [...]
There was almost no mention of domestic policy in the 5th Republican debate. Instead, the focus was on national security. I predicted that candidates would argue about who had the best plan to defeat terrorism and who would be the toughest. After watching the debate, three aspects stood out for me: Revealing moments, language choices [...]
CNN has been promoting the 5th Republican primary debate as if we’re about to watch The Hunger Games [watch the CNN trailer]. While we won’t hear a cannon shot and see pictures of the candidates afterwards because they’ve been figuratively killed during the debate, we might see certain elephants make a big splat after falling [...]
Remember that one of Aristotle’s “available means of persuasion was logic, or what I refer to as “argument” in blog postings. To better understand how to judge the strength of an argument, it helps to have some tools at hand, so in this post I look at the structure and constituent parts. To effectively analyze [...]
The post on the DNA of Argument introduced the role reasoning played in argument. I wrote that reasoning connected the evidence someone presents to the assertion someone makes. You could also think of reasoning as a bridge or a link. In this post, we take a closer look at some different types of reasoning and [...]
So far, the primary debates have contained lots of assertions, but very little argument Most have conveyed little evidence, confused the nature of facts and conflated the different types of assertions. Before we delve any deeper into the rhetorical toolbox and look at the role assertions play in a logical argument, let me offer three general [...]