Debate No. 3 – Quick Reaction
Who won? I don’t know.
I don’t have a clear “who won” reaction.
Trump was more subdued than usual for the first part of the debate, and he seemed to do well. He missed a huge point on the Heller decision — which Hillary absolutely falsely described as an issue of protecting toddlers. As things heated up, Trump again scored points, particularly on the Clinton foundation and Hillary making a mess of the world. He also did well on immigration.
BUT, as usual, Trump gave the media something to talk about that likely hurts him — declining to say whether or not he would accept the outcome of the election. In a prior debate he said he would, but now no? It’s all the media is going to want to talk about.
Hillary stuck to her script, and scored points on the allegations against Trump by various women who came forward. Hillary had her zingers ready, and the ones on Trump using Chinese steel and Trump having a personality disorder (not the phrase she used, but that’s what she was getting at) in which he claims everything is rigged against him, were used to great effect.
Will it change the polls at all? As mentioned after the last debate, I’m out of that business.
Here’s my Quick Hit for tomorrow’s Morning Insurrection (if you don’t subscribe yet, you are missing content not on the website. You can sign up here):
“SAD! That’s how I felt watching last night’s presidential debate. In a country of over 300 million people, how did we end up with these two? They are each deplorable in their own special ways. I’ll take one deplorable from column A, and a second deplorable from column B.”
Here’s some of what I was tweeting as the night went on.
Oh, I see. The District just wanted to “protect toddlers” by effectively banning all private ownership of firearms.
— Jim Geraghty (@jimgeraghty) October 20, 2016
https://twitter.com/LDoren/status/788910839923257344
https://twitter.com/iptuttle/status/788913374247677952
https://twitter.com/NoahCRothman/status/788913374277033988
This is a focus group of Nevada voters.
Trump does stronger than Hillary on immigration. #Debate pic.twitter.com/HBdrTYjN6g
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 20, 2016
Voters do not want to hear Hillary blame Russia. Her numbers tanked during her anti-Putin rant. #Debate pic.twitter.com/p81KwoZlIZ
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 20, 2016
Somehow, Trump successfully weaponized Hillary's experience *against* her.
Voters like that he held the State Dept. accountable. #Debate pic.twitter.com/dQraWaNwwa
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 20, 2016
When Trump zeroes in on NAFTA, TPP, and trade, he wins.
If he wants to win in November, he should stay on trade. #debate pic.twitter.com/RrZCooPyBt
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 20, 2016
Hillary's Clinton Foundation answer was a disaster.
Trump scored yet again by pointing out its corruption. #debate pic.twitter.com/dgFH3oPg4D
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 20, 2016
Wallace asks Trump if he will accept the result of the election:
TRUMP: “I will look at it at the time"
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 20, 2016
TRUMP: “What I am saying is I will tell you at the time. I will keep you in suspense.”
Clinton calls comments “horrifying”
— Oliver Darcy (@oliverdarcy) October 20, 2016
Voters want the candidates to support the election results. No excuses.
Hillary did. Trump did not. #Debate pic.twitter.com/LH7J4JPMC2
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 20, 2016
When Trump focuses on the failures and absurdities of Clinton/Obama foreign policy, even Hillary-leaners give him solid scores. #DebateNight pic.twitter.com/FtHlhCwktv
— Frank Luntz (@FrankLuntz) October 20, 2016
https://twitter.com/FrankLuntz/status/788934049481957377
Some highlight clips:
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Comments
Did Al Gore accept the result?
In fact when that question came out, that was the talk on Gab
https://gab.ai/hash/PresidentialDebates .
My understanding is Gab is still in beta and you can’t join right now. I got a “place in line,” but have never heard back….
Yes
No. Gore filed a bunch of lawsuits with Billy Bubba right at his side. The ‘rats never did stop referring to Bush as the ‘illegitimate president’, even to this day.
Hillary considered suing over the 2008 primaries, the results of which she disputed and stewed over.
The ‘rats made up new law in NJ to get Torricelli off the ticket so they could cram decaying old troll and ward-heeler Frank Lautenberg onto the ticket because Torricelli was going down criminally.
The ‘rats have been big-time cheaters all the way back before Tammany Hall. It’s what they do. It’s who they are. They live and breathe corruption, gaming the system, and cheating and lying all day every day. There isn’t one honest SOB among them.
