Contrary to my expectations, I think Trump lost his first debate.
He started out strong, stronger than HRC, but then declined a lot in the third round on foreign policy – on what should have been his strongest round.
And he really lost it at the end when they pulled out the woman card.
I say this as a Trump supporter who has called Trump as the winner at each of his appearances at the Republican nomination debates.
Unfortunately, this time he really fell short, and so far as I can tell the predictions markets seem to agree with this assessment.
It’s not an absolute disaster. Trump did get in many of his key points, and remained stringently reasonable for most of the debate. However, his lack of preparation really showed. He will have to get a lot more clinical in his attacks if he wants to bring down HRC, because she will not be doing it for him.
Here are my comments on each of the three rounds:
Achieving Prosperity
Trump was very good here, really playing up protectionism – something he has been a consistent proponent for since the 1980s – in a way that credibly jived with working class concerns in the Rustbelt. He also pointed out HRC’s disingenuous comments on the TPP. She could only respond with a lame plea to check out her website and her book (that is rated 1.4 stars on Amazon).
Trump laid out a credible and easily understandable plan to reshore industry to the US by imposing tariff barriers and lowering regulations. This includes lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 15%. Although the US is, overall, an excellent place to do business in – it consistently places within the top 10 countries in the World Bank’s Ease of Doing Business rankings – its rate of corporate tax remains one of the highest in the world (most of Europe is at 20%-30%!). And his promise to get rid of the carried interest provision is highly progressive. Although HRC tried to paint all this as a giveaway to the 1%, I do not think she succeeded.
He also drew attention to the ballooning debt, the politicization of the Fed, and the “big fat ugly bubble” that is the current economy, which should help get him the last few Paulistas who have yet to hop aboard the Trump Train.
The attacks on his refusal to present his tax returns were deftly deflected, and redirected towards HRC’s continuing emails scandal. He also managed to present himself as an able businessman who will save money and revamp America’s “Third World” infrastructure. That said, his response to allegations he did not pay some of his workers – “I did not like the job he did” – was weak and must have come off as callous to many people.
I would say he won this round. Trump – 8/10, HRC – 6/10.
America’s Direction
With a focus on race. Dis gonna be gud!
HRC did her standard pandering spiel, repeating the claim that young black men are more likely to be arrested, charged, and imprisoned for the same crime as whites. This “systemic racism” had to be countered by the end of mandatory minimal sentences, more second chance programs, and better police training. Because, apparently, politically correct diktats on “implicit bias” are sure to be more effective at fighting crime and protecting Blue Lives than a lifetime of instincts developed on the beat.
Now to be sure, Trump couldn’t exactly respond with dindu nuffin memes and FBI crime stats like some Alt Right shitlord – though HRC’s comments on how “everybody is jumping to conclusions about each other” was a perfect moment to mention that whole “basket of deplorables” affair. Still, he hammered his points in well, which was the most important thing. Trump emphasized the need for law and order; mentioned the endorsements that were flooding in from police unions; and pointed out that the number of homicides has increased in the past year (HRC claimed otherwise. Trump is correct and she is wrong. With any luck, progressives cajoled into researching this further will stumble upon the Ferguson Effect. And with any luck might even add two and #BLM). He even managed to slip in a mention of HRC’s “superpredator” comments, a “no, you” tactic that he would shortly use yet again.
As in the first segment, the moderator ended by mentioning another sore point for Trump – his promotion of the birther conspiracy theory. Trump had a reasonable reply, arguing that it was actually first raised by Sidney Blumenthal, a Clinton-friendly journalist, and also mentioned the Kenyan garb photo spread by HRC’s campaign during the nomination contest against Obama in 2008. As such, HRC’s accusations of “racism” against him were just another example of her hypocritical “holier than thou” attitude. Overall, this was handled well, though of course some people will never be satisfied.
However, Trump’s counter to HRC’s claims that his real estate firm discriminated against black tenants was not well made. He said there had been no admission of guilt (“And so? Corporations can get away with anything,” a critic might reply), and provided a counterexample of inclusion… in the form of an non-discriminating rich person’s club that he owns in Palm Beach, Florida. This was tone deaf with regards to both blacks and the 99%, but unfortunately rather typical for Trump, who has a tendency to talk too much about his projects and especially the things he builds for rich people. Eventually, it becomes tiring, even for people who aren’t much enarmored with “We are the 1%” rhetoric.
Overall, I think Trump won this round as well, though by a thinner margin than the first. Trump – 7/10, HRC – 6/10.
Securing America
In the final round, HRC went on the warpath, the moderator’s shilling for her became pretty much explicit, and Trump tumbled badly on what should have been his strongest round.
I was actually smiling when HRC started off with her standard jeremiad about cybersecurity and the Russian menace. This was not a good idea, especially for someone with her record. Had her earpiece failed? Was the medical cocktail she’d been injected with beginning to wear off? Her arguments were almost self-refuting. The Russian angle is trivially easy to mock and dismiss, given the complete lack of evidence that it was actually Russia who had broken into the DNC. Furthermore, her comments essentially gave Trump free ammo to attack her on her own criminal misconduct with respect to matters of national security and her alleged complicity in stealing the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders.
And at first, Trump delivered. He mentioned that he had gained the endorsement of 200 admirals and generals. He pointed out that the hacks might have come from Russia, but it could equally well have been China, or even some “400 pound hacker” lying on a bed. The disturbing thing was that this had been possible in the first place, not to mention the revelations themselves – namely, that Bernie Sanders had been “taken advantage of by your people.” This was a well-advised nod to wavering Bernouts.
But it all went downhill from there.
Despite having already confronted a hostile Republican elite on the question of the Iraq War, Trump turned a lot more mellow on this issue in this debate – even though his audience, now half Democratic, should have been a great deal more receptive to it.
As Pumpkin Person points out, this allowed a thoroughly compromised HRC to turn the situation to her advantage:
I was stunned that Trump let Hillary and the moderator put him on the defensive for supporting the war when Hillary was a million times more culpable.
All Trump said in support of the war was shrugged and said “I guess so” when asked by Stern if he supported it but from then on he was against it.
By contrast Hillary actually VOTED for it in the senate, gave it bipartisan legitimacy, gave a speech wrongly claiming Saddam Hussein had links to Al Qaeda, and her husband propagandized for war on Letterman.
