When she was still a full-time teacher, Barbara O’Connor, emeritus professor at Sacramento State, skipped class a few times to judge 10 U.S. presidential debates at the invitation of The Associated Press. Asked Wednesday morning over coffee how she views the current debates taking place among the diminishing gang of wannabes for the Democratic presidential nomination, she says in her deep, heard-it-all voice, “Oh, these haven’t been debates. You have to be saying, ‘What would be different if you elected someone else besides Trump?’” She refuses to live in the past but clearly laments the passing of a time when “evidence mattered and facts counted.” O’Connor adds that social media “has changed everything. It creates crowds and it creates chaos.” Even so, when O’Connor turned 72 this past week, the number of Facebook happy-birthday posts she received, well into the hundreds, offered a fair indication of her continued popularity, her currency and her own social media presence.
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