Talk:2008 United States vice presidential debate

Ifill's "great freedom and power"
The sentence "The debate's format offered moderator Gwen Ifill great freedom and power to decide the questions which can cover domestic or international issues" made sense before the debate, when people were speculating about how she might bias her questions. But now that we know what questions she asked and there's been no complaint about bias in the questions, the sentence seems pointless. I suggest deleting it. —KCinDC (talk) 20:41, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

What's past is prologue
I created a page for the saying "What's past is prologue" after being intrigued when Joe Biden said it in the debate. It should probably be linked to from this page since it was one of the more seminal quips of the night. Does anyone disagree? I wanted to check so it didn't seem spammish. Mcoogan75 (talk) 03:10, 14 October 2008 (UTC)

2nd debate
So, let's get some mention of the "other" VP debate. The virtual blackout of anything to do with 3rd parties in the USA is practically criminal. ⇔ ChristTrekker 20:03, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I suggest you create a new article for that, not this one, this article is about the october 2nd debate, as is clearly stated in the article since the article was created. There is no blackout on anything you are free to write many articles on third parties or anything else just this article is not the place to do it. The article has a well defined topic a well defined name, it's not the place you looking for but in 2.6 million articles there might be some that are. Or you can create new articles.Hobartimus (talk) 21:12, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Hobartimus beat me to saying this, but yes.... This article is about the single Biden/Palin debate. There is only one "official" VP debate in the election series, and there is a precedent on Wikipedia for making an article on that single debate (see United States vice-presidential debate, 2004, United States vice-presidential debate, 2000, and United States vice-presidential debate, 1996).  You are free to write another article on that other debate, but it's not part of this official general election and shouldn't be a part of this article. And this article certainly shouldn't be moved to a new name, as it's widely linked from other articles and moving it will create a swath of double redirects. &mdash;Politizer talk / contribs 23:12, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Nice to know we are tacitly endorsing the Dems/Reps collusion to make themselves the only "official" parties of an election. ⇔ ChristTrekker 15:28, 18 November 2008 (UTC)
 * Nobody is endorsing anything like that. If there were other notable debates, by all means cover them, there is no need to put it in this particular article. I guess the participants have their articles, their parties have articles or you can create a new article that covers all the other debates, (presidential and vice presidential) that took part without repub, democrat participation. Hobartimus (talk) 17:07, 18 November 2008 (UTC)


 * I already know how that will go. It gets marginalized by putting it into a separate article (let's keep this article about the "main" candidates, the ones in the "official" debate).  Then that will likely be attacked for notability (who cares about some minor debate between unknowns?), or lack of sources (nobody covered that, it wasn't in the news), or lack of content (this is only a stub, what's the point?).  Whether you intend to or not, relegating 3rd party candidates to the hinterlands (i.e. an ancillary article rather than the main article) is effectively an endorsement of the Dem/Rep monopolization of US politics.  The third party pres debates are covered in the main article.  I honestly don't see why this article should be treated any differently.  The only substantive argument is the logistical problem of having to clean up some double redirs.  Well, too bad...get a bot to clean them up, then.  Even if the article name remains singular, I don't see any reason the 3rd party debate cannot be included here.  True, there won't be much material about it, which is even more reason it ought to be included here rather than creating a separate article.  ⇔ ChristTrekker 23:16, 20 November 2008 (UTC)
 * I don't want to burst your hopes but this article gets about 40 views a day, it hardly gets more marginal than this. I assure you I will not "attack" any such new article for notability. If all the 3rd party debates are covered (presidential and non-presidential) I'm sure there will be enough material for a stub at least. Hobartimus (talk) 02:27, 21 November 2008 (UTC)


 * If you must have the debates in this article, ChristTrekker, they should be presented in a minor section somewhere, introduced by something along the lines of "There was also a debate between....". They should not be prominently featured in the lead-in of the article and bolded, because they are not the real topic of this article.  Our identifying those debates as not "official" is not some arbitrary distinction we are making as part of some conspiracy to perpetuate Dem/Rep hegemony and bla bla bla...it's based on the fact that these debates really weren't part of the official election campaign, given that those candiates (as far as I know) didn't receive federal election funding and all that and (as far as I know) weren't invited to appear in the "mainstream" debates.  If this were Ross Perot in 92/96, things would be different.  But this isn't Ross Perot.
 * That being said, I agree with Hobartimus that this stuff belongs in a different article, linked from this one but still a separate article. &mdash;Politizer talk / contribs 02:39, 21 November 2008 (UTC)

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