And yet Hillary made Trump look like the war monger and all Trump could do was babble incoherently when he could have ripped her to shreds on that point since it was the worst foreign policy decision in U.S. history.
He repeated the line that “we should have taken their oil.” That might have played well with Republican hardasses, but it would have won him no favor amongst the progressives unhappy with HRC’s neocon-in-all-but-name militancy. A missed opportunity.
HRC argued that Trump’s anti-Muslim rhetoric put him in a bad position to negotiate with the Muslim countries that are involved with the US in the fight against ISIS. Instead of riposting that her wars killed infinitely more Muslims than his comments ever did, or questioning the legitimacy of the sectarian involvement of Muslim countries in the Syrian civil war, or perhaps mentioning the Saudi donations to the Clinton Foundation and the influence they might have on HRC’s decisionmaking, he… went on some kind of rambling rant about Obama’s weakness on Iran and the need to go into Iraq with NATO (sic). “I have a much better temperament than Hillary,” Trump concluded. Kk.
Trump expressed his sentiment that America no longer had the means to be the “world’s policeman,” and repeatedly complained that Germany, Japan, Korea, and America’s other allies don’t pay the full cost of their own defense. We know that this is a reference to the inability of almost all NATO member states to meet the informal guideline of spending 2% of their GDP on the military, which allows them and Japan to enjoy the American security umbrella for free and use the savings to provide more social benefits to their citizens. Explained thus, Trump could have appealed to the anti-war left, many of whom hate HRC; but expressed in Trump’s trademark money-grubbing language, the point was lost for progressives while failing to satisfy the #NeverTrump types kvetching about Trump’s disregard for America’s international “obligations” anyway.
In contrast, HRC struck a consistently more professional and “learned” tone; vapid at its core, to be sure, but seemingly profound to the casual observer.
At this point, this could have still been a tie, just about, but much worse was about to come. It was time for the woman card.
The moderator asked Trump to clarify his comments that HRC doesn’t have the “presidential look.” Trump just about avoided getting stumped by insisting that he actually said HRC didn’t have the stamina, but that allowed her to make this killer riposte: “Well, as soon as he travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a cease-fire, a release of dissidents, an opening of new opportunities and nations around the world, or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina.”
Instead of using this as an opening to go back to the emails issue, Trump bought into HRC’s frame by acknowledging that she had “experience,” but prepending that it was “bad experience.” However, this argument fell flat because Trump had failed to properly grill her over the Iraq War and her other international misadventures. In any case, unfortunately for Trump, the debate had already moved beyond foreign policy. It was now about affirming HRC as a strong womyn and Trump as a misogynistic pig.
Plunging in the shiv hard and deep, HRC said that Trump had called women pigs, slobs, and dogs; reminded viewers of his comments that pregnancy was an inconvenience for employers; and criticized him for his love of beauty contests and his comments about a certain “Miss Piggy” who is a Latina and will not be voting for Trump.
Now this need not have been fatal, had Trump kept his cool. He could have claimed that these comments had been taken out of context. He could have used that to segue into his childcare proposals. He could have pointed to his good record on hiring women. He could have joked that at least he had kept his beauty contests out of the Oval Office. Not so politically correct, but funny and classically Trumpian. And if HRC wanted to play rough, there was no shortage of ways Trump could have stumped her with Bill’s record. Bombing Yugoslavia to draw attention away from the Lewinsky affair? You can be assured I’ll keep it to just words. After all, we have the best words, don’t we folks?
Instead he decided it would be a better idea to go on a bitter rant about how Rosie O’Donnell had “deserved” his tough words – no matter that everyone up until this point had forgotten about her – and then proceeding to whine about HRC’s negative attack ads against him. Even the staunchest Trump supporters would admit that complaining about tone is just about the last thing he should be doing. But this particular juxtaposition was especially awful.
In short, HRC stepped up her game and went on the attack, while Trump was unable to adapt and ended up affirming the prevaricating warmongering asshole stereotype that liberals have affixed to him after having refuted them in the previous two rounds.
What should have been a crowning triumph for Trump after the hard slog of the first two rounds turned into a debacle. Trump – 3/10, HRC – 7/10.
Perhaps there’s a good argument to be made that anything which transpires in the debates has a significant influence on the final result.
I have never heard such an argument.
I think online Trump supporters tend to overplay the man’s wit and underestimate his narcissism. I’ve read plenty of good responses of things Trump COULD HAVE said to deflect on women, birtherism, etc. but none that actually sound like something he would say. Trump ALWAYS takes this bait instead of dismissing it with a quip.
For me the low point was when he spent nearly 5 minutes giving us the origin story of birtherism, only to say he was proud that he personally forced Obama to provide his birth certificate. He started out well as you mentioned, but simply throwing the albatross around Clinton’s neck was enough. Even if Holt (don’t get me started) pressed the issue, he could have simply brushed it off and said he had changed his mind and it wasn’t important. But apparently Obama’s birth certificate is the hill he wants to die defending.
I don’t think the foreign policy segment went as poorly as you seem to, but I agree it is remarkable that he didn’t mention who actually voted for the Iraq war. His “seize the oil” remarks, while correct, probably should have been phrased better (“work with the people of Iraq to rebuild their country so it isn’t a haven for terrorists” maybe?). And with regards to working with Muslim leaders, didn’t Trump have a successful meeting with al-Sisi just last week? No mention of it, at all.
In general I’m not thinking this debate changes the race very much: no one really expected him to win, he didn’t completely flub it, and he has had good momentum this past week. I am concerned by how nervous he seemed, though. I can understand blowing off debate prep because you think these things are worthless (and you would be correct) but then you have to bring the swagger to back that up. Trump didn’t deliver. He seemed defensive and weak. It was kinda like being a little kid and watching your dad get beat up.
The purpose of the debates is to sway few percent of undecided voters (the most lazy and most ignorant).
http://www.reuters.com/election2016/the-undecided/
Unless you believe in Trump plant theory…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trump_plant_theory
I missed the first part of the debate and only watched the boring 2nd part, so Trump’s performance looked particularly lackluster to me. What if a significant proportion of the viewership only watched the 1st half and thus saw Trump when he was winning it ?
I’m all in for Trump (despite not even being an american!) but he’s so frustrating! Trump is anti-neocon so why focus on the one point that makes him sound like a neocon ? Why can’t he say “our top priority should have been to keep the oil away from the terrorists, using our troops if necessary” ? That sounds better than “we should have just taken the oil” to a lot of ears including mine.