Take another drink or stop drinking – whichever will quell your DTs. You are out of material.
Accepting the results is a red herring, Trump wants controversy on that.
Still, I doubt this changes the outcome, regardless of how Trump did. Hillary will likely win.
What makes you say she will likely win? What makes you come to that conclusion?
But now he’s got a platform to talk about the Wikileaks stuff about vote fraud, more about Hillary sabotaging his rallies with hired thugs, what’s going on in IN and elsewhere with voter fraud registration, and about how the DNC conspired against Bernie. There’s proof of all this stuff and the ‘rats haven’t denied it.
It may turn out to not have been such a dumb thing to say after all. That red meat he threw at the snapping, snarling media with that statement for them to run with may actually turn around and leave a real bad taste in their fangs.
We’ll see.
There is, indeed, ” red meat snapping, snarling” by people like you. Unfortunately, you are very much in the minority.
Hehehehe………looks like I hit a nerve. You must have noticed there is wall-to-wall news todays about voter fraud issues, Al Gore, Bubba, Hillary, all claiming stolen elections by Bush and obastard.
Heh. Suck it up.
Hit a nerve? Please!
I am sure the fringe right and alt-right will be wall-to-wall election fraud. What else have they got when they put themselves in the hands of a grifter.
The 1st rule of being with a con man is that nobody is exempt. After he has fleeced the others, he will get you. Consider yourself GOT.
Yo, Dumbo….I have said on LI at least thirty times I will not vote for Trump or Hillary. I simply made an observation and offered some speculation about the statement he made that’s created a new controversy throughout all the media whores whose joyful clacking may actually and abruptly miss the target. In fact, it’s already happening. 🙂
Hot off the press and posted just for you because snowflakes need reality checks:
https://pjmedia.com/jchristianadams/2016/10/19/podesta-wikileaks-horror-voter-id-doesnt-stop-alien-voting/
I will wait for it to come out in paperback.
Newsflash – Trump will accept the results of the election if he wins. He sounds like a 5 year old losing at monopoly.
Jack, when AZ, IA, OH, NC & NV are all leaning towards Hillary, it is very hard to claim fraud. But I guess that is all you’ve got.
Hillary got in a few jabs, but Trump[ repeated got the strong body bows and hard hits.
Trump also got the greatest joke in when she said “He even said the emmys were rigged when he lost. ” “It was.”
Hard to focus though whentrying to wqatch the Cubs game.
From what I’ve heard Kelley is virtually in tears over how Trump did. That says it all for me.
Ah two Kelley’s. I mean the one on Fox not the fox.
( Couldn’t resist that pun. )
I quit trying to do both when the Cubs were up 10-2 in the sixth. No need to keep watching after that. L.A. wasn’t going to score 9 runs the way they were playing. Their comedy of errors in the sixth, especially, said it all for this game tonight.
Don’t worry Jack, the Windians are going to win the World Series!
Dream on, brother!! 🙂 🙂
I stopped switching back and forth after the sixth inning. 🙂
“It was.” Boy that sure was a snappy retort. The man can think on his feet – not. If that is an example of his best moment, he is sunk. It is absolute ridicule to have Hillary say he even claimed the Emmys were rigged.
Poor Donald, life has been rigged against him. He was born with a silver spoon in his mouth and now he won’t get to be a tin pot dictator.
I don’t know who won, but I sure know who lost: all of us.
This election is a disgrace.
Hillary Clinton is a kleptomaniac and a pathological liar. She’s a corrupt criminal that should not be allowed anywhere near public office.
Trump on the other side is a clown who can’t get his act together. I will be voting for him, but God knows I wish I didn’t have to.
Puhlease that has been true since 1988. Now with Trump at least the pressure will be on the parties to clean up their act.
( Less on the Dems with DWS and now Brazille, but Prebius seems to have a bit of a clue. )
To paraphrase PJ O’Roarke.
In a democracy, the whores are us.
Do you realize how stupid that statement is. Look at the election of Jefferson over Adam and Burr. We lost when we hear the same crap every election by the Uniparty. Thank God that Trump is at least creating discussion. You have no clue to how right he is on the drug problems we have and the gang related inter city problems. Neither party is willing to talk about it or do a dam thing about it. Immigration just makes it worst. Ya, live in your bubble, but you are clueless to what is it like to live in the streets. Trump is the closest thing we have to make the inner city better, but that is lost on your arrogant “we are all losers” Even if he loses, it has at least talked about issues people are too PC to talk about.
