Second "presidential" debate notes

I wanted to roll-in the latest Wikileaks with yesterday’s “presidential” debate, but there is so much damaging information about the “real” Hillary Clinton that it can wait another day. Suffice it to say that the Clinton News Network continues to expose its extreme-partisan support of Clinton by making the story an inconsequential footnote, still railing about the “family feud” in the Republican Party over the media-created “controversy” about Donald Trump’s views of women he finds "attractive."

Now, I did not watch the second presidential debate, but listened to it on the radio. Naturally this provides a different perspective on the proceedings, allowing you to focus on what is being said, rather than just watching body language. I won’t get into the 15-minutes devoted to the “controversy” that says more about Trump’s ego and the influence of fame and money than his “attitude” towards women—or the licentiousness and salaciousness of the media, or at least CNN.  But unlike the first debate when gender politics was inserted at the very end, allowing Clinton—who claims that she wants to make the campaign about “issues” rather “personalities,” and naturally is lying about that too—an opportunity to rail ponderously about Trump’s use of descriptive words toward people who have disparaged him in the past, this time the gender politics were moved to the front and the debate moved on to more pertinent topics.

 

The first thing one notices when listening—as opposed to watching—the proceedings, it was clear that Trump was attempting to be more “rational” in tone, although much of what he said still promoted the weaknesses of his base support and his own narrow view of the world, of which he alone apparently occupies. On the other hand, once more Clinton was off-putting with her patronizing, condescending tone—which only made her misstatements, misrepresentations and outright lies just that more offensive to hear. Neither candidate had much to say beyond their usual propaganda lines. Clinton claimed to offer “policies,” but just as sarcasm isn’t an argument, ideology isn’t policy, it is just a “framework”—and as the recent email leaks prove, what Clinton says in public rarely coincides with what she says in private—and that includes her “ideology.” 

Clinton once more touted her “experience” and has an “insider’s” knowledge of the White House. Well, she was First Lady, or co-president, or whatever she wishes to think of herself as.  Her husband was always better at the “common touch” with “common” people, while Hillary was behind the scenes—doing what? While Bill was engaged in his sexual exploits, Hillary was orchestrating Travelgate, Filegate and Chinagate. Why do you think she was the front person speaking to the media—or lying to the media—about her and the president’s involvement in them? 

In the current email server scandal, Trump warned that if elected president, he would order his attorney general to appoint a special prosecutor with the purpose of putting Clinton in the “office” she deserved to be in—a prison cell. Following the debate, an NPR “fact checker” analyzing the accusation that 30,000 emails were illegally wiped clean from her server, lamely bought into the story that the emails were “supposed” to be deleted before a Congressional committee had ordered that the server be turned over, but someone “did not get the message” and belatedly deleted them after the subpoena. Clinton was “exonerated” because she claimed she thought the emails were deleted before the subpoena. But if this sounds like an invented story, it probably is; after all, how many “coincidences” has there to be until they start adding-up to something, like the truth? Of course Clinton ordered the deletion of emails harmful to her and her chances of being elected president. Not everyone is as stupid as Clinton and her media supporters think they are.

The moderators again showed their partisanship in “subtle” ways, such as repeatedly interrupting Trump in the middle of his answers, allegedly because they were “off question.” Yet they allowed Clinton all the rope she wanted, especially on the last question when the candidates were asked to say something “nice” about the other candidate; Clinton only exposed her self-involved character by briefly mentioning something about Trump’s children before going off on a two minute harangue that was essentially a closing speech as why to elect her. Why didn’t the moderators stop her when it became clear she was “cheating”? 

For his part, Trump “praised” Clinton as a “fighter” who will not “quit.” We saw that after the 2008 Democratic primaries, remember? Oh, you don’t, huh? I’ll refresh your memory. First came the psychological meltdown of your typical megalomaniac in defeat, suggesting that it wasn’t “over” because, as you may or may not recall, Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated around this time. What the hell was she trying to “imply” there? That Barack Obama might be assassinated and she would become the nominee? How the hell else can that statement be “interpreted”? And she has the gall to talk about Trump’s character traits?  In an attempt to escape explaining what she meant by this, Clinton disappeared from view until the Democratic Convention. 

But that did not mean her fanatical supporters were not enlisted to carry on the “fight.” They were, and they included feminists like Bonnie Erbe, who wrote an op-ed (that was published in the Seattle Times) which “urged” Obama to vacate his victory and move aside for Hillary, because “white people won’t  vote for you.” Then the DNC disregarded its own injunction against the states of Michigan and Florida for moving up their primaries without party approval, caving-in to Clinton’s demand that those states’ primary results be counted after all. Why? Because Clinton had disregarded the DNC’s rules and kept her name on the ballot of those states, and her camp believed that all those states’ delegates should go to her count, which the DNC at least declined to do for her. But you did hear from at least one of her fanatics when things didn’t exactly go Clinton’s way: Harriet Christian, who stalked away from the conference dividing-up the delegates shrieking about Obama as the “inadequate black male.”

None of this should be a surprise, and the WikiLeaks does reveal that the Clinton camp did intend on using gender politics as a weapon in this election, as well as “testing” some disparaging campaign verbiage with Obama as a “stand-in.”