From all that I’ve seen, he was, at best, ambivalent about the war, for a very brief period in 2003 and came out against the war very soon and very clearly. Why can’t he communicate that forcefully ? Why let that damn moderator insinuate that he was ever enthusiatic about Iraq ? Why not point out that at the time, also, he was a random private citizen, not a policy maker of any kind ?
Re: the birther thing. I think he won that one but that took way too much effort. How hard could it have been to point out in a very succint way that the birther thing was started by Hillary and then move on ? He won it, but expanded way too much energy into that point.
And with regards to working with Muslim leaders, didn’t Trump have a successful meeting with al-Sisi just last week? No mention of it, at all
He handled his meetings with international leaders very well so far.
Trump’s job last night was not to win, but to make himself appear less distasteful to cuck suburban whites than Hillary. That’s it.
He did so. Mission accomplished.
People saying that Trump “lost” don’t understand the purpose of Presidential debates.
Good analysis. A few things that might be getting lost in the moment:
– Trump did well on trade and Nafta/TPP and Clinton was awful. That matters in the Midwest. The marginals in the key Midwestern states will decide this election and this helps with them.
– Clinton failed to present a plan. Or anything that would make her different from the status quo and Obama. That was lost in the moment, but this failure will hurt her as people focus before 11/8. Yeah, she can nitpick and blabber a lot, but what exactly is she for?
Finally, given the general zeitgeist in the media and among the ruling elite, a more direct attack on Clinton’s foreign policy would be today demonized to high heavens. There is no fair play, this is us-versus-them for the establishment. It would be nice to see a more direct attack – and your points are true – but there is a risk. Whatever Trump says is taken literally, but not seriously. So his points are ignored and his words are twisted in any case. This is not a fair fight, they really, really, don’t like him.
Clinton has in effect a Therapeutic Exception from WADA (she did the “paperwork”), and Trump is put under a microscope. It is Williams sisters against Sharapova all over again. In situations like that only winning matters because the process no longer exists.
Twenty or so minutes into the debate I noticed that he shouted at her too much. It was a weird thing – she was smiling, cool and condescendingly amused, like an alpha, while he was angry and bothered, as if he was a beta.
I remember a primary debate were he was angry like that – in South Carolina I think. The booing of the crowd got to him. I don’t know what got to him here, maybe the Hildebeest’s confidence.
Trump landed a couple of hits: “two words she never mentioned were law and order” and “she has experience, but it’s bad experience”.
The moment when he started to talk about job losses due to trade, after her vague and general remarks about the economy was good too – he changed the tone.
But unfortunately I agree that the average undecided voter was probably moved towards Hillary by this debate.
[Hillary] “gave a speech wrongly claiming Saddam Hussein had links to Al Qaeda”
SHE has more links to Al Qaeda than Saddam did. Some of the people she supported in Syria against Assad are Al Qaeda.
In contrast, HRC struck a consistently more professional and “learned” tone; vapid at its core, to be sure, but seemingly profound to the casual observer.
Yes. But would a man of culture and intelligence running on the same issues have done better or worse than Trump is doing now? I don’t know. Pat Buchanen is very smart and well-read, but that didn’t attract many upscale people to his campaigns. His core support was the same as Trump’s: working class whites. And maybe the fact that Buchanen is not culturally working class was one of the reasons why his campaigns never achieved Trump’s level of success. Obviously, there are a million other variables, and I could be wrong about this. The time might not have been right.
Trump, the son of a multimillionaire, is culturally working class.
I’ve always expected that Trump would be weakest at debating foreign policy: Although his instincts on the subject are far superior to Hillary!’s, his problem is that debates are won by sounding like you know what you are talking about, and he is an ignoramus. On Syria, for example, Trump’s position is sane (except for his “take the oil” silliness) and Hillary!’s anti-Assad super-hawkishness is insane, but how certain is it that Trump could even name the capital of Syria? And foreign policy is a particularly hard subject to BS your way through: If you’re asked a question about the nuclear triad or no- first-use policy, and don’t know what those things are, it inevitably becomes apparent when you have to give a two-minute response.
Trump is also hurt by his fixation on bragging that he was always against the Iraq War and Libya air campaign, despite the lack of any supporting evidence other than the word of his chief sycophant Hannity. He’d be much better off to simply say what appears to be the truth, based on the Stern and Cavuto interviews: That as a private citizen who was generally skeptical of neocon adventurism, but trusted the president’s assurances regarding Iraq’s alleged nuclear program and WMD stockpiles, he was initially ambivalent about going into Iraq. That would still compare favorably with Hillary!’s enthusiastic support and vote for it.
I am mystified how anyone could have watched Trump during the primary debates- in which he was clearly completely unprepared, and “won” only by keeping his speaking time to a minimum as the other nine candidates on stage remained focused on attacking each other- and not anticipated he was going be in big trouble once he had to debate one-on-one with a reasonably well-informed person for 90 minutes.
I think by now this is conventional wisdom: Trump wins if he plays a brash truth-speaking outsider to Hillary’s corrupt and entrenched insider. He loses if he plays a narcissistic NYC real estate tycoon who constantly self-congratulates his own projects, boasts of not paying taxes and workers, and calls out fat women.
Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/14/us/politics/mike-pence-campaign.html?_r=0
This is the problem right there in the quote, the one that Trump had to adress in this debate. There are just too many faggots like Fortenberry and cucks like Lee in the GOP electorate that need “muh feelings” soothed before they could bring themselves to support Trump. They made a fetish, an idol out of “muh good manners” and think that the destruction of the country is a price worth paying for not voting for Trump because he says mean things. For these people Trump had to make a “muh presidential appearance” first and keep the ammo for the second and third debate.
Thanks for this analyses, reading it was much more preferable than actually watching the debate, an activity I find excruciatingly unpleasant. Good to have you back blogging again, in general.
I seem to remember that Obama demonstrably lost the first debate to Romney in the last election cycle. He promised to up his game, which he apparently did, and performed much better in the following debates. I also remember reading at the time that the debates were fixed, with the candidates agreeing ahead of time who would be the aggressor and who the defender. I have no idea if this is true or not, but I would expect a better performance from our man next time around. It seems that, in this debate, Trump tried to be more like Hillary and vice versa. Since she is entirely phony anyway, it was easier for her to pull it off.
OT: What do you think of this development in the MH17 investigation?