You don’t know me.
You don’t know where I live or where I work.
You don’t know how smart or how informed or how educated I am.
But when you call me arrogant, or when you call my opinions “stupid” just because you don’t like them, you do reveal a lot about YOURSELF.
You don’t know me. If you think Trump is the best thing since Jesus, go ahead, knock yourself and dance a waltz. Just don’t expect me to.
Something I missed but I am starting to hear a lot about.
Did Hillary really let the world know that it takes four minutes from the time the order is given and the nukes are actually launched?
She did, and grownups are horrified.
I was concerned about that as well. To be fair, that hasn’t been my area of national security policy expertise, but seemed to be one of those areas that was…. a bit too specific. I could be wrong, but I thought that went into way too much detail.
And how long did Bill loose the codes while he was getting his nob polished.
“…four minutes from the time the order is given and the nukes are actually launched.”
Now that there is funny!
Although my own involvement with that industry was peripheral, I think “four minutes” has been the stock answer since the ’50s. The big concern in the Cold War days was that that time applied to land-launched missiles. As emphasis shifted to submarine-launched missiles for strategic deterrence, the delays inherent in communication with submerged missile platforms were expected to increase that time. By how much, I never heard.
Would you prefer ‘launch on warning’? There have been a number of false positives.
There have also been some Russians who thought before they hit the button, too. A Russian submarine commander refused to fire a nuclear torpedo when he thought he was under attack during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
others: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/military/nuclear-false-alarms.html
4 minutes will not leave us with our pants down. Didn’t when Bill Clinton was in office – Ha, Ha
Won’t if Donald Trump is in mid-grope.
AL Gore and the Dems never accepted the 2000 election. The Dems wanted selective counting of “hanging chads” rather than canvas the whole state for recount. I get the feeling I am on the Titanic and the Left is assuring me everything is all right….plenty of champagne and now a great new supply of ice. Trump has been barnstorming and Hilliary resting and adjusting her Parkinson’s meds. The Left knows…as with the Titanic….the shrieks of terror will finally die down.
Why would I accept Hillary when she should be in jail.o
Because she won the electoral college.
If the Commander-in-Chief and the person charged with executing the law can do so from prison, then fine.
I suspect she’d pardon herself.
Her being a crook has nothing to do with accepting the will of the people.
I read the transcript as usual. Trump made some good points about his opponent but still struggles to make a positive case for himself. Hillary crushed him with lines like “I was catching bin Laden while you were hosting celebrity apprentice” and in any tough question she pivots effortlessly to her resume highlights as First Lady, Senator, Secretary of State, etc. And she is able to use his own quotes against him of course. If you want to grade by lowered expectations, then sure, call it a tie, but lets be real clear that we’re grading on a curve.
And let’s be honest, the idea that he won’t accept the results of the election is ridiculous. It isn’t something we’d put up with from Democrats, so why should we put up with it from a Republican? Obviously, any candidate is going to ask for a recount if its close or if there’s irregularities, but the time to talk about that scenario isn’t during the contest itself.
I don’t know anyone that credits her with catching Bin Laden. I think that lands more as an empty boast than anything else.
Yes, the way she phrased brings an unbelievable, rather cartoonish picture to mind – an old lady trying to drag a bearded monster from a hole with a knife held between his teeth.
It just didn’t fly.
She passed on info from one person to another. In grade school we called that the telephone game. To base your whole stance on fighting terror as a link in the telephone game really leaves a lot to be desired.
Chris Wallace had to, just HAD to, fact check Trump and calls him wrong on Aleppo. Russia/Syria are still bombing Aleppo and there is nobody, and I mean nobody, doing anything to them. I guess Aleppo stands until the rubble stops bouncing, then and only then will Aleppo have fallen. What does Wallace think this is? The Battle of the Bulge with Gen. Patton’s Third Army just hours away from relieving the 101st Airborne?
Hillary brings up violence at Trump rallies that the O’Keefe videos show were instigated and funded by her own campaign. Of course, only conservatives have seen those videos, so she probably thinks she’ll get away with it. If there is any fact checking, even by her supporters, then the media branch of her campaign will have to try to discount O’Keefe’s work, bringing the videos to the public.
