Steve Kates No Sex, Please, She’s Skittish
The second presidential debate was a Trump victory, no doubt about it, even though the timely leaking of his “locker room tape” should have given his opponent a clear advantage. Hillary’s problem is that she can’t go there, not with that satyr of a husband in the wings
And, of course, there are the dead citizens and non-dead non-citizens who will also be lining up to vote her in, along with those who vote early and often. Not to mention those who will vote for her because she is a woman irrespective of any other considerations whatsoever.
Formidable, almost impossible odds facing Donald Trump, in other words. Even after a flawless presentation against his Obama-clone opponent, in which he took Hillary apart despite each and every effort by the laughably “impartial” moderators, the bad news is that Donald Trump remains no better than 50-50 to win. But that is also the good news. He has not yet lost and might yet emerge victorious.
And why that is so is because he represents the last chance for the United States to save itself, and approximately 51% of the voting American public know it.
The supposed killer issue was a 2005 tape made of Trump discussing in crude terms his approach to women. And possibly in anyone else’s hands, this would have been the death blow it may still turn out to be. But for Hillary Clinton, married to a genuine sexual predator, this is an issue that can only be used carefully, as the blowback is so enormous. Whatever Trump has done is as nothing in comparison with what Bill Clinton has done, who was protected by Hillary in quieting the many and various “bimbo eruptions” (her term). I regret to have to deal with this, but since you’d have to have been born before 1980 to have an active memory of any of it. I will deal with only one, the story of Paula Jones, and I will include it only at the end.
I find all this repulsive, and the Paula Jones story is the least disturbing among the stories that surfaced at the time, and it is plenty disturbing since it was only one instance of what must have been nuch more common at the time. What is more repulsive is listening to others go on about Trump, as if Clinton were not orders of magnitude worse. But what is actually significant is that bringing that tape to light has enraged Donald Trump so that we ended up with the single most devastating, one-sided debate in American political history. With Bill’s past once again in everyone’s minds, Hillary could not truly exploit the tape to the full extent she might. Trump’s was a cold anger, but it was devastating.
Donald Trump had two tasks before him. The first was to demonstrate Hillary’s immense hypocrisy in even bringing the tape into the conversation. Trump said that his misdeeds were words, but Bill Clinton’s involved deeds. Whatever Hillary might say about Trump it applies with immensely more force to her husband.
The second task was to insist that all of the above was a distraction from the real issues a presidential election should be about. He then forced Hillary to deal with policy issues — and on each of these the substance of the argument was entirely with Trump. There was not an issue that at the end of the debate one could say Trump had not shown a better understanding of the complexities, and that the policies he intended to put in place were not superior. This, in particular, I found quite remarkable. It is Trump speaking.
“These are radical Islamic terrorists and she won’t even mention the word, and nor will President Obama. He won’t use the term ‘radical Islamic terrorism’. Now, to solve a problem, you have to be able to state what the problem is or at least say the name. She won’t say the name and President Obama won’t say the name. But the name is there. It’s radical Islamic terror.”
And just as Trump had said, she would not use those words. But irrespective of the words one chooses, there was no denying, as Trump repeatedly pointed out, that Hillary was deeply complicit in creating the problem we now face in ISIS, and he made that point very well. In discussing the Middle East, and the “stupidity” of US military strategy, what may have been the most remarkable part of the debate came when Trump disagreed point-blank with his running mate, Mike Pence, over the use of the American military in Syria. Pence thought America should. Trump’s reply: “He and I haven’t spoken and we don’t agree.” Not only did he show decisive leadership, it was an answer that ought to quieten at least some of those who worry about Trump leading the US into war. It was also the right answer politically, since the controversy that has occurred since has been over the disagreement with Pence, not whether Trump had the better answer.
What must, of course, be included is this, which is for the ages:
Hillary: You know, it’s just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in charge of the law in our country.
Trump: Because you’d be in jail.
What he said is that he’d appoint a special prosecutor to look into the many scandals that have surrounded her time in politics, not least the email server she illegally used during her time as Secretary of State. There is much more that could be said, but at the end, what matters is that Trump is back.
The obstacles are formidable, but at least it is possible. And there is still the third debate to come.
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