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-37495067?ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbc_breaking&ns_source=twitter&ns_linkname=news_central
I think regardless of what you think of the conflict, it’s mostly Konspiracy Kooks who believe that it wasn’t the Russian/rebel side.
First, it’s highly unlikely that anybody would’ve done this on purpose.
The rebels had no air force, so the Ukrainians cannot have done this accidentally, whereas the Ukrainians were attacking from the air, so the rebels were quite likely to try to shoot down a number of aircraft, which in fact they did, they downed a few Ukrainian aircraft, including I believe one at maybe 10,000 feet.
So it’s possible that they started using Buks to down Ukrainian aircraft at 30,000 feet as well, and accidentally downed an airliner which they mistook for a military aircraft. It’s possible the rebels were unaware that civilian airliners were still flying there, or the information somehow got lost in the chain of command. The rebels in July 2014 were probably way less organized than later, and the Russians probably lost a lot of efficiency by having to pretend the rebels had nothing to do with them.
Actually I even find the Ukrainians’ intercepted conversation between two rebel leaders plausible, where they admitted to the mistake and were angry that airliners were still flying there.
I think it’s possible that someone did it on purpose. The Kiev junta and its sponsors in the US used this incident in their anti-Russia media campaign. It’s certainly helped them. Why isn’t it possible that they created this incident in order to use it in the media?
The plane fell in the war zone, which was roughly 1% of the Ukraine’s territory. I’ve seen flight maps that implied that this flight was diverted INTO the war zone, not away from it, by Ukrainian dispatchers. This flight’s usual path was different.
To be clear, I can easily imagine the junta downing that plane in order to blame it on the rebels.
They killed many thousands of civilians by shelling Novorossian cities. A few hundred foreigners in a plane isn’t much compared to that.
And I can easily imagine Obama signing off on the plan. He knows that most of the victims of his Syrian and Libyan adventures were civilians. The relevant moral threshold was passed long before that incident.
The aim was precisely to enable svidomite planes to fly again and bomb without anyone daring to shoot them down. Now things don’t just happen as conveniently as that for the svidomites and their American owners. They have to be made to happen. Fortunately, Russia wasn’t intimidated.
What you think or believe it’s irrelevant, stick to the facts (you have supported your “opinion” with none) and stop calling names and boring us with your rants
Hallo?! are you 12 years old? if the Ukronazis-Neocons did it was on purpose to change public opinion against Putin and Russian-Ukrainians and make clear to everyone (ie muppets such as yourself) who are the good guys in the Ukrainian conflict.
This is again you thinking and believing too much what you read in the Guardian, again stick to the facts and stop boring us with your irrelevant Guardianista shill opinions
Flash news no one gives a sh*t about what you think or believe regarding MH17, unless it is supported by facts.
Please read and stop making a fool of yourself and torturing us with your irrelevant rants dear muppet/shill
http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-who-shot-down-flight-mh17-in-ukraine/?highlight=mh17
Here comes President HillBilly Clinton.
What will eight years of HillBilly bring us?
HillBilly will help Big Jew Wall Street finish off the takeover of Main Street America.
HillBilly will force more social programs on business that only big corporations will be able handle.
HillBilly immigration plans will overtake the white voters.
HillBilly through the power of federal spending they will enforce speech codes on American institutions.
HillBilly will engineer ever more gun restrictions on America.
HillBilly will install Jews, women, gays, Latins, Blacks wherever possible. White males need not apply.
You fly airliners in a war zone, and then start to attack your enemies there from the air. Until your enemies accidentally down one of the airliners. You might call it an accident, or you might call it negligence, or you might call it deliberate. Ukrainian culpability is not zero in that case.
What I don’t believe is the deliberate targeting of the plane. Until I can see some evidence. Is there any? It’s at least an extraordinary claim, requiring a bit more evidence than the simple theory of rebels (who may or may not have been professional) mistaking the airliner for a military transport plane.
True enough, but it didn’t occur to either of them to apologize to the Iraqi people for destroying their country “by mistake” and killing 100.000’s of civilians. The best Trump could do, was say “We should have taken their oil”.
And they are both on board with Israel’s plan to use US resources & military to destroy Iran.
They had already stopped attacking from the air, because they got shot down with regularity. They were eager to start again.
But I’d still require some evidence. Shelling cities which inevitably leads to thousands of civilian deaths in a war zone is different from deliberately downing a peaceful neutral airliner packed with neutral civilians. The Donbas civilians were, from a Ukrainian point of view, enemy (rebel) civilians, quite unlike the neutral (actually, friendly neutral) civilians on the flight.
Just a friendly note to everyone in this discussion that there’s an MH17 specific thread here: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/mh17/
A military transport plane was shot down just a day or two before. The funny thing was, it was downed some 10,000 feet high, and the Ukrainians were claiming (just hours before MH17 went down) that it was shot down from across the border, because the rebels had no missiles capable of doing that. Then MH17 happened, and they started claiming that they had known for days the rebels had been given a Buk system…
I noticed, I was just responding here. But I won’t do that anymore.
Scott Adams, of the Dilbert Comic, who also writes about the Race and who has his focus on PERSUASION TACTICS, says that Donald Trump succeeded with his primary goal:
Not to be perceived as “scary”, which is how the Clinton Campaign is trying to paint him.
It would be astonishing if Scott Adams is the only one who got this, but in his view “Clinton won the debate. And while she was doing it, Trump won the election.”
The larger picture:The Democratic Party has been importing Hillary Clinton’s nonwhite,highly racialized voting bloc….legally…for 51 years since the 1965 Immigration Reform Act was passed.
Hillary Clinton the political creature is a creation of the passage of the 1965 Immigration Reform Act.
US labor markets are saturated with nonwhite scab labor…and here is the scale of it:nonwhite legal immigrants+the US born geneline of nonwhite legal immigrants. And Trump has to create high paying jobs for this demographic and the Native Born White American Demographic. Trump can’t do this unless he intends to black-top the whole US with hot asphalt.
I agree, Hillary did win the debate. And I’m sure she and her supporters thought so too. And yet, according to just about every poll except CNN, Trump won.
The paroxysms of rage she must be experiencing right now can’t be doing any good for whatever it is that’s killing her.
I want to add this to what I wrote above.
The idea being put forth by Donald Trump and his Julian Simon protégés who are his economic advisors is fundamentally a lie. And what they are putting forward is a massive tax cut for billionaires and multibillionaires as if that was the reason for the lack of middle class paying jobs in the US.