Trump did miss one big shot though; every time Hillary used the word ‘invest’, Trump should have pointed out that ‘invest’ is Hillary’s code word for new taxes. Maybe enough of us know that by know. Still, it would have been a good opportunity to bring up the subject of static versus dynamic scoring.
The media, the Democrats and all the low information voters are aghast at the possibility that if the Democrats illegally steal the election with non-citizen voters, the dead, students voting at home as well as at University and busloads of paid stooges showing up at one polling station after another to cast fraudulent votes as shown in the O’Keefe videos, that Trump won’t slink off with his tail between his legs.
Hillary seems to think that private citizens should show their tax returns just as career politicians should. Politicians have, as Hillary’s term as Secretary of State demonstrates, conflicts of interests and it is important that those conflicts do not accrue to the politicians benefit. That’s why politicians publicize their tax returns.
Once again, Trump points out Hillary’s decades of public service have done little to alleviate all the problems she says she now wants to fix. Hillary’s proclamations make thunder out of butterfly breaths. Hillary creates much noise, little action, more noise, less action, and so on and so forth ad nauseam.
Finally, Hillary’s Safe Guns for Toddlers Act is just plain stupid.
Trump won hands down.
Being a baseball fan watching this “Debate” was like watching a “T” ball game! The pitcher, Wallace, couldn’t pitch and the two batters couldn’t hit. Neither could they field the ball (questions), when they were pop flies hit right to them. hillary actually called Trump a liar and all Trump could say was “Not true”. Wallace had to mention hillary’s open border speech she gave to Wall Street, not Trump and when she lied about it being about energy, he didn’t say a thing. She never answered about the no-fly zone in Syria, and Trump didn’t push it and she never answered about pay to play and Trump didn’t push that either. He missed so many opportunities and when he did go after her it was over things that will no longer affect her like the 30,000 e-mails. He tried to hit her on the leaked info that we all have read but failed pretty badly. He did come out on top but it doesn’t look like he spent thirty minutes on this debate in preparation. I yelled at the tube more than I used to do when I watched the NFL.
I felt so offended by the “energy” B.S !!
This lady thinks that we are all retarded.
Luntz has his graph colors wrong.
Wallace is wrong. Gore the loser didn’t concede to Bush the winner.Gore sued. Repeatedly. And he & his supporters… https://t.co/dln6HVCbiR
— Mark R. Levin (@marklevinshow) October 20, 2016
https://twitter.com/marklevinshow/status/788925399124369408
Too Bad Trump was not a seasoned politician because he could have had a heyday with her. He got a few good punches in but he could have knocked her out of the park. Wallace actually helped Trump.
There is no reason that Trump should accept the results of a rigged election. There is no reason that we voters should accept the results either.
Trump won the debate, but will it help him?
I don’t know. Hoping for President Trump…
Clinton has been talking up these things for years, and can make it seem like she knows the issues, but as Trump says, her experience is bad experience based on bad judgment. Not to mention the corruption.
Trump is still learning. But he has good sense based on reality, not Marxist theory that proves to be a disaster. Trump seems shrewd and capable, a far cry from the way he is made out to be by the experts spouting conventional wisdom.
Hopefully, his message will not be drown out, and heard for what it is, not what others project it to be. His tweeting does not mean he will pull the nuclear trigger.
I didn’t watch the debate, I made coconut curry chicken, which was great.
I didn’t need to watch it because I knew it’s immaterial. At this point, it’s cheap entertainment for political junkies. What Trump needs to do is to show that he has the character lead and there is no way he can do it within the format of a debate.
I’m not sure what’s the point of having a focus group of undecided NV voters at this point. Why not AK or Iowa?
Agreed. Why would I watch two NYC liberals debate each other? I’m not going to learn anything.
The Concession Question is really code for something else—will you accept HRC as legitimate? And that in turn implies a far more worrisome elite concern: will your tens of millions of followers accept her as the legitimate ruler?
The same question was asked at an earlier debate.
DJT has feet of clay, is a profoundly flawed candidate, and so forth. But he is the first candidate to raise serious questions about the neoliberal capitalist world order, and I think he scares the feces out of those Demlicans who assumed that their plundering would proceed unquestioned.
“will you accept HRC as legitimate? ”
No. Nor any other Democrat ever after the confessions to vote fraud. Next question.
