Despite an anxiety condition, I decided to put the debate on.
That was the wrong move. I was up all night with palpitations.
I expressed the thought that Trump was going to turn it into a circus to a friend, but I never thought it would get as out of hand as it did.
Ever hear of the Gish Gallop?
That’s what Trump did for the 50 minutes of the debate that I could stand. He launched fusillades of filibustering untruths and they came so fast and so furious that it would take Joe Biden days to refute all of it.
Chirs Wallace lost control of the debate completely. Each candidate could have two minutes to respond to an issue he brought up. But Donald Trump steamrolled right over that rule. He wouldn’t give anyone, including Wallace, a chance to speak.
I don’t know what’s worse; a terrible moderator or a terrible debater. But both of those were on display last night.
Regarding Joe; he was a little nervous at the start, offering a shaky answer as to why Coney-Barrett was the wrong choice for the Court. He could have elucidated the hypocrisy of the Republicans for creating the rule that no president should seat a nominee in an election year. Instead, he offered two reasons: Obamacare and Roe. OK.
And that was the end of the sanity.
It devolved rather quickly into a crosstalking, grating miasma. And Wallace let it all happen. Biden couldn’t get a word in edgewise; at one point he asked the president to shut up because of his incessant babbling.
I hear there were other moments but I called time of death of the debate at 9:50pm. Forty more minutes of that shit was a bridge too far for me.
I imagine there will be calls for moderators to mute microphones to obviate whatever it was that happened last night. I also think Joe Biden has standing to decline debating Trump again. There’s clearly nothing we can learn when these two men get in a room together. Frankly, I am surprised Joe didn’t swear, leave the stage or pop Trump for denigrating the lives of his boys.
Trumpers will be thrilled at the outcome of the debate; to them, he must have “dominated” since he threw everything but the kitchen sink. The more reasonable among us will disagree because he showed a serious lack of self control unbound by rules and custom. It’s alright for a debate to get a little contentious, that’s expected. But one was reminded here of the proverbial pigeon who walks around shitting on the chessboard claiming victory. We’re reminded of what a piss poor president he truly is; a man not confident at all to state his positions calmly. A man with no command of facts or depth. Insults instead of insight.
In 2016, we deserved Donald Trump for one reason or another. This is 21st century America and it turns out that it’s a suckier place to live than one might have thought. But I would like to think some of us have learned a little over the course of these godforsaken years since then.
One thing is clear: the fact that this election is going to be anything less than a runaway for Joe Biden is cause for lots of fucking worry.