The other lie being put forth by Trump’s economic advisors is that the solution to the problem of a lack of high paying middle class jobs is an unprecedented scale of economic growth(where is the H20 gonna come from to sustain this giant tumor of economic growth?).
The jobs were already here…..but these jobs were,and are, being given to nonwhite foreign scab labor….the legal ones…and the ones that were born here(The exponentially growing nonwhite Democratic Party Voting Bloc).
The much larger point:A very severe labor scarcity must never be used as an excuse to race-replace in US labor markets the Historic Native Born White American Majority Working Class-because racial demographics is fundamental….non-negotiable…not subject to debate.
Oh yeah…Donald’s enthusiasm for fracking….enthusiasm for the malignant tumor known as unbounded economic growth.
Don’t take what I have written as enthusiasm for the repellant wart known as Hillary Clinton…which we should all refer to here-on-in as a wart.
Can’t argue with it. I expected Trump to wipe the floor with this old bag. That said, Hillary made a serious tactical error. She shot her garbage bombs in the first act. She used them up. “Racism”, “birtherism”, etc. She can’t use them a second time.
Trump, intentionally or not, failed to use his most effective weapons against her. I suspect that will not happen twice.
In any case I don’t think a single vote was swayed by this debate, on either side. The fence-sitters are still on the fence.
I wish it was true, but sounds like wishful thinking.
Polls suggest that Clinton, not Trump, gained votes from the debate.
Thank you for a very useful and detailed analysis. I would rather have a root canal than watch one of these nerve-jarringly idiotic pieces of political theater for morons. But it’s important work to keep up with this nonsense; nonsense which may very well decide the fate of our country and even the world. Somebody has to do it and I’m glad it’s someone as competent as you, Mr. Karlin.
Chris Bridges
Trump’s most effective “weapons” in the next debate:1)Hillary Clinton=ISIS…2)Her “loving and devoted” husband is a violent psychopathic serial rapist…3)the complete abolition of the H1B…L1B scab labor program…and the need to create a severe labor scarcity in US Labor markets by shutting legal immigration completely down and allow the real wage to rise..that’s if you really believe in a high real wage economy…And of course, The Wart’s missing emails. Why did Huma Abedin have easy access to Hillary Clinton’s National Security computer server?
Trump has to override the hostile debate moderators and define terms of debate:”I want to talk about Huma Abedin’s easy access to Mrs Clinton’s Natinal Security email server.” I want to ask Mrs. Clinton a question about her devoted and loving husbands violent treatment of innocent woman”.
The it-Wart Democratic Candidate for POTUS deserves to be taken down in debate by Fred Trump’s son.
I’m getting rather displeased at many of the media personalities supposedly on “our side” and their censorious Monday morning quarterbacking of Donald Trump, so I’d like to take this opportunity to put a few things back into perspective.
In the days and even the weeks leading up to this first debate, Trump was treated to a Spector-like Wall of Sound of unsolicited advice from every quarter telling him that he had better be “presidential” or he was done for. So Trump correspondingly toned it down, and now those very same voices are demanding to know why he didn’t go right for the jugular and KO Hillary with everything but the kitchen sink. “Why didn’t he hit her on that,” is the common refrain issuing from every region of the conservative commentariat. “She left herself so wide open and Trump just whiffed it.”
What a spastic set of conflicting demands! How is Trump supposed to please these people? He’s damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t. The media, as usual, think that they occupy the Emperor’s box at the Flavian Amphitheater and that these debates are a spectacle that exists solely for their sake, to give them something to criticize and dissect. But Trump isn’t interested in performing for the media; he’s interested in helping the country and he speaks with that end in mind, in a style modulated to communicate with other doers and clear-sighted people like himself who do not need to obscure the facts for political purposes. The media feel slighted by this. Their whole reason for existing is rendered null and void by Trump’s appeal to common sense. Quite tellingly, quite predictably, quite appropriately, the timbre of the criticism that has emerged from the media talking heads is Trump’s “poor debate preparation”—by which they mean, “He didn’t give us the kind of show that WE wanted!”
Any Trump supporter who follows the media’s lead in this sort of jeering is being tremendously disloyal. Let us remember that Trump is the candidate; he is the one exposing himself to all the risk, taking all the punches, and spending a great deal of his own money simply because he wants to fight for us, so he deserves our support not our complaining and ridicule. Furthermore, I do not take seriously this notion that Trump literally did not prepare for the debate. Of course he prepared for the debate, he just did not treat it like a spectacle.
Concerning the other point, viz. that Trump left a lot of zingers on the table that he could have clobbered Hillary with, I think it is necessary to go a bit meta in order to explain why it doesn’t matter. We all know what Trump could have said. We all know that he could have brought up the email server, Benghazi, or the Clinton Foundation. Hillary Clinton knows it too. But since we all already know these things, is it really necessary for Trump to actually do it? What would that accomplish other than allowing the red-meat Republican base to engage in some vicarious venting while making Trump look petty and vituperative? If there is one thing we know about Hillary Clinton, it’s that she doesn’t care that she did these things or that everyone knows about it. She’s the one who looked like an insouciant, spaced-out robot on the debate stage. She’s cut from the same cloth as Obama, who just issued a resounding FU to the American people in the form of the Saudi Arabian veto and was soundly rebuffed by Congress for it. That debate was truly surrealistic for the sheer amount of lying Hillary did. It wasn’t deception; it was open, outright lying about things that everyone already knows aren’t true. It was completely insane.
There is nothing Trump can do to penetrate that sort of arrogant obliviousness. What he can do however is reveal it for what it is, and I think he did so masterfully. To me, the whole debate and the whole election came down to just one line. When Trump tarred Hillary with the fact that she never went to Louisiana to visit the flood victims, she smirked back, “No, I was too busy preparing to be president.”
That right there was her “Let them eat cake” moment. It encapsulated her whole entitled, elitist personality. Many people seem not to have noticed it, but it will gain traction as the debate is replayed and will eventually go down in history as the decisive point in the campaign. Trump stood with the American people in their hour of need. Hillary is all about Hillary. The contrast is clear. It’s all over but the voting.
But she’s not getting a bump in the polls. She’s finished.
All this talk of Trump “brushing off” comments is misguided. It would have worked in a normal debate where the moderator was unbiased. But here he had to fight the moderator as well as Hillary. He knew it in advance, or he figured it out quickly. He would not have been allowed to brush off anything, and if Holt returned to it legitimately, it would have made him look weak.
