The “presidential” debate

The winner gets an F.

The “presidential” debate was curious at best. First, calling it “presidential” is a stretch. I, for one, could not sit through 90 minutes of listening to either candidate so I watched a baseball game. I did manage to listen to clips from the debate later.  It was apparent that Trump’s strategy was to say cool and let Biden slobber all over himself. The question is why was anyone surprised of Biden’s incoherence? He has been stumbling, mumbling and bumbling for more than a year now. Why did the Biden camp agree to have the debate before the democrat convention? They knew he would be bad. The pundits knew it would be bad so they could all call for him stepping aside. As a matter of fact, was anyone surprised that he would be awful? So now the democrat operatives can publicly moan and groan and hope for a new nominee at the convention. Who? The most mentioned are Gavin Newsom, Gretchen Witmer and J. B. Pritzker who would all be worse than Biden. Imagine the harm that a young articulate leftist socialist democrat in the White House could do enacting their climate, DEI, border openness, illegal migrant citizenship anti-Israel agenda. What about Kamala Harris? Not nominating Harris would alienate black democrats and create even more turmoil in the party. But Harris is likely unelectable not because of race but because she has been a simply awful vice president – which is saying a lot. Isn’t it ironic that the only people now wanting Harris to be president are some republicans? Rick Scott and Mike Lee are calling for evoking the 25^thAmendment which would make Harris president. Perhaps they feel that if Harris were president now, then she would get the nomination and be beatable. Is there a democrat who would not be a disaster? Josh Shapiro of Pennsylvania comes to mind.

What I find interesting is that there is very little analysis of Trump’s performance. Of course the New York Times would characterize it as “relentless attacks and falsehoods”. But wasn’t that how most others characterized Biden’s? But even Trump’s sympathizers conceded that he was light on substance and did not come armed with data and facts. Some pointed that he did not aggressively attack Biden’s climate policy and the economy but focused mainly on the border. It’s the economy stupid! Both Trump and Biden were given to hyperbole with Trump calling the border the most dangerous place in the world and saying that everyone wanted abortion returned to the states. However, even Trump’s critics who gave him an F admitted that Biden did even worse (F-?). I was in Washington and a dear friend said that she would vote for Sammy (her Labrador retriever) before she would vote for Trump. I said that I would vote for Sammy too but unfortunately Sammy was not running for president.