On Tuesday, the United States will be six weeks away from electing its next President of the United States. With this in mind, the Commission on Presidential Debates (yes, there’s actually such an organization) will be conducting four debates over the next 30 days or so. One of those debates will take place between the two men who are hoping that the person who chose them as their running mate dies a quick and painless death so that they are saved from a job that Texas’ John Nance “Cactus Jack” Gardner, one of the Vice President’s under Franklin Delano Roosevelt, called “not worth a bucket of warm piss.” The other three, unfortunately, will be contested between the Democratic nominee for President, former Senator and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and the Republican nominee for President, the Orangutan Mutant that is called Donald Trump.
Tuesday night in Hempstead, NY, NBC news anchor Lester Holt will be in charge of a 90-minute, no interruptions debate between Clinton and the Tangerine Nightmare, featuring their replies to the subjects that he has chosen. Those subjects for the debate have been gaudily titled (and completely non-descriptive) “America’s Direction,” “Achieve Prosperity” and “Securing America” (this is unless the aliens from Independence Day land on the major cities of the world – then Holt might come up with some other questions under the equally gaudy title “Aliens in America: What to Do?”) and two 15-minute segments will be devoted to each topic. Both candidates will be required to respond to Holt’s inquiries and answer in a serious, straightforward manner…and if you believe that, you haven’t seen what’s been going on in the political arena for the last 18 months.
From the time the first candidate announced his intentions of running for President (can you guess who it was? Ted Cruz was the first major candidate to announce his intentions for the Presidency in March 2015), the 2016 Presidential campaign has been a shit show of epic proportions. The sheer size of the Republican cadre of candidates – eventually it would reach 17 nominees – ensured that, whoever emerged from the rubble, that person wouldn’t even have a plurality of support FROM THEIR OWN PARTY. Then there were the Democrats, who basically wanted to anoint a candidate instead of nominate them by running her (Clinton) against a few wannabes and never-weres.
As the poet Robert Burns wrote, however:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men,
Gang aft agley,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,
For promis’d joy!
(The best laid schemes of Mice and Men oft go awry,
And leave us nothing but grief and pain, For promised joy!)
Once the GOP clown car started reaching its capacity, along came pseudo-businessman Cheeto Jesus, who immediately shit in the punchbowl, smacked the hostess of the party on the ass and double dipped his chips in the guacamole. From the time he started his campaign – where he announced that Mexicans were “rapists, drug dealers…and some, I assume, are good people” – this misogynous, racist, xenophobic jerkoff brought the vilest excrement from the bowels of his twisted soul. A wall to block Mexicans that stretches across the entire Southern U. S. border…banning Muslims from entering the U. S., then dropping that to “just having a registry” for them…insulting veterans by saying that Senator John McCain wasn’t a war hero because “I like for my war heroes to not be captured”…saying that the usage of torture such as waterboarding was “mild” and we would have to do worse (what? Shove bamboo under fingernails? Flail the skin off the genitals?), including going after the families and children of “suspected” terrorists and enemy combatants. And THIS is just within the first few months of the announcement of his nomination…he’s since gone on to other lulus that defy description (a “test” of an immigrant’s knowledge and devotion to the country? That’s already done, you asshole…it’s called a citizenship test).
Under normal circumstance, this lunatic would have been launched to the curb. But you know what happened? 14 million lunatics who hold the similar racist, misogynist and xenophobic ideas finally felt like they could come out of the closet and join Herr Drumpf as he looked to start the First American Reich (such newspapers and websites as Stormfront, The Daily Stormer and American Renaissance – all white nationalist or Nazi groups that represent the bottom of the bucket of humanity – all have announced their support). That 14 million people – a sizeable chunk of the Republican base – could think that such ideas are what the United States were built on is simply stunning in its ludicrousness. But, it worked for Mr. Oompah Loompah and he’s the nominee.
On the other side, Clinton was supposed to simply have to go through the motions and the Democratic nomination would be handed to her as a reward for her embrace of President Barack Obama after he defeated her in 2008. But a funny thing happened on the way to the coronation: people started to look at other options.
Whether because of her long history in the nation’s consciousness (a Clinton has been a part of the federal government or running for federal office pretty much since 1992 – almost 25 years now) or because of her duplicitous nature (Clinton is always going to give just enough information but not give you a full description unless forced), Democrats looked to Independent Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Sanders, a self-proclaimed “democratic socialist,” caught the eye of many who, for the first times in their lives, were looking to elect someone other than a Bush or Clinton (remember, Jeb! Bush was running on the GOP side) to the Presidency (yes, I know Obama isn’t one or the other, but Clinton served in his Cabinet for the first term…we’ll count that).
Sanders would prove to be a proverbial thorn in the side of Clinton as he pushed for a progressive agenda that, instead of taking years to create, he wanted done YESTERDAY. In the end, Clinton would be able to parry away the assault of Sanders to earn the Democratic nomination and be ready for the challenges that the run for the White House present.
Thus, we come to a crossroads with two candidates who couldn’t be more despised by people both inside and outside their parties. These will be the two people who are the choices for the 45th President of the United States (sorry, Gary Johnson and Jill Stein). Thus, how will the resulting debate between the two work out?
Considering what occurred in the GOP debates, Drumpf is not a debater at all. In fact, his debate style could be condensed into a bullying, narcissistic cacophony of horseshit that flows from an entrance point on his face that doesn’t let up. It isn’t factual and it certainly isn’t worried about having to answer for being a lying sack of scum. In fact, the bar is so low for Drumpf that basically all he has to do is show up and not drool on himself to be able to allow his cabal – the “basket of deplorables” – to claim he won.
Clinton, on the other hand, has to stand there and take whatever mockery that comes out of the Orangutan Mutant’s mouth and not reply. She has to stand there and present her extensive knowledge of virtually every aspect of running the country and, when Holt is finishing getting retouches on his makeup and eating a doughnut, try to demonstrate to him and the country that her opponent is basically a walking Lie Machine. Clinton could probably walk on water to open the debate, then be criticized because she doesn’t know how to swim.
Then again, we could actually have a debate between the two candidates. In that case, Drumpf has already lost – there is no earthly way that he can handle the high level discussion necessary to comprehend the issues presented – and Clinton will blast a hole in his candidacy the size of Australia. Then Commandant Drumpf will not show up for the other two debates (October 9 and 19, if you’re wondering) because he’s “being mistreated” by the press.
To call what will occur on Tuesday night a “debate” is a misnomer. It is better to call it what it will actually be – a debacle – because there will be nothing of substance answered, neither candidate will be called on their obvious lies or even the mildest “stretches of truth” and Holt will kiss both candidates’ asses rather than be a journalist and pose tough questions and follow-up questions (look at the bullshit titles for the segments and tell me that NBC wasn’t focus-grouping those for a couple months now). If we get the Drumpf of the GOP debates, he loses. If he as stated previously can keep from dribbling saliva down one of his Chinese-made neckties, then he’s “presidential.” There’s not a damn thing Clinton can do to make herself more “likeable” because 30 years of public exposure has already cemented the public’s opinion of you.
And that’s the sad thing. A debate is what happens when you want to learn the stances of two (or more) people who are running for office, what they will do once elected. Instead, the Presidential debates have become the latest sideshow of the swirling vortex of sewage that was once known as our political system.