Sorry, you dont know me, I have been visiting and reading this site for years. I have this site bookmarked so that i can visit it 2 or 3 times a day. I am ashamed that i have not contributed , but I don’t have any extra funds. I love this blog, and I read the comments from the other visitors with high expectations. I am a registered Democrat in Georgia, but I have not voted for a Democrat since 2000. I only wanted to say that this has been the most entertaining election season of my lifetime. I am a fairly successful black man that was born in the sixties, I pay alot of taxes, and i have become more conservative over time. I find Hilary repulsive, but Donald is the guy that used to try to pick on me in High School, until I punched him in the face. I am going to vote for him, but I must admit it is going to hurt just a little. I watched the debate, I believe there is no real winner. In fact I think we the American people are the losers in this one.
“I only wanted to say that this has been the most entertaining election season of my lifetime.”
If you think that this ominous debacle is “entertaining”, you’d really have had a ball watching the Hiroshima bombing.
I was not alive to view the Hiroshima Bombing. I found the debate entertaining because it was off MSM script. I can only hope that you are not near any sharp objects.
I’m not an expert on this, but a friend of mine in the military said that Hillary saying that our nuclear response time is 4 minutes is illegal, and serious. Of course, so is a bunch of stuff she’s done, and that’s never stopped her. Is it actually a crime for her to divulge that information? At the very least, it seems very irresponsible.
I have some experience in this area, but it’s not direct. I have the clearance for such materials but I haven’t had any cross my desk.
I do know that if you take the briefing seriously, then there should have been at least a review of such statements before uttering them, involving multiple branches of the gov’t. But we’ve pretty much established that Clinton doesn’t even take the briefing, let alone take it seriously.
I’ve known a few different Air Force missileers when I was active duty. The guys who pull 24 hour shifts in an underground capsule and wait to receive codes from POTUS/SecDef to verify against their codes who then actually launch the nukes. I’ve asked them all kinds of questions about the capsule, what they do, how they fill their time, how the rockets operate, etc. Never once did I ever hear one of them tell me the response time. They told me the average time to target but I’ve never heard the response time. While I haven’t talked to those guys in 2 or 3 years and haven’t asked them about it since last night, I’m pretty certain Hillary let the cat out of the bag…
Just why is the most inconsequential question, “Will you accept the results…” the big lead? If Trump wins, the question is totally inconsequential. If Hillary wins, who cares if Trump supports the outcome; what consequence is there? I thought Wallace was okay and reasonably balanced, but this question had me calling him a few choice words. That question and the tabloid sex question greatly diminished his moderation efforts.
The consequential issues should be the important, lead topics: Supreme Court, the economy, the Mid-East, et cetera. I saw Shep Smith leading off with the “support outcome” phony baloney question. Our media is awful.
No, it isn’t. Look up “Middle-class Anarchy” and “Irish Democracy”. When no one obeys the law unless the government is literally standing over them with a gun, that government will fall.
To me, this “debate” was a surreal farce for the reasons you state: There’s an assumption that Trump should do a Bernie Sanders, and supinely accept the election of a pathologically dishonest, treasonous criminal who won with the help of a corrupt media and a foreign instigators (e.g., George Soros)
Toddlers must be protected from people with guns. Pre-toddlers, though, are pretty much on their own.
While your toddler comment is funny the fact that Trump didn’t pounce on her over such a stupid position is another example of the opportunities he repeatedly missed. Her whole blather about toddlers was out of this world stupid! Why didn’t he just turn to her and say “what are you talking about?”. Why didn’t he turn to her on her position of the “No fly” zone in Syria? My God! She never even came close to answering the question and all he did was purse his lips. That could easily lead to WWIII and everyone knows it but Trump.
Perhaps the mods are finally getting it that by asking a final set up question (for example the first debate ending with the obvious setup that allowed the ex-fat model to be inserted into the debate like a fork in fondu) that those questions end up bolstering Trump because people can see the overt bias for HRC.
I didn’t see that in tonight’s debate. The evil bastards trying to fix the debate by NOT asking overly biased questions!!!
Mailman
If the BLM shows up at the poles this election will be a complete fraud and I wouldn’t accept it either!