Instead he attacked, exposed Holt, and made Holt look like an idiot. At the expense of a few intemperate comments that people generally forgave him.
Hillary won in the prediction markets because people weren’t sure she would be able to stand up and not have a medical episode. She’s pretty much put that very substantive issue to rest — unless it pops up again.
Agree.
Also, Trump’s goal in this debate according to Scott Adams was to dispel the idea that he’s scary. He did so, he even appeared sympathetic next to Princess Hillary and Lyin’ Lester Holt.
He was again in the middle of the stage figuratively, Hillary on one side, Lester on the other. The way he won the Republican primaries.
I want to repeat because I think I’ve found a new moniker for Trump’s opponent:
Princess Hillary
don’t promote her from that position.
This moderator was clearly pro-Clinton.
Immediately after the debate (but I never heard this before the debate) Hillary’s people were complaining that the moderator for the third debate should change, because he knows Roger Ailes.
I think they expected that with all their advantages here they would have a knockout under their belts now. They don’t, it was close to a draw one way or the other, and now they have to try for the KO in the last debate by cheating again.
Fortunately I haven’t heard any movement regarding the third debate moderator.
Let’s just hope HillBilly will continue to subsidize your favorite food – government issued PORK & beans.
Sherm
Um, no. He looked arrogant and combative and his answers were often incoherent.
Hillary is already getting a bounce in the polls.
(emphasis mine)
Fascinating. How do you explain the speaking time data that shows Trump spoke the longest on average (for debates he attended)?
http://time.com/4109236/republican-debate-speaking-time-2/
http://www.iowapoliticsnow.com/cumulative-gop-candidate-debate-talk-times/html_6fdcc4e6-dca8-11e5-b805-fb615c6d4b74.html
(note that Trump skipped the seventh debate)
I disagree with you about deemphasizing the Iraq War stances. I think Trump just needs to make sure people see the actual Howard Stern video rather than the spin attempts. Anyone who was around then and remembers how much pro-war pressure there was will understand that Trump’s response matches best to a “skeptical but going along with the consensus in public” belief (kind of like the shy Trump voters today).
Abraham Lincoln said that, “A house divided cannot stand”.
If he was right, then the US is still going down. There are no signs of national unity now and I’m not looking for any after the election.
Polls?You mean ones that said she had a 90% chance of winning a few weeks ago?
These people are serial liars and serial screwups,and anyone giving credence to anything they spew is an idiot.
The only poll that counts is Nov 8.
And yes she spent her attack ammo in this one,and if she wasn’t on some type of drugs,I’m not the drug expert I think I am.Adderal,Ritalin or methamphetamines.
Yes,she hates US deplorables.Most of the La. flooded were white people,if they were minorities she would have been there.
Her base is anti American immigrants,minorities,wacky women,homosexuals and Zionist traitor monsters.
And why minorities vote for democrats who haven given them absolutely nothing but ghettos,no jobs,terrible schools and treat them as war fodder is another one for the shrinks.
In case you didn’t know, Trump was a private citizen, not a politician when we went to war in Iraq. He has no reason to apologize for our out of control criminal government.
You are confusing polls with election prediction models that use polls as an input.
They were right in 2012.
This is true.
She shot her wad. She’s done. She can only repeat herself from here.
Trump has a full arsenal left.
Bounce over.
I only saw one or two polls that showed Trump did not win the debate, and one of those was from NBC which is in he tank for clinton. On Tuesday there were several websites that listed just about every poll out there and it was overwhelmingly for Trump, and there was plenty of news about how the wax manican, Lestor, had tried to enter the debate and interrupted Trump 41 times and clinton only 7 while never asking any questions about Benghazi, or the emails, etc.
Personally, I don’t care what happens in the phony “debates”. They prove nothing about a persons ability to be president, and I don’t expect any objectivity from the LLSM that is putting them (and us) on.
He is arrogant and combative and is often incoherent. That is not news. What he needed to do, however, was not appear unhinged and he did not, at least not to anybody not already in the tank for Hil.
She gets a favorable media cycle and a bounce in the polls. So far, the LA Times, UPI and Reuters samples show no change, whereas Hillary has jumped ahead in the Morning Consult and Rasmussen post debate polls by an average of 5.
More likely than not, the polls will be back to their pre-debate state this time next week.
The recent report from Holland on the MH-17 shootdown places the blame squarely on the Russians. They moved a battery into occupied Ukrainian territory and shot down MH-17, then moved it back to Russian territory after they realized what they had shot down. The missile used was the newest version, a version the Ukrainians did not possess.
Russia has been nailed in another lie.
Care must be taken that we don’t call win/loss based on our expectations of what Trump should have done. He succeeded in showing he’s not some undisciplined monster as the DimoKKKRats keep harping on. Based on what Hillary had to do, she lost. Trump also shook here up and things just worse for her as time wore on.
In polling, only the snap polls I’ve seen hold her out as winner. The others are telling a different story.
Well here goes, The Obama administration has been out there to try and jazz-up the black vote. Hillary has been trying to play to the working people that she knifed in the back with trade deals. Perhaps big TV watchers could actually believe this, but, the election depends on who comes out to vote.
Trump’s support is solid, while Clinton’s is not. Not doing very well in a debate,is a very disarming sort of a thing.
From the Baltimore Gazette:
Earlier last week an NBC intern was seen hand delivering a package to Clinton’s campaign headquarters, according to sources. The package was not given to secretarial staff, as would normally happen, but the intern was instead ushered into the personal office of Clinton campaign manager Robert Mook. Members of the Clinton press corps from several media organizations were in attendance at the time, and a reporter from Fox News recognized the intern, but said he was initially confused because the NBC intern was dressed like a Fed Ex employee.
The reporter from Fox questioned campaign staff about the intern, but campaign staff at first claimed ignorance and then claimed that it was just a Fed Ex employee who had already left. No reporters present who had seen the intern dressed as a Fed Ex employee go into Mook’s office saw him leave by the same front entrance. The Fox reporter who recognized the intern also immediately looked outside of the campaign headquarters and noted that there were no Fed Ex vehicles parked outside.
