(August 2, 2016 at 11:57 am)Esquilax Wrote:(August 2, 2016 at 10:36 am)Crossless1 Wrote: I imagine many of Trump's aides must dread his debating Clinton. As it is, they have full time jobs going on the news shows to 'clarify and explain' what their candidate "really" meant every time something stupid, insulting, obnoxious, shocking, or ignorant oozes out of his mouth or his fucking Twitter account. And that is virtually every news cycle these days.
But Trump sharing a stage with a candidate too intelligent to take the bait, who actually understands policy and process, and who has been facing down the likes of him now for decades? He is completely ill-equipped to debate Clinton, unless by 'debate' we mean nothing more than a name-calling and shit-slinging fest. Somewhere in the dim recesses of his reptilian brain, he must understand that he is utterly overmatched, at least so long as the moderator doesn't let him turn it into a free-for-all, and that Clinton will eat him alive.
I can't wait to see the next Republican post-mortem analysis after they lose a third consecutive general election. Spoiler alert: "We need to stop pandering to bigots, morons, and crazy people -- i.e., our base."
I sometimes wonder just how far Trump would have gotten if all the other GOP hopefuls hadn't been willing to sink to his level during their debates and appearances. If we didn't have them making dick jokes and giving each other pithy nicknames. If, to a man, they'd all kept the level of discourse high- a feat, I'm aware, for some of these theocrat thugs- and stuck to the issues, so that you had just one squawking orange ballbag up on stage instead of, like, fifteen.
Trump got away with running his campaign like he has because all those other idiots gave him cover: he may have been bad, but the problem was that he wasn't substantially different from the other bickering toddlers up for a vote in the primaries. Their willingness to employ the same childish "demonize the enemy," rhetoric against themselves that they do against the democrats played a big part in making a Trump presidency a palatable option, and now here we are.
And it's just him, and Hillary. He's the lone squawking, indolent voice on stage, his lack of ideas standing in stark contrast to an actual politician. Without the cover of the rest of the slavering ideologues... people won't have any choice but to see the real him in the light of the real world, and not the goddamn toddler carnival that the GOP has turned into this election cycle.
Unfortunately, the GOP has been sliding into 'toddler carnival land' my entire voting life. This election is a difference in degree only. I remember all too well how obnoxious and toxic the '88 election (the first I was old enough to vote in) seemed at the time. Surely, I told myself, this represents the nadir of political discourse, and things must get better from this point on.
Oh, naivety, thy name was Crossless1!
Back then, of course, it was all about pandering to the conservative Christians. Now, with the rise of the disaffected Tea Party types, there is actually a chance (a slim chance, to be sure) that the conservative Christians might prove to be the adult Republicans in the room, should enough of them simply stay home on election day rather than cast a vote for an oafish demagogue who is so clearly not one of them. We'll see. The usual Baptist and Evangelical loons in power have given Trump their stamp of approval. I hope the sheep have more sense.
What the hell! I can hope, and I'm open to surprises.
