Will of the People

Brief meditations on a common, usually-misleading tactic in discourse;

Predicting a response from a particular (type of?) opponent and mentioning it before that response, often using the opportunity to characterise it.

Why does this "work", in that why do people feel it is a successful move?

• Offering a (possibly) false explanation - It allows one to either be the first to frame a line of argument as one likes, or it allows one to offer a false explanation of the reasoning behind the objection, perhaps pressing buttons (stressing their membership in some widely-disliked groups) along the way.
• Conversaitonal flow dynamic - Arguments often are not entirely about their content; there's a give-and-take to issues that happens on an emotional level, and this disrupts that

Less bad related tack: identifying possible objections to what one's saying and addressing them, either accepting that they have some weight but pointing out that that weight is limited, or showing their invalidity.