Watch.
Her numbers will go up quickly.
Why?
First of all, she proved that she is not suffering from anything that disturbs her mental, emotional and physical energy. 90 minutes of consistent control. That’s a long time to be under the TV microscope, and that’s what it was. A microscope. The Trump people blew it by letting the network broadcast the debate as equally sized talking heads. Trump won the Republican debates by sheer physicality and emotional dominance. His stump speeches? Also sheer physicality and and emotional dominance, only instead of dominating his opponents he dominates his audience.
Last night?
No dominance.
None.
In fact, he looked like the less healthy debater, sniffing and sniffling repeatedly, especially during the first 20 minutes. Add to all that the invisibility of Lester Holt…who was quite subtly but also quite plainly anti-Trump but not identifiably pro-Hillary (a narrow path to walk, one that he walked admirably)…and Trump couldn’t beat up on him, either. Holt didn’t exist. He was a disembodied voice that showed no emotional resonance whatsoever. He could have been Siri v.2. Trump had no one to beat up on and he was very disturbed by that fact. A bully with no victim. It was lovely to see.
Will he learn from this failure?
I don’t think that he will.
Instead, he’ll probably fire someone.
It’s what he does best, after all.
I mean…he can’t fire himself, right?
Can he?
I think he’s peaked.
Watch.
AG
Accusations of being inconsistent myself?
Only if you are stupid enough to think that I have been pro-Trump.
Opposing Trump does not mean supporting HRC. They are both disasters waiting to happen. Just different disasters.
I will say this, though. If it’s any consolation, HRC’s disaster will be a lot smarter.
Sigh…
AG
Thanks for the prediction and diary. I doubt anyone thinks you are pro-Trump, AG; you are opposed to each of them in their own way as far as I can tell. Will you vote?
I share your verdict, although am not so sure about the BIG time! aspect of it. Trump did very poorly and I can’t tell what his strategy was, since his constant interrupting was surely seen as rude and obnoxious, and even childish. It certainly didn’t come off as “strong”. And he certainly wasn’t willing to own up to many of the (extreme) things he has previously said, which looks weak (to me anyway).
That said, while HRC was calm, collected and in control, she simply has no answers to what should be Trump’s main lines of attack: the massive loss of manufacturing jobs as a result of free trade policies she spent her (prior) life supporting, and the fact that ISIS exploded onto the scene during her tenure as Sec of State. Hell, I could hardly tell if she agreed with Obama’s current military strategy or not. Or if she was proposing something more, shall we say, aggressive..
She was at her most opaque in trying to explain how she would help the middle class, although their existence was often referred to. “I’ll invest in you”? What’s that mean? Presumably it refers to the infrastructure expansion that both of them claim to support. The elephant in the room, naturally, is the Radical Repub Congress, which hasn’t the slightest intention of funding any such program, ever. The uselessness of all sensible economic proposals in the face of the Do-Nothing Repub Congress was never alluded to. Would it kill her to say the Radical Repub Congress must be destroyed?
But at bottom, the free traders shattered the country and they don’t have much of an answer for those who got left holding the empty bag. Dem proposals to use tax incentives to bribe our corporate overlords into employing more of us were not even mentioned. The truth is there is no good answer, hence the current rebellion.
On optics I’d give HRC a B, on content a C. Der Trumper looked bad and sounded worse—certainly a D. But that’s to a reality based observer, and such are decidedly in the minority. And I wonder if Trump’s objectively bad and clown-like performance is beyond mattering at this point.
These televised debates are not about “facts,” euzoius. They never have been. They are about image. Nothing more and nothing less.
And…when you get right down to it, there aren’t even many “facts”left in his brave new digital world. Only opinions, and lots of them.
The media are certainly not to be trusted with their so-called factual reporting. We all should have learned that lesson during the run-up to Bush II’s Iraq War. Politician’s “facts” are notoriously self-serving, and the old trust in academic and scientific “facts” should have been thoroughly shattered by now due to the many serial contradictions from those sources that are plain to see on any given day. Butter, flossing, the efficacy or danger of various pharmceuticals, eggs, alcohol, coffee…first they’re bad for you, then they’re good for you and then again maybe they’re not. Year after year, week after week, the same over-reported bullshit.
There are almost no “facts” left. Yes, the sun comes up and sets every day. After that everything gets hazy. That’s why I love the so-called “fact-checking” thing in the media. First the media destroy the very meaning of the word “fact” and then they bray about their fact-checking.
Deep.
Are vote results “facts?” No. They are fixable, so they cannot be factual.
Did a bumper-bender accident happen on your streetcorner yesterday? Only if you saw it with your own eyes. Everything else is rumor disguised as “fact.”
So it goes…
AG
P.S. There are people here who regularly comment about how I am some sort of pro-Trump troll.
P.P.S. I will not vote for either of these candidates.
AG–If it’s any consolation, I’ve had people call me a Hillarybot and similarly stupid expressions, although my vote for Hillary Clinton in November will be my first vote for her. As far as I can puzzle it out, the crimes for which I have been denounced are my failure to be sufficiently nasty in my comments about Secretary Clinton, as well as (back in the spring) my failure to be sufficiently worshipful towards Senator Sanders. Some people just can’t get it through their thick skulls that it’s possible to prefer one candidate without hating the other.
AG – not sure how anyone could confuse you with a pro-Trump troll: your dis-tatse for both candidates is very apparent.
As for your voting stance, I am glad you live in NY state where you have the luxury of registering a protest vote without worrying that by doing so you might help Trump get elected.
Looks like even a subset of Trump’s usual 4chan and reddit minions have been unhappy with his debate performance. HRC came across as a sane, sober candidate. Trump? Not ready for prime time. From the way expectations were built up, this was his to lose. And he appears to have lost it. For the 40% who vote for the tribe regardless, it won’t matter. But for some others sitting on the fence, maybe last night will benefit HRC. We’ll have to wait to see what the polls start to look like over the next week or so.
Since you mention it, the first thing that struck me when the CNN split screen came up was that her head appeared at least 25% larger than his.
It’s all about the visuals, Dunwoody. bet on it. People in the know have been saying for months that HRC’s team of solid campaign pros would get the job done for her. This setup is evidence that they were right.
AG