Corny question.

Painful

            I have to write about the candidate for an Iowa Senate seat, Theresa Greenfield. Greenfield is the challenger. She was asked a question about the price of corn in a debate with Ernst. Asked and answered. Bam!  Then Senator Ernst gave it a shot when asked about the price of soybeans. OMG! It was almost painful to watch. Give it a look if you haven’t seen it.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sy6fk3UDqes

 Classic

            She should have just said that she didn’t know. Instead she gave a long winded answer that had nothing to do with the question that she was asked. Classic Trump.

And then

            Then the moderator said that she didn’t answer his question. He said it in a nice way. Then he said that she SHOULD KNOW THE ANSWER. She didn’t. So she really got to make the guy hammer the point in.

And then

            Then she claimed that Greenfield didn’t get it right either. Classic! The problem? Greenfield got it right. Then Ernst wanted to be asked the same question that Greenfield was asked. Well, Greenfield already gave the answer to that question so that would have been an easy one for Ernst to answer.

And then

            Then Ernst said that she must have had an equipment problem. Classic! Yet she claimed that she knew that Greenfield got it wrong. Uh, what?

And then

            I’ve got my ‘and thens’ out of order here I think. At one point Ernst also indicated that she didn’t understand the question. Somewhere in all of this she did give a dollar figure to some kind of answer for something that was also wrong. The whole thing was pretty brutal. Will it make a difference in the election? It should, and not just because she didn’t know the answer to an Iowa farm question. It was the weaseling that she did afterwards.

She’s been hanging with too many rich people in suits.

 Went and stayed.

            The problem exemplified by Ernst is one that happens all over the country. People go to Washington, stay in Washington and become Washington. They don’t have to. But they do. They buy homes there and put down roots there. No, I have no idea of where Ernst stays when she’s not in Iowa.

            Then they do as Ernst did. They start taking care of the people in suits that don’t need taking care of BUT the suits give them money.

            If I lived in Iowa I would vote for Greenfield for her name alone. Well, her name, her position on issues, her understanding, her presence and for the way that she answered—

that corn question!

The back door [Politics/3rd Debate]

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 8^th. I will accept the outcome. 

We are the United States of America.

Presidential Speed Speeching [Politics/Debate]

These aren’t debates, they’re more like speed speeching. I am all in on that suggestion of cutting the mics after 2 minutes.

As in the first debate, which Trump overwhelmingly lost, he needed to do much better than just hold his own in round 2. He’s trending downward in the polls so he needed a tour de force performance. He gave a Trump performance; the kind of performance his supporters love. So far that hasn’t worked when it comes to convincing the undecideds who they are going to vote for. They’re trending to Hillary Rodham Clinton as we approach Electageddon. Subsequent polls will provide us an indication of who won.

Trump added to his controversy for the next news cycle before the debate began. He foreshadowed his own performance whether it was bad or good. He trotted out, against advice not to, women that claimed former President Bill Clinton committed various sexual improprieties against them. He doesn’t seem to understand that he’s running against Hillary Clinton. Wives are often perceived as being victims of philandering husbands.

And here I go—off message and not talking about the debate. Why? Trump did it to himself. He may have done it to throw Hillary Clinton off her game but he really needs to stop poking the bear. It isn’t working out well for him.

Then he starts off in the debate apologizing but coupled the apology with the “locker room” defense. This is not a good defense for a man who was caught on tape talking about sexually assaulting women by grabbing their personals. He would have been way ahead if he had simply apologized and then just STOPPED.

What was with all the sniffing again? Trump did that in the first debate too. I’ve watched way too much video of him lately but I haven’t seen him doing that in any of them or at his rallies. Another conspiracy?

Trump said during the debate that it was 3 against 1. At one point he seemed to be complaining that the moderators interrupting were getting in the way of him interrupting when Hillary Clinton was interrupting. Nevertheless, he managed to talk longer than Clinton. My personal feeling is that when a person says stuff like that it makes them sound weak and that they know they’re losing.

Then it was like he was playing Lurch, following her around. His campaign manager said that’s what people would talk about rather than him winning. That means she noticed him doing it too.

While they both avoided answering some questions, I believe that Hillary showed the more professional behavior of the two. Her responses were more coherent while Trump tends to wander and be repetitive when answering questions. He leaves out words like when he’s talking about the “nuclear.” At times I think that he’s talking about the triad but at other times it seems he isn’t. During the primary debates he didn’t know what the triad was.

People may decry the negativity but often the same people fill up Facebook with it. And why do politicians do it? Because it works. The number crunchers and polls have demonstrated that year after year. It’s what sells. We’re the audience and they know what we respond to.

The polls will tell us how the undecideds responded. 

You had one job…[Politics/VP Debate]

Here’s my take on the Vice President debate. Hands down Mike Pence won. Pence is the Republican far right evangelical running mate of Donald Trump. I pass this along because people might not know who the candidates for Vice President are.

I would have given the debate to Pence just because Kaine was so incredibly rude, repeatedly interrupting and talking over Pence. Regardless, Pence still won the debate. Mike Pence is a professional Washington Republican politician with years of service and was unflappable. He maintained his poise and decorum for the most part. His responses were measured and well delivered.

Tim Kaine, Hillary Rodham Clinton’s running mate, mainly needed to avoid shooting himself in the foot like Trump did several times in the first Presidential debate. He also needed to avoid doing any serious damage to the ticket when debating Pence.

Before watching the debate I spent some time checking out whether or not the VP debates had ever made much of a difference in the polls or outcome of elections. I was surprised to find that by and large they had little effect since they are the number 2 spot on the ticket. It seemed that there have been indications that they could stop a trend. Polls for the next week or so will provide an indication of what effect if any the VP debate between Kaine and Pence had.

