A day of work, interrupted by a sad funeral, and now on to a Presidential debate – CNN has not yet reported Trump has decided not to attend, so I’ll be live-blogging it. Refresh this post for up dates.
8:05 – Keeping their physical distance.
8:10 – Good first question. A clear delineation of Clinton’s positions on hot topics. A canned speech, but very clear and clean answer. A shot at the Senate. Trump is disjointed about current composition. The maturity of her view is very clear, while he’s scattered. He gets his point across, but not like she does.
8:16 – Open discussion: Clinton takes a conventional rhetorical approach, showing she sees both sides on Amendment #2. Wallace admits Scalia said the amendment is limited. I wonder if such a specific topic – even a SCOTUS case – is a good idea, vs a more broad approach. Clinton remains coherent. Trump has been instructed to talk about Chicago and its strong gun laws – it’s a superficial argument, in long retrospect, then he rambles.
8:20 – Roe v Wade – Trump dodges answering the question, or doesn’t understand it. Clinton launches into a canned speech, I’m sure – nothing wrong with that. She defends it and brings in Planned Parenthood, so each base gets energized. Given the disaster in TX when PP was defunded, I have to side with her. PBA is brought up, Clinton doesn’t address it – Donald demagogues on it. Each is playing to their base, but Clinton’s is the humane base. And is Clinton appealing subtly to the anti-government part of the undecideds?
8:28 – Immigration: More demagoguery from Trump. So we have murderers coming in? We also have many more productive workers, paying taxes, serving in the military. Trump pleads for strong borders – OH GOD, HE’S TALKING ABOUT THE WALL. Even his treasured union endorsing him has said he’s bullshitting on this one. Clinton once again plays the humane card. This is the classic contrast: humane vs security. Clinton claims she’ll deport the violent – is that good enough. Now she finally takes a shot at Trump. So far this debate has been more palatable than earlier…. the host kow-tows to Trump, though. Interrupting. Clinton fires back, says she has also worked on border security – more than he’s done. Now a bit more mud about undocumented workers. Trump trumpets (sorry) an Obama success, bizarrely – deportation has been successful in the last 8 years.
8:35 – Wallace asks Clinton about a hemispheric open market. She clarifies it to be energy, then turns to talking about Wikileaks. She wants Trump to reject Russian meddling. Will he? Wallace gets desperate for quiet. Trump continues to frighten his base into following him – but why? Doesn’t he realize he has to identify and pursue other groups? Now he’s just repeating himself. The mud is thick and lumpy now. The problem? He’s said enough of to make her plausible, while his accusations have less basis. Now he denies his own intelligence briefings, it’s embarrassing. Big softball for Trump, so he can pivot to more general insults. Clinton and Trump jab at each other about incompetence. Trump has no accomplishments, while Clinton has both. More of the liar, liar crap from Trump. Trump is clearly nettled – we can measure it by the frequency of interrupts. He hates being caught lying.
8:44 – Economy: Clinton is behind the middle class, mfg, clean energy and its new businesses, etc. She communicates clearly her goals, not much on methods – but in two minutes, what to do? Since she was asked to criticize Trump, she does, legitimately. Trump claims huge tax increase, but now he’s back to NATO and how allies don’t pay much. NOW HE TAKES CREDIT FOR THEM PAYING. He’s such a grasping bully. “Free trade” is his theme, although he clumsily repeats points – NAFTA is a disaster 3 or 4 times, but he’s going to make every good. Clinton will translate, which gets under his skin. She refutes the tax claim. Now some repeats from earlier debates – snore, but necessary. “Tax cuts won’t work” – Kansas tried that and is going under.
8:52 – Clinton forced to defend Obama’s plan by the host. “Not a penny to the debt.” Trump now forced to defend his plan, so host is even handed. Job report is bad, according to him – but compare it to the last GOP admin and it’s actually very well. He wants to compare to China and India, which is ridiculous – smaller, different economies. Back to NAFTA, sigh. He feeds his base with no clue that it doesn’t play with everyone else. Clinton plays to his base by accusing him of doing what he’s against in his speeches. “Bad experience” – but when she was helping run things in the 90s, the economy went great guns. Will people think for themselves? Now she talks about accomplishments while he was being sued, etc. The mud gets dark and lumpy again.
8:55 – “A phenomenal company” – sigh. Careful of “real record”, Mr Trump, and Wallace just lets them wallow in the pit. Come on, Chris, get them back on track.
