Thanks as always to The Other McCain, Pirate’s Cove and Bacon Time for the Rule Five links, and to our pals over at The Daley Gator for the dual linkbacks! If these blogs aren’t on your daily blogroll, they should be. Also, I’m on Parler now, so click the button to the left to check out a censorship-free social media site.
Now then, a few thoughts on the final Presidential debate:
Both candidates had a few good moments, but in Groper Joe’s case, only a few. The President had the most difficulty dealing with the Kung Flu issue, through no fault of his own, because it’s always easy to say “I would have done X instead of Y” when you have the benefit of hindsight. My recommended response to that issue would have been along these lines:
“It’s always easy to play Monday-morning quarterback, Joe. It’s always easy for you to stand there now, months later, and say ‘oh, I would have done things differently.’ But you weren’t there. You weren’t the man on the spot, dealing not with what we know now but what we knew then, and knowing that your decisions would affect millions of American lives, not just with respect to their health but also to their jobs, their businesses, and their communities. So, sure, go ahead and second-guess, but every word out of your mouth is just hot air, because you weren’t there.”
Points to the President, though, as he did hit Joe on his performance as point man on the H1N1 flu issue, which was a cluster-fuck.
On every other issue, though, the President was clearly and unambiguously on his game, in command of his facts, and dominated the discussion; he had Groper Joe on his back foot pretty much the whole time. Possibly his best moment was when he looked over at Biden and said, “Joe, I ran because of you. I ran because of Barack Obama. Because you did a poor job. If I thought you did a good job, I would have never run.” His next best was on the immigration question: “Who built the cages, Joe? Who built the cages?”
Biden showed a distinct tendency to fall back on what were obviously rehearsed lines, and even stared into the middle distance as he recalled his rehearsed script. And by the sixty-minute mark he was growing visibly tired and a little disoriented. After, I point out, four days of rest and “preparation.”
President Trump, on the other hand, was much more disciplined than he was in the first debate, while maintaining a very high energy level. He deferred to the moderator; he didn’t step too much over her or Biden.
By the end of the debate, Groper Joe was exhausted. The President looked like he could have gone on all night.
The President’s worst foul-up: Not hammering Biden harder on Hunter’s laptop. If a fourth of the allegations coming out of that issue are true, it’s absolutely disqualifying.
Groper Joe’s worst foul-up: Checking his watch, as George H. Bush did in the 1992 debate. That was a bad sign; he knew he was losing and wanted to know when the whole thing would be over.
Conclusion: The President won this one, easily.