Clinton seemed to have scripted responses ready for every question she was asked at the first debate. She had facts and numbers memorized for specific questions that it is very doubtful she would have had without being furnished the questions beforehand. The entire mainstream media has specifically been trying to portray Trump as a racist and a poor candidate. By furnishing Clinton with the debate questions NBC certainly hoped to make Clinton appear much more knowledgeable and competent than Trump. And though it is unlikely that anyone will be able to conclusively prove that Clinton was given the debate questions, it seems both logical and likely.
The Trump Plant Theory page has already been taken down on Wikipedia…
More evidence of the plant? Covering up the theory already?
This just in from Consortiumnews.com:
depends on how well he does in the debates to come. if he is throwing them, then you and I, all of us will know what is up. trump isn’t new to public speaking or new to debates.
Persuasion tactics do not necessarily need to convince people the same day.
“A house divided cannot stand”.
The “house of US” is indeed currently divided in the most indecent (and tragic) ways:
The Pentagon and CIA are supporting different fractions of “moderate” jihadis some of whom are Al Qaida affiliates. So much for the “war on terror…”
“In Syria, militias armed by the Pentagon fight those armed by the CIA:” http://www.latimes.com/world/middleeast/la-fg-cia-pentagon-isis-20160327-story.html
Moreover, the US deciders had made a decision for openly supporting the ISIS/Al Qaeda “moderate fighters” in Syria: “US Deploys Troops near Aleppo City:” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JCy_zFSM498
Looks like convergence of the zionist Oded Yinon plan and neocons’ lunacy of full-spectrum-dominance: http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/06/17/hillarys-agenda-here-and-abroad-intertwinedfull-spectrum-dominance-around-the-globe-a-swelling-precariat-at-home/
http://www.voltairenet.org/article186019.html
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-pentagons-strategy-for-world-domination-full-spectrum-dominance-from-asia-to-africa/5397514
Trump passed the “appear Presidential test,” but he failed to control the narrative. She held that ground because the NBC “moderator” secured it for her. In the interim, Trump looked unprepared and allowed Hillary and he field hand to direct the discussion. Trump cannot show up to “not loose” and expect to win. That said. I think the DC Police may want to see where Lester Holt was the night Seth Rich was double-tapped.
Trump laid out a credible and easily understandable plan to reshore industry to the US by imposing tariff barriers and lowering regulations. This includes lowering the corporate tax rate from 35% to 15%.
I own a small US ‘C’ corporation. I’m a bit surprised to learn that the tax rate is 35%. But I don’t do my own accounting. I think the corporate tax rate is already 15%. It matches the personal income tax that you pay in the $100,000/year income bracket. I chose to run this ‘C’ corp as a pass-through ‘S’ corp. My accountant’s advice. That is, I never make a profit. I take all the money out of the corp at the end of the year for myself and pay PIT on it.
Here the rub. If I were to leave this money with corporation the corporation would pay 15% on it. If later, were my business expansion plans to not to work out I would have to bring the money back into my personal income and pay another %15 on that. This creates a balls-to-the-wall or nothing-at-all incentive in expanding a small business. I chose the latter and I’m OK with that. But I think it would help other business owners if there some workaround to this.
good article, pretty much spot on with every observation.
its strange that someone like Trump has such thin-skin. I’m not sure he didn’t prepare, its just that he has really, really thin-skin.
Trump did OK. There’s only one metric that matters in a presidential debate – who gained/lost voters. Examining which candidate gave more polished answers is only a proxy for voters lost/gained.
Trump did miss his “killshot” chance. Lester Holt colluded with somebody on his cybersecurity question. Hillary has got big, big problems on the cybersecurity front, and Holt’s question was so generic and carefully tailered that it allowed her to look hawkish on cybersecurity while steering totally clear of her private server scandal. Trump could have said “The FBI has already concluded that you were ‘extremely careless’ in keeping our national secrets on an unsecured, illegal private server – and now you stand up here and say your all about cybersecurity? What a joke!”
It sickens me to see people actually taking sides in this facade called an election. This process has only ONE GOAL, DIVIDE AMERICA!
I mean, we are not TRAINED just to dislike Trump, but to hate him, and the same with Hillary.
This is PURE MANIPULATION.
The Zionists are all about dividing others, they have been doing it for thousands of years, you think this is any different. Do any of you forget who is running this show?!
Please stop buying into the lie, the system has one goal, to divide Americans, and they do it very well.
Why is it our politicians keep getting worse, more hated, yet Clinton and Trump a few years ago would be considered quite similar.
Every election bring us closer to our end, democrat, republican, they all work for the same Zio filth…WAKE UP, this is NOT football, this is real life, and yet, look at the candidates, they are a joke!
I know it’s Zero Hedge, but still it’s a good article on whether or not Trump supported the Iraq war at the time.
A spectacular black eye for the US/EU presstitutes:
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/wikileaks-founder-julian-assange-we-believe-in-what-we-re-doing-a-1114774.html
Julian Assange: “We believe in what we are doing. It’s very satisfying. It’s extremely interesting intellectually. Sometimes great moments of justice come out of it. In one case, a man falsely accused left prison thanks to a publication of ours. A lot of people who work for WikiLeaks have the same instinct as me: If you are pushed you push back…
While many of the established media make losses or go bankrupt, WikiLeaks has survived a major conflict with a superpower, including an unlawful economic blockade by its banks and credit card companies and the detention of its editor. We have no debts. We have not had to fire staff. We have never lost a court case related to our publishing. We have never been forced to censor. Adversity has hardened us. We’re 10 now. Just wait until we’re teenagers.”
Compare this speech of a free man with the presstituting servility of the US/EU MSM. The Reuters and Guardian in particular were reduced to a miserable state of petty propagandists a la Eliot Higgins. The New Times, Newsweek, and Salon have been losing fast any credibility. The Daily Kos has become a stinky joke.
More on the presstituting MSM by Paul Craig Roberts: http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2016/09/30/bring-back-the-cold-war-paul-craig-roberts/:
“…Israel’s voice in the US, the New York Times, blames all the troubles in Ukraine and Syria on Putin. The NYT presstitutes know that they have no case, so they drag in the US-orchestrated false report on MH-17 recently released by Washington’s Netherlands vassal.
This report is so absurd as to cast doubt on whether intelligence exists anywhere in the Western world. Russia and the now independent Russian provinces that have separated from Ukraine have no interest whatsoever in shooting down a Malaysian airliner. But despite this fact, Russia, according to the orchesrated report, sent a surface-to-air missile, useful only at high altitude, an altitude far higher than the Ukrainian planes fly that are attacking Russians in the separated republics, to the “rebels” so that the “rebels” could shoot down a Malaysian airliner. Then the missile system was sent back to Russia.