There will be no BLM or Black Panthers at my election poling location!
that likely hurts him — declining to say whether or not he would accept the outcome of the election
Trump’s great popular appeal, as it has been since the early Primary campaign, is that he talks about the things We the People think are problems, but which the Democrats, the Obama administration, the press, and a disgracefully large crowd of Republican politicians treat as Untouchable. This has been casually dismissed as mere “populism”, but if that’s what populism is, we need a lot more of it. Illegal immigration? Moribund NATO bureaucracy? Vote-rigging? Trump’s opponents don’t want to talk about any of it; he’s just about the only one of the batch who even acknowledges that these are issues. This is quite aside from his proposed solutions (which may or may not have merit)—the simple willingness to consider these crises seriously is a yuuuuuugge improvement over “
businesspolitics as usual”.If electoral fraud in the US is a problem … and the Wikileaks e-mails show that, to some still-undetermined degree, it certainly is (it’s “OK for illegals to vote if they have a driver’s license” … Hey, WTF?) … then he can’t just say it’s OK and he’ll accept it. It’s not OK and no American should accept it.
+1
I think that looking at election results is not as awful as some think…. the Democrats have been practicing cheating on elections for decades, to the point that we can’t feel confident that the elections are “real” anymore. In that regard, perhaps it’s time for Democrat politicians to understand that the people want to have a “trust but verify” policy to our elections.
No one has noticed that Trump got Hillary to commit absolutely to accepting the election results? And making fun of the possibility that anyone would question the results?
I don’t know who will win, but I bet if Trump wins, it will be razor close.
Trump is a natural politician. He may be a bum, but he’s thinking strategically, all the time.
I agree that she can be said to have committed to accepting the results if she loses; BUT this is Hillary. No lie or reversal will taint her, and the State-controlled Media will cover it up. Never assume that either law or reason will influence a Leftist. TWANLOC.
My quick reaction is: that ghastly Charlie McCarthy grimace carved on Hillary’s mug means that Trump was probably right about those drug tests.
Trump’s refusal to commit to accepting the election results wasn’t about recounts or legal maneuvering. Both sides have the right to do that and should. He was implying that he would claim, base on alleged fraud, he might ask people like those on this site to rise up.
I used the term ‘alleged’ because I don’t care to litigate the question of election fraud in this post. I have argued my case elsewhere. But if in the end, all of Trump’s legal options are exhausted (as Gore’s were) and he still refuses to concede and if he doesn’t ask his supporters to stand down, that is essence of Treason. He should be the one to be locked up.
ORDC: I’m not certain that in either Trump’s or in the minds of his supporters the “rigged” issue relates solely or even mainly to elections. Based on the older definition of legitimacy, you are correct–a ruler’s legitimacy must be conceded if power was lawfully obtained at the time of transition. In this country, that means elections.
But I would encourage you to consider a more recent use of the concept of legitimacy, one that became (and remains) of great interest because it lies at the center of counterinsurgency doctrine. There, legitimacy is a 360 degree determination; “lawful” transitions of power are only one element–what “lawful” itself means is another element (here, think what some believe was a corrupt FBI investigation that kept HRC in the race); IRS suppression (which reportedly continues) of conservative voter groups’ tax exempt status is another element; the widespread perception that individuals leading institutions (the House, the Senate, the Courts) combine as a non-representative monoculture advancing members’ personal wealth or narrow ideological agendas, is yet another element in illegitimacy. And there are many other elements.
Considered in this mix, while perceptions of voter fraud (real or not) contribute to a conclusion that HRC’s election might be illegitimate, they may not be the principal drivers. My guess is that if HRC wins, she’s going to have extreme difficulty governing… but that’s for another post!
(((Boogs))), You said it better than Trump ever did. But anything beyond your 1st paragraph starts to require an interpretation of the Constitution that would be at odds with the Original meaning – irony intended.
Beyond that, you start to sound like a an acolyte of Saul Alinsky. BTW, I never heard of him until the 1st Obama election when his opponents started to bring Alinsky up. A corrupt FBI, a politically malleable IRS, unresponsive leading institutions and biased media! My god, I know I have heard this before. I have to rack my brain to go way back to – wait, wait – I know – the ’60s & ’70s. There were a bunch of people who didn’t think anything like you, but they felt the same way about elections. Are you old enough to remember Chicago in 1968?
