Thursday, October 20, 2016

The final debate

I watched it. Probably should have watched the Cubs instead. My two cents:

  • Nothing happened that really moved the needle. All the social media howling today is about Trump's refusal to answer whether he'd accept the results of the election, but it's beside the point. Whether he concedes or not, if Hillary Clinton gets the majority of the votes in the electoral college, she will be the next president. If he gets the majority, which I doubt he will, he will be president. The rest is just theatrics.
  • For someone whose slogan is "Stronger Together," Hillary sure has a lot of people she'd like to punish. Perhaps you are one of them.
  • Moderator Chris Wallace is getting a lot of praise for his performance, but I don't see why. He was so wedded to his set of questions that he didn't ask some followups that need to be asked. When Clinton went off on a rant about Russian involvement in the WikiLeaks documents, the obvious followup wasn't where the docs came from, but whether they were real. It would have been useful to get that answer on the record. Wallace never came to the aid of Clinton, which puts him well above the Raddatz/Crowley line, but that's an awfully low bar.
  • Trump had his moments, but he is a disastrous debater. He's a guy who likes to riff on a subject and he's not disciplined in his presentation style. And he's incapable of avoiding the asides that sink him. He didn't need to say Clinton is a nasty woman -- the evidence speaks for itself. The Clinton campaign will have t-shirts, buttons, and bumper stickers with that comment for sale this morning. If Trump had any wit, he'd ask for royalties.
  • I've never backed away from my #NeverTrump stance, because he's simply not a good choice to be president. Clinton is worse. If we didn't have a completely compromised FBI and Justice Department, she would be facing prison for destroying thousands of emails. Her record in office is abysmal and her conduct is worse. She's surrounded by charlatans. She will be president and the only question on the table is whether her presidency will be more like that of James Buchanan or that of Herbert Hoover. Assuming, of course, that her presidency isn't most like William Henry Harrison. She's going to be horrible. Somehow, I suspect most of my readers already know that.

2 comments:

Bike Bubba said...

I must admit that I struggle to not pray imprecatory prayers about both of them, that their planes would crash into each other or something, but rather to pray for their repentance.

In more important issues, Cubbies have home field advantage back. let's see if they came use it well.

W.B. Picklesworth said...

I've used imprecatory prayers before and they certainly have their place, namely to get poisonous hate out of ourselves and into God's hands. I've been a much happier person these past 4 years for having prayed honestly after the last election. I won't hesitate to use them again if the vile injustice of our society and government makes them necessary. In fact, I think that's probably a good idea - better than apathy or cynicism.