How insouciant does a person have to be to believe this propaganda from the New York Times?
Does the New York Times write this nonsense because it is bankrupt and lives on CIA subsidies?
It is obvious that the Malaysian airliner was destroyed for the purpose of blaming Russia so that Washington could force Europe to cooperate in applying illegal sanctions on Russia in an attempt to destabilize Russia, a country that placed itself in the way of Washington’s determination to destabilize Syria and Iran.”
Roberts explains the dealings of the Filth Column in Russia:
“To reduce Russia’s status to Washington’s vassal, we have Russian-US coperation between the Moscow-based Institute of World Economy and International Relations and the US-based International Institute for Strategic Studies. These two co-conspirators against Russian sovereignty are working to destroy Russia’s strategic alliance with China and to create a US-Russian Pacific Alliance in its place.”
And he provides the most succinct explanation of the current situation in Syria:
“There can be no cooperation between the US and Russia over Syria, because the two government’s goals are entirely different. Russia wants to defeat ISIS, and the US wants to use ISIS to overthrow Assad.”
“Now to be sure, Trump couldn’t exactly respond with dindu nuffin memes and FBI crime stats like some Alt Right shitlord”
“AltRight shitlord”??
And Ron says he wants certain commenters to clean up their act?
Was the intern Jack McBrayer? Because it sounds like somebody was watching 30 Rock and got confused. Funny story though.
Glossy : ” A man of culture and intelligence”. Well this “man of culture and intelligence” ( myself) : Pro jazz performer since the sixties, and “Mensa” member of forty-plus years, will be pulling the lever for DT in nov, so put that in your uppity pipe and smoke it. I simply abhor such garbage labeling as ” culturally working class”. My family was (Detroit) ” Working class”, and it would be impossible to find more decent, refined, ethical people. Authenticjazzman.
“The Complete A To Z Of Nations Destroyed By Hillary Clinton’s “Hubris,” by Tyler Durden
“Clinton’s tenure as Secretary of State during Barack Obama’s first term was an unmitigated disaster for many nations around the world…:”
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-30/handy-chart-countries-destroyed-hillary
I believe in science. So, I believe in evolution and the survival of the fittest: unintelligent people and people with bad genes should go extinct.
A people with good genes should understand basic logic, reason, objectivity, and the scientific method. As such, as Trump, I would state my goals objectively:
1) I will deport all illegal immigrants, who are over-represented in crime and the benefactors of welfare services.
2) I will stop all further immigration until everyone in the USA has a socio-economic status they desire.
3) I will stop interfering in foreign affairs, since we currently have no foreign threats aside from illegal immigration, and will bring back all our troops and instead place them on our borders.
4) I will remove the USA from NATO and the United Nations, since neither organization serves America’s interests.
5) I will break up all company monopolies in the USA to encourage competition, innovation, quality improvement, and lower prices.
6) I will break up the media conglomerates in the USA to allow for more free speech of ideas, facts, and opinions.
7) I will ban all financial contributions to political candidates. Instead, public funds will be equally provided to any candidate that pass a certain threshold of popular support. This will end the existence of politicians being bribed to serve the interests of certain entities, as opposed to the overall interest of the voters.
8) I will ban all lobbyists. Any individual, company, organization, or other entity that wants to talk to a politician about supporting a certain law or policy will be required to carry out all communication in front of a public video camera which will be aired live on public television and internet for all to see free of charge, and the conversations will be archived for ever and accessible to any individual.
9) I will ban any individual from making more than $200,000 a year; any income above that will be taken away as taxes and used for things like the military, police services, public schools, and so forth, and/or put in a public bank for use during emergencies. This is to ensure that no individual becomes too powerful where they can use their financial power to affect laws and public policy that serve their own interest, as opposed to the interests of the voters as a whole.
10) I will pass a law banning outsourcing of factories and labor; all factories must remain in the USA, and all employees must come from our nation. Also, I will ban the ability of foreign nations to buy American companies. These policies will ensure that the USA has the capacity to be self-sufficient in all things. I will only allow imports of foreign products if for the time being, we ourselves cannot produce the product or service in question, but then I will start implementing policy to make us capable in providing that very product and/or service in question so that we can eventually be self-sufficient in that area.
11) I will pass a law requiring us to be a peaceful nation, and also if required, cooperate with other nations where it is necessary when dealing with aspects that are shared between nations, such as protocols for interaction in international waters, globally shared resources such as air, and outer-space.
12) I will support the First Amendment fully, with emphasis on the free exchange of ideas, facts, and opinions. I will abolish “hate-crime” laws; an act of violence or robbery or vandalism is a crime, regardless of why the individual did it. A person who was beaten or killed to steal their property was inflicted with an equal magnitude of crime as a person who was beaten or killed because of his ethnic, sexual, gender, or religous background. I will not penalize thought, just action.
13) I will support the right of individuals to own firearms for the purpose of self-defense. I believe a person should not be forced to have to fist-fight a burgler, rapist, or murderer. The victim should be given the means to safely stop the perpetrator.
14) I will pass a law requiring the death penalty for all murderers, rapists, assaulters, robbers, significant vandalizers, and significant fraudsters. No exceptions will be given to people based on who they are (CEOs, politicians, ethnic background, gender, etc).
15) For a nation to be prosperous, a minimum amount of genetic health must be maintained. As such, criminals will not be allowed to reproduce. Also, chronic welfare recipients will not be allowed to reproduce. Plus, geniuses, scientists, engineers, and other gifted people will be given economic and social incentives to have many children.
If you support the above laws and policies, then please vote for me. If not, then please vote for my primaries opponents or the Democrat candidate. I need not say any more. The above sums up my views. Either you agree, or you don’t. The choice is yours. The future is yours. Good luck.
Then there’s Scott Adams, who says Trump will win by his mastery of facile suggestion. Logic is for losers.
It’s dysgenics, Trump reducing his speech to an extremely low intelligence level to serve the reproductive interests of the unfit. In fact, my long post is not even complicated: there are no mathematics/equations in my text. It is logic fully utilizing Occam’s Razor. Very simple. I do not believe that a person who can’t communicate at even this simple level should exist. I do not believe Trump should see value in serving the interests of people who can’t apply the Scientific Method to politics.