Now, those people (I stayed away from Chicago because I didn’t want to get my head bashed in), along with people of color and others who felt marginalized have gathered a modicum of the power you think you were permanently entitled to. They used the system. Yes, they used the system. They got educatied, rose to positions of power and accumulated wealth. Oh, the irony in that.
They would argue that the bulk of the power still lies with the right. But that is for another discussion.
I won’t continue to litigate election fraud since I have addressed that elsewhere. It is myth, projection and infinitesimal in its effect on the Presidential election.
Trump is a grifter. He probably doesn’t even care about being President. It was just the next big thing. He is worried about his brand. Remember how you will ‘win so much that you will get tired of winning’? Well, he cannot allow himself to be seen as a loser. So it has to be rigged. Actually, he is still a loser; even if it was rigged. Imagine, a woman out maneuvered him. Oh, the humanity!
I watched, and listening to Hillary and her promises and lies nearly made me feel that I should vote for Trump, if nothing else, to increase the number he gets against her should she win. You know she’s going to ignore that fact that no one trusts or likes her and that the ONLY way she could become president was to run against Trump or Charles Manson; she’ll say she’s got a mandate and will do exactly what she said last night: amnesty and progressive SCOTUS justices who put social justice and their “feelings” above the law first, gun grabbing and Obama-style stimulus next. Then “free” education from K-college . . . and it won’t cost one dime (sound familiar?).
Missed opportunities:
Trump should have been even more graphic in his description of late term abortion, including what Gosnell did for decades and what Planned Parenthood does to “preserve” baby parts for sale to the highest bidder.
When Hillary was gabbling on about conspiracy theories, Trump should have hit back hard with her insane ’90’s whining about “vast right-wing conspiracies.” She’s the queen of conspiracy theories. Always has been.
When Hillary was listing her “accomplishments,” Trump should have pointed out that most of them were simply her saying words. She went to China and said words about girls. So the hell what? What she does–and doesn’t do–are what matters. Her staggering around the world uttering empty promises and poll-tested bromides is not an accomplishment. The Kardashians do that on a regular basis.
When Hillary talked about Bill Clinton balancing the budget, Trump should have hit back with the fact that it was the GOP Congress who forced that on him, that it was the ’94 and ’96 GOP wave elections that forced him to “triangulate” and declare the era of big government over.
When Hillary was attacking him about Putin (her worst moments arguably), Trump should have asked how his position on talking to Putin is any different from Obama’s position on talking to the world’s thugs and tyrants with no conditions at all. The answer is that Trump would have conditions, of course, and that he is up to the job of ending the new Cold War begun by Hillary’s “reset” button gaffe and stoked by Obama.
I thought Trump did a great job demonstrating that Hillary is completely ineffective and nothing but empty promises and tired lies. I’m not sure that will break through, though, as the people to whom that most matters likely weren’t watching. He should have just hammered that point over and over and over. She’s been in public life for half a century (give or take a decade), and not only have things not improved for the poor and for minorities, they’ve gotten measurably, demonstrably worse.
When Hillary was stating that she doesn’t think the government should be involved in women’s choices about abortion, Trump should have hit her hard with the fact that this is the ONLY area she doesn’t think government should control and that even here, the government is controlling abortion by inventing a Constitutional “right” and funding Planned Parenthood and ensuring that states can have little say in their own laws regarding abortion.
I was watching wishing that Cruz was standing there; he’d have mopped the floor with her in the first ten minutes. But as it was Trump, I didn’t hate his performance and thought he got in a lot of points and didn’t look as dangerous and nuts as he is portrayed (and likely is).
I was not happy that the first questions were ones that Trump was good at and the last part was damning to him. That means people left the debate with a negative on Trump.
I think, all things considered (including the ridiculous dance he did about accepting the results), Trump won the night. For people who like what Hillary had to say about promises of bigger, more intrusive government that will plunge us into even more debt than Obama managed, they’ll say she won.
All she did for me was make me seriously consider voting for Trump.
As a 70 year old, I can no longer run a mile under 5 minutes nor can I read “The C++ Programming Language, Fourth Edition” in less than a week and still recite chapter and verse with 80% accuracy.
Things take a little more time now than they did twenty years ago, but then there are many more lessons learned as well. Better, more reasoned judgments can be made by taking just little more time; I think that’s probably true for most of us well experienced citizens.
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Your observations rightly point out the weaknesses in Trump’s debate performances due to age, but these are not indicative of his overall skillset.