As the day of the second debate dawned the Republican Party was in chaos. Trump’s latest insult to women dashed across the headlines as he bragged to Billy Bush about being able to grab women by the crotch because he is a celebrity. As opined by Al Sharpton, this was shocking but not surprising. Everything Trump has said before this has led directly to this.
With almost five-dozen GOP officeholders finally abandoning their degenerate candidate the party is in shambles. Congressmen and Senators in battleground races, who had held onto Trump until now, have finally been forced to cut loose the dirty mouthed sociopath and try to climb the mountain on their own.
Hillary Clinton, who has stayed on the sidelines and let Trump and his surrogates cut their own throats, has also had to face revelations that in another atmosphere might have been highly damaging. In the words of Ruth Marcus, however, sex trumps everything else in the gossip pages and so Hillary’s problems with email hacks that seem to have revealed her dealings with Wall Street and the Bankers as less than okay are being brushed aside. The Democrats have played it cute blaming the emails on Russia which is being accused of the hack, but that’s just political hokum. A number of anti-Hillary sources have released what they seem to think are damning sequences from Hillary’s speeches, speeches for which she received a lot of money, more than any of the GOP speechmakers have managed to squeeze out of their own constituents. For anyone with any understanding of human nature this speaks more to the feelings about what Hillary said, rather than anything Hillary actually said.
A little over an hour before the debates started Donald Trump appeared at a press conference with four women who accused Bill Clinton of having various degrees of sex with them. It must have been many years ago from the look of the women but the question that really has to be raised is, did it happen at all. The answer, of course, has a place, but that place is in court, not at the debates. This was just a sick ploy by the degenerate Trump; a pathetic attempt to offset the tapes on which Trump is heard making offensive comments about physically manhandling women. This attack might have had some significance if Bill Clinton had been running for President but in these circumstances Trump is only doubling down on these pathetic women’s willing victimhood by once again dragging them in front of a drooling public. It was just a degenerate trying to drag the rest of the country down to his level by diverting attention away from his own, unacceptable behavior.
All of Trump’s troubles have come, not from Hillary, not from Bill, but from Trump’s own dirty mouth. Now, not only guilty of mistreating women, he makes the horrible call to try to drag the debates into a slime pit where he is obviously comfortable. Admittedly, to some extent, it worked. I am sure that Trump’s base is positive that he ran away with the debate. To be sure he was more successful in this debate than he has been in any others, especially if you consider that he managed to keep much of it where he wanted, rather than where it was supposed to go, which is to the issues.
It is this kind of disgusting plan of action, obviously planned by Steve Bannon and carried out by Trump that has caused over four-dozen important Republicans to announce that they are dumping Trump. No matter what happens in this election, Trump has disgraced this country in front of the world. He demagogues that he wants to make America great again, but what he has actually done, is drag it down into the pig sty with him.
The DEBATE
It was announced that the Gallup Poll had chosen a number of the people, to be in the small audience, who were still undecided. This is unbelievable. Who, at this point in the process, can still be undecided? Anyone who fits that description, at this point in time, shouldn’t be allowed to vote. Hell, they shouldn’t be allowed out of their house without a keeper.
Trump kept the debate a lot closer than he did in the first one but he was still the buffoon and the bully and Hillary was still the intelligent, informed office seeker. When Trump was asked a question he ignored it and simply attacked Hillary. When she was asked one, she answered it. Sure she went over time on occasion but so did Trump.
When he ignored questions to go on his rants and the moderators tried to get him back on message he accused them of being on Hillary’s side.
Trump’s problem is that he can’t stay on subject. He is a raver, a free associater who talks like a speed freak in the throes of a high. He makes no sense most of the time.
It was as usual, Trump himself, who finally lost what might have been left of any intelligent audience when he declared, in his best bullying style, if elected he would, in the tradition of a long line of African and South American dictators try his best to jail Hillary over the email controversy. This decidedly warmed the hearts of his troglodyte fans. Then he spent the rest of the night looming ominously in back of her whenever she spoke, proving to the few who didn’t already know, that he is nothing but a mindless bully. I say mindless because none of the arguments he brought to the table were cogent or organized in any logical manner, leaving any thoughtful woman, who still considered voting for him, at a loss for a serious alternative. This was due to this behavior a much as anything he has said or did.
And what happened to Mike Pence who got short shrift the only time his name was brought up? For the last three days Pence has been in the process of abandoning Trump because of Trump’s disgusting behavior. After Trump pulled his bluster act at the debate Pence forgot his moral objections, forgot that he still had a wife and daughters, but remembered that he could still be a politician as long as he had no moral center and fawned his way back to congratulate this third world demagogue on his performance.
Trump’s problem is still that he can’t conduct a conversation that depends on a logical progression. He is more than able to rant on almost any subject. He is loud and forceful and brooks no interruption, and in fact neither of the moderators were able to control him. Martha Raddatz made some hopeful but unsuccessful attempts to rein Trump in when he walked away from questions and went on wild rants but Anderson Cooper simply faded into the woodwork, a useless wimp.
So what about Hillary? In the face of the wild attacks by Trump should she fight back and try to answer what were in most cases untruthful accusations? She obviously decided to play it cool and other than pointing out that Trump was mostly lying, she just brushed off the charges. Was this a smart move? Sure. She’s far enough ahead in the polls that she didn’t have to get down in the mud with the pig. She answered every question put forth by the people or the moderators but refused to engage the ranting, wild eyed, red-faced bull in a screaming match. Why? She didn’t have to. She’s far enough ahead and more important, he’s far enough behind, that she doesn’t have to learn to mud wrestle.
The final question is not who won the debates because neither contestant could be called a winner after that mess. Hillary didn’t fight back and so she couldn’t win and Trump acted like the mindless bullying demagogue with no ability to speak reasonably. The obvious conclusion is that neither of the contestants won but more important the nation lost. We, as a nation, have allowed the most important contest in the Democratic process to degenerate into a comedic clown show. We as a nation look ludicrous before the world. How could we allow a degenerate sociopath to get this close to the oval office and how would the rest of the world deal with this monstrous madman other than to point and laugh.