How about that debate, huh? After
all the aforemath the aftermath was pretty much the same.
Perhaps the most telling incident occurred
behind the scenes before the debate took place. But more on that later.
Moderator Chris Wallace did an
excellent job. It’s a formidable task keeping two ego-driven, strong
personalities under control. For the most part he was able to do that but there
were a couple of times I wish he had had one of those air horns or maybe a starter
pistol. I hate it when they’re both talking over one another. What they’re
saying is lost for the most part. Not effective. Not effective at all.
As in the previous debate Trump
didn’t need to just hold his own or come out a little on top. He’s a candidate
declining in the polls; he needed a decisive unquestionable victory. He needed
to be the dominator. He needed to talk circles around her, not stalk her. He
needed to knock the ball out of the park. Instead he hit a grounder.
As far as the “debate” goes I will
give it to Clinton again on technical performance. Technically they both
screwed up bigly but she was much less bigly about it. (I like the word bigly.
Shortly legitimizes it. Thank you.) In general, she was again the more poised
of the two and comported herself better. Whether we like it or not, it’s about
appearance and I’m not talking physical appearance.
Once again Trump’s lack of
preparation worked against him. He doesn’t practice being civil at rallies. The
problem for him is he brings his personal style to a debate and it doesn’t work
well in that environment. For one thing the feedback from a positive crowd is
missing. He feeds off of that and uses it to provide direction to his comments.
Since he can’t have Hillary Rodham Clinton physically removed he’s reduced to
interjecting snarky comments. Such actions don’t give him an appearance of
strength.
Trump’s continual denying in
debates things that he says, when the videos and audios of him saying them are
all over the internet, works against him. It isn’t his evil twin that we’re watching
making those comments. It’s him. Hillary Clinton at least has the sense to try
and figure out credible responses.
Again Trump stomped on any gains he
might have made by making the next day’s headlines about him negative. He said
that he wouldn’t accept the outcome of the election. He said that he would keep
us in suspense. By saying that he ensured that negative headlines would stay in
the news along with his refusal to release his income taxes and comments about
sexually assaulting women. Yet again he manages to keep Hillary Clinton’s
negative news on the back pages.
But as I mentioned in the first
paragraph what happened before the debate is perhaps most telling. In addition
to all of the external polls the two main parties are doing their own internal
polling and also have a pretty good idea of how the election will probably go
down, though we don’t see those.
What we do sometimes see is a
letter or sign, even before the vote takes place, where the second (VP) will
let people know that they’re available for work after the election. In this
case it wasn’t the second, it was the son-in-law, Jared Kushner, shopping the
idea of a Trump television network. While Trump supporters might like the idea
of Trump Presidential network it would probably be just a little too Banana
Republicky to sell. More realistically the Trump campaign family knows how this
election is probably going to go down and is dutifully trying to figure how
they can make money off of his following. They even rolled it out by televising
the debate #TrumpTV. It’s a savvy move. But it isn’t Presidential.
The polls will continue to provide
insight as to how the election is going. The election is November 8th.
I will accept the outcome.
We are the United States of America.