The Third Debate

I’m sorry if this is a couple of news cycles late, but I want to offer up my thoughts on that last presidential debate.  Such is the peril of a once a week blogging schedule.  I may sacrifice timeliness, but I’ll more than make up for it in carefully considered wordsmithing.  After all, I’ve been working on this in my head since last week and am totally not throwing this together slap-dash so I can get on with watching TV. [Snork!]

I’m just going to hit some of the topics they touched on and give Hillary some helpful advice on things she could have said.  It’s kind of like Monday Morning Quarterbacking for political arguments.

Abortion

Trump showed either a shocking unawareness of why “partial-birth” abortions exist or a brazen indifference so he could pander to the social conservatives he’s trying to woo back to the fold.

The point Hillary should have made was that it’s not like they do these for shits and giggles.  It’s either to save the life of the mother or the baby is severely damaged or non-viable.  Women aren’t having these late term abortions because they just haven’t gotten around to it.  When having to choose between saving the woman’s health or life, and not, it’s not really a contest.  

Pivoting

Aside from the fact that every politician does this in a debate or Q and A session, it really wasn’t much of a pivot.  Hillary explained how the moderator took her quote out of context, which nullified the overall point, and then moved on.  (The moderator, Chris Wallace, was from Fox “News,” and taking quotes out of context is so ingrained there, he probably didn’t even realize he was doing it.)

The Economy

Trump was still pushing the idea that tax cuts for corporations and the rich will result in a benefit for all.  Unfortunately for him, anyone who was alive when Reagan was president, or more recently when GW Bush was president, remembers that tax cuts for the wealthy stayed with the wealthy.  Corporate taxes were at their lowest point in history and regulations had been slashed.  And all the rest of us got out of it was a lousy recession.  Where were the jobs?

Or look to the current Republican-led states, who have implemented the GOP wet dream of government budgeting.

Trickle down economics just doesn't work. #debate #ImWithHer pic.twitter.com/pdqfLYM7HU

— (((R.Saddler))) (@Politics_PR) October 20, 2016

And when Trump complained about how the (she and) Democrats haven’t been able to address jobs or the economy over the last 6 years, Hillary needed to remind him that the Republicans have blocked every meaningful jobs and infrastructure bill they put forth.  They can’t obstruct every bill and then complain that nothing got done.

Well… I guess they CAN, really, because that’s exactly what they’re doing.  But it’s linguistically and intellectually bankrupt.  But that’s the reality.  They would rather nothing get done and have the country suffer than let a Democrat (in general) or Obama (in particular) get credit for something.

King of Denial

I honest to God don’t get how Donald Trump can stand up there and claim he never said things that we all heard him say, even stuff he said at the last debate.  This is stuff that’s on audio and video tape, in context, and incontrovertible.  The man is playing the American public for fools.

The New O’Keefe Video and Election Rigging

Over and over Trump kept going back to how the Democrats are somehow rigging the election against him and citing the new O’Keefe video as proof.

As far as I’m concerned, you can’t believe anything you see in one of this guy’s hack job videos.  His entire history is a series of dishonestly edited undercover videos, where up is edited into down and yes is edited into no.  They have zero credibility.  But at this point, neither does Trump, so I imagine he sees O’Keefe as a kindred spirit.

I have to hand it to Hillary on this one, though.  She totally reeled him in on the rigging thing.  He took the bait and she beat him to death with it, basically calling him a whiner who’s making excuses for losing.

The thing is, though, I do believe the election is being rigged.  But it’s not by the Democrats.  I see a two-pronged attack.  The first is the well-documented GOP voter ID laws and purging of voter rolls, to fix the alleged voter fraud, which no one has ever found in a statistically meaningful way.  And then at the same time, people are trying to obtain the newly required documents, they cut back DMV operations in Democrat-heavy areas.  The GOP has had 4 years to hone their voter disenfranchisement policies and they know what they’re doing.

The second thing is that Russian hackers are raising their ugly heads and are actively inserting themselves into our election, by hacking Democratic servers and leaking emails they consider damaging.  And if they can do that, they can certainly hack into the hundreds of electronic-voting precincts that have no paper backup.  Piece of cake.

So to me, this is why Trump keeps going on about election rigging: If he loses, he already has an excuse and a rallying cry to maintain power and influence.  And if he wins, the Democrats (as well as most everyone else) have already put themselves on record as saying there is no voter fraud and the voting system is sound, so if they complain, then THEY’LL look like the sore losers.  Either way, Trump wins.

Mosul

Trump blames Hillary and Obama for the Russians and Iranians getting involved with Assad.

Sigh.  Even a numb-nut like me knows that they’ve been involved in Syria for decades.  Christ, Trump, read a newspaper sometime and not just by looking for your name.

The best part of the foreign policy segment was that I came up with this:

Trump thinks Mosul is one of the daughters in Fiddler on the Roof. #Debate

— bluzdude (@DarwinfishBluz) October 20, 2016

That’s for all my Broadway fans… Trump tries to pass himself off as Tevye, but he’s really Lazar Wolf; rich boor and butcher of language.

It was obvious that Trump started out the debate trying to stay calm and under control.  He didn’t interrupt, waited his term, and measured his words.  But then Hillary got under his skin and baited him into going back to the old Trump.

The thing is, the constant interruptions and interjections didn’t make him look clever; they just made him look like a punk… and ill-mannered, back-of-the-classroom oaf.

But I’m glad these things are over with and there are only a couple more weeks until Election Day.  Then we’ll know who’s rigging what.  At any rate, I’m taking advantage of early voting and doing it next Saturday.  You should check your local voting rules and do so as well.  November 8^th could be a major nightmare, just getting your vote down, especially in areas where Trump will have his helpful poll watchers out in force.

I don’t expect any trouble in deep blue Maryland, but you never know.  If the ballot asks me to vote “da” or “nyet” on Issue 1, we may be in for more trouble than I thought.