The Final Debate: A Lot of Ink Left in the Well . . .

I won't bore you all TOO much with my thoughts on the debate, both what was said and what coulda/shoulda been said. You saw the debate and don't need some inconsequential blogger to tell you about it . . . but of course, I am going to . . . 

OK, who won? 

In ALMOST every part of the debate, Trump dominated. Biden got rattled, confused, and dumped a big ol' word salad on the stage that won't convince anybody to vote for him. 

The moderator, although better than Chris Wallace, still interjected herself into the discussion too much; she repeatedly stepped on President Trump's line of argument, in particular on his asking Biden questions, e.g., about the "laptop" from hell, who actually built the immigrant "cages," etc. In addition, of course, the topics came out of left field--literally--and meant to play to Biden's "strengths," as seen by the progressive media-industrial complex. She asked no questions, for example, on the Supreme Court, on additional states entering the Union, on foreign policy, on veterans, on the Second Amendment, on law-and-order, or on the amazing rebuilding of our military. No. It was the usual tired prog agenda of race, "climate change," and the poor dear illegal undocumented aliens, with some legitimate issues such as health care. 

Despite having the format and questions rigged against him, Trump managed to flip the debate discussion onto Biden's crooked dealings, and his disastrous energy policy and Covid recommendations. Poor ol' befuddled Joe even took a page from Bush, pater, and anxiously looked at his watch: "When will this end? I am running out of gas." Trump skillfully introduced the topic of Biden's sleaze as documented by his drug-addled son's laptop, and poor old Joe had no response, except "Russia! Russia!" Joe didn't even realize that his character and honesty had been savaged in front of millions of viewers, and resorted to his obviously previously scripted closing address on, wait for it, CHARACTER and HONESTY. The old buzzard had just been painted accurately as a monumental crook, and he ends up arguing that this is an election about character and honesty. Yep. Agreed. And Joe is on the losing side of that . . . .

Trump's greatest victory came by forcing the "big guy" both to disavow and reaffirm some of the most radical proposals in "his" agenda. He flipped and he flopped, right there on stage, Trump nailed him on the fracking question--Joe blatantly lied--and got Joe to make the devastating confession that he, in essence, would eliminate the American oil and gas industry. Wonder how that went over in Pennsylvania, Texas, Oklahoma, etc.? Trump also showed the Paris Climate Accord to be a pro-Chinese fraud, one which Joe kept vowing to return us to despite its horrid effects on our coal industry. 

Trump also handled the potentially loaded race topic well. He nailed Joe as the incarceration chief who locked up tens-of-thousands of mostly black men for non-violent crimes and called them "predators," which Biden dishonestly denied doing.  Trump laid out a pretty impressive record of his work on behalf of the black community. Biden had nothing except empty words; too bad Trump didn't hit him on Biden's past associations with avowed racists.

To be fair, Joe did OK on healthcare by lying quite effectively about his "Biden Care" plan. He couldn't, however, explain his previous defense of Obama Care, and why it now needs replacing by Biden Care.  Trump did not have great answers on this topic, and needs to sharpen those up. Joe was shown to have no plan on Covid except some blather about locking things up again. He also lied, yet again, about his initial opposition to Trump's shutting down travel from China.

It was Trump's night. 

Impact on the election? I don't know. So many people already have voted that the potential audience of converts is shrinking rapidly. That said, anybody truly undecided, or only weakly for one or the other candidate, might have been swayed to join the Trump Train.

Off to walk the dogs.