8:59 – Trump’s victims – “They’ve been debunked”. Now the lies are starting to come out of Trump, claims Obama and Clinton paid meddlers to start violence at Trump rallies. “It’s on tape.” Trump’s mad, we can tell because he interrupts. Will she address this “on tape” thing? I hadn’t heard of it, but would guess it’s part of his fantasy world. Let’s see if the news and fact-checkers can come up with anything. Nope, didn’t address it. “America is great because America is good.” Donald wants to assert Clinton lies, and she ignores it. So a general is going to jail – so what? He’s not effective. Back to Clinton and more interrupts. It’s tiresome when you know it’s true.
9:08 – Clinton must defend the Clinton Foundation – didn’t we do this once already? Trump wants to claim it’s a criminal enterprise – whose own Foundation has been fined and shamed. Wallace collapses, let’s Trump run things. She avoids the details, but is that good or bad? The implication of pay to play lingers in the air – despite investigations that don’t find anything. Wallace beats up Trump’s Foundation, but Trump slides away. Whoa, it’s tax returns AGAIN. Tiresome, but effective. Trump tries to blame Clinton for the tax laws, which is silly. Trump’s voice rises as he gets more and more upset. He wants to slime her, but he knows she can’t change the law by herself. I’m so sick of that crap.
9:11 – Will Trump accept election results. He hedges. He talks about corruption with no proof. Waves his hand claiming she’s corrupt. Wallace tries to drag it back to transition of power. Trump refuses to be honorable. Clinton gets on his case about rigging – even about not getting 3 Emmys – line of the night, “It should have gotten it!” Clinton makes the easy case that you have to accept the election results or you’re not up for the job.
9:19 – ISIS: Clinton won’t put Americans into Iraq as an occupying forces once ISIS is gone. Hard question, Clinton answers it with no shots so far, links to Syrian and Russia cleanly. Trump blames Clinton for Mosul, on the other hand. Ah, we’re back to Trump the Military Genius – another tiresome repeat. He refuses to answer the question and instead now wants to talk about Iran nuclear deal. Confusing rant about Iran taking over Iraq. Repeat, interrupt, repeat, interrupt. Trump keeps lying, lying, lying – he JUST CAN’T STOP. In the face of copious documentation. She clearly has studied the problem and has an idea of what to do, Trump is not so clear. Interrupt interrupt interrupt.
9:24 – Trump is reduced to repeating previous debates. He’s out of gas. Now to Aleppo, Wallace accuses Trump of lying. Oh my. Trump keeps interrupting and Wallace is having trouble keeping it together. Trump has his talking points about the unfrozen Iran bank accounts and the money returned for the undelivered weapons system. Now he starts yelling, but reverts to scaring his base rather than reaching out to the undecided. He’s politically an amateur.
9:26 – No fly zones procedures – Clinton gives a reassuring answer. Then a pivot to the refugee problem, which she whacks Trump with. Once again, humane vs security.
9:32 – National Debt: Wallace smacks both of them with expert evaluations. Trump will “create tremendous jobs”. It’s unfair, but we almost got rid of the debt back in the 90s. Trump won’t defend his plan on a serious basis, he just accuses the government of incompetence and corruption – once again playing to the base. Clinton begins by critiquing Trump’s style, then pivots back to the question. She will raise taxes on the wealthy and corporations.
9:35 – Entitlements: Wallace says neither has a serious plan; will SS and Medicare be preserved: Trump waves his hand about the jobs he’ll create, then pivots to ACA. “Bad healthcare at a disastrous price” – ooops we don’t have good healthcare? Clinton responds to the question directly, gets interrupted (he’s such a jerk). Clinton points out that ACA has extended Medicare solvency.
9:38 – A minute apiece. Clinton appeals to all voters. touts accomplishments, her lifelong mission. All is good and well. Trump attacks her. “Depleted military” – what BULLSHIT. Trump mixes scaring and promising. He just doesn’t seem to understand that there’s more to this country thean people who have lost jobs and find their futures frightening. There is everyone else, who have jobs but worry about the future and see his antics as negative and wonder about his temperament, intelligence, and competency.
Clinton has, by reports, been running a campaign built on today’s technology and a team approach; Trump seems to make gut decisions based on his own knowledge-base, and when it’s wrong, he goes right off the rails. Clinton has a substantial history and has had some incidents that can be read the wrong way. What we tend to ignore is that she gets investigated for them and has never even been put on trial. The worst is a hand slap, which suggests she makes honest mistakes.
Tonight I saw them mix it up, but given how often Trump was interrupting and running over the host, it appears Clinton wins again – Trump may not look as agitated, but his desperation to make the story his betrays him – and if he’s lying the fact-checkers will nail him to the wall. His base may not care, they may even think he won (even again), but the undecideds and the Clinton waverers – the voters he has to win – will find little here to persuade them that he’s the one to elect, especially if they do the research that a responsible adult should be doing, given our online resources of today.
And so that’s it for tonight. More palatable than the previous two debates, but I’m glad this is the last one.