I loved this sentence about the debate from a Washington Post article written by Abby Phillip: “But Clinton and Kaine had a larger goal in mind than winning the debates themselves: to create a series of compelling sound bites that they planned to weaponize for the reminder of the campaign.”

Isn’t that great? They spent hours upon hours figuring out how best the debates could be used to advance the election in their favor. Kaine made his points, interruptions and all, in order to get Pence’s response or non-responses on video. Since the debate they have been releasing campaign videos of Pence lying repeatedly, playing his denial of saying something and then video of him and Trump making the comments he just denied that either of them said. I’m not sure if I’ve ever watched an ad that effective.

When it comes to debates there’s winning and then there’s winning. It turns out that Tim Kaine was a good soldier and did his one job.

Bigly debating the debate [Politics/1st Debate]

If all it took to do it is say it we could all be heroes.

Donald Trump said this about debating Hillary Rodham Clinton, "I think beating her in a debate would be one of the easy challenges of my life.” He made this comment to Greta Van Susteren back in 2015. What a difference an actual debate makes.

Is who won or lost is really in the eye of the beholder? People will see and/or believe what they want to believe, but there really is an objective answer to the question.

The real problem for Donald Trump is that he needed for there not to be any question as to who won. He needed to knock it out of the park! His personal narrative is that he doesn’t lose. He needed to be able to rub her nose in it after the dust settled since it was such an easy challenge for him. He is in adulation of himself and is the best at what he does so why prepare? It was obvious that she baited and rattled him. The only time I saw a break in her composure was when she had to tamp herself down when she realized how bigly badly he was doing. The problem for Donald Trump wasn’t just that he shot himself in the foot. The problem was he just kept doing it again and again.

I think it’s hard for some people to accept that a man who easily, and I do mean easily, waded through so many skilled adversaries in the Republican primaries, including a woman, came up so short against Hillary Clinton. It’s just salt in the wound that he was humiliated by a woman. He obviously wasn’t prepared. But to repeat a line used previously, “Well, that's Donald Trump." He should sue her for beating him. That would show her.

If he really believes that he won the debate why all the excuses afterwards? Immediately after the debate he claimed that he had a bad mic. What? I’ve watched the debate twice now and if he had a bad mic I couldn’t tell. But if he thinks he won does bad equipment really matter? At first he said that the moderator “…did a great job. Honestly, I thought he did a great job. I thought they [the questions] were very fair.” Then he had time to think about it. And suddenly Lester Holt “was fine. Nothing outstanding. I thought he gave me very unfair questions at the end - the last three, four questions." By the third day after the debate he came to the conclusion that it was rigged. "I had to put up with the anchor and fight the anchor all the time on everything I said. What a rigged deal." He may deny that he was even at the debate by the time I get this posted.

Nixon had his flop sweat and Donald Trump had his runny nose. What was with that anyway? Perhaps he was really sick and managed through sheer grit, courage and determination to make it through. Give the draft avoider a purple heart. He was wounded in debate. He would want a Medal of Honor.

Did he get asked the right questions? Did he get his message out? The country’s a mess. We need law and order. Everybody is beating us. Black people are living in hell. Jobs shouldn’t be sent away. HRC has done nothing for 30 years (or conversely, she has been fighting ISIS and losing for all of her adult life). People lie about him. His ten year old is good with computers. Stop and frisk minorities. HRC has been mean to him. The Latina was fat. Rosie had it coming to her. He solved the birther issue and people should thank him for it. I’m sure I’ve left out some of his deeper and more meaningful comments, like his thoughts on “cyber” and I would really like for someone to delve into that 400 pound hacker in bed answer. Where did that come from?  

The whole point about debate preparation is to prepare for whatever comes your way and have a way to work in the salient points that you want to make. I was asked a question once in a candidate forum and used the time to address a different issue. Another candidate asked the moderator if I was allowed to do that. (I had already done it.) The moderator said, “Yes. It’s his time. He can do whatever he wants with it.” I made the decision to get my position out on something that wasn’t being covered that I felt was important. It was a risk. It worked out. Since Trump didn’t bother answering some questions anyway, he passed up opportunities to talk about a number of his favorite things like building the big wall that Mexico is going to pay to for.  His supporters love that! Instead he wandered off mentally to talk about fat people. He really doesn’t like fat people. I don’t know if anyone has noticed but the man is a tad overweight himself. Just a tad. Just a little obese. Being a man of a certain age myself I know how that can happen.

He had the same time and opportunity to get his message out that Hillary Rodham Clinton did. Instead he gave rambling non-answers. It’s like when an attorney asks a question that gets overruled by the judge. They may get overruled but their question or statement is out there. Same thing applies here. Hillary consulted her internal memory, exercised her amazing powers of recall and answered the questions intelligently, getting her talking points across time and time again.

It seems that the intention of those managing Trump’s campaign is for him not to act like himself. They want him to act like someone that he isn’t in order to get those that are undecided to vote for him; to accept and vote for a false Donald Trump. So, I’m glad that he was unable to sustain acting reasonable. He more accurately portrayed his true persona and temperament for most of the debate. It’s being honest. He is unapologetic about who and what he is. He is the best Donald Trump in the world and she was laughing at his ineptness.

I may go ahead and watch the next debate because I don’t think that Hillary Rodham Clinton even got into her “A” material. The “who-won-the-debate-polls” are starting to come in now and it looks like Trump’s best chance of winning the next one is to have HRC thrown out. That could get ugly with a battle of the assigned Secret Service agents. One thing for sure. She will come prepared.