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Well worth reading, however for those who are in a rush, here are some final thoughts.
Cathleen Decker: "So he had a big hole to climb out of, and he did not do it. He was snappish throughout, repeatedly interrupting Clinton and badgering the moderators. He repeated falsehoods -- that neighbors of the San Bernardino terrorists saw bombs in their apartment and said nothing, that he had never tweeted about a sex tape involving last week’s Trump target, a former Miss Universe. Trump’s target audience tonight -- the one that counted -- was small, composed of undecided women voters. ... It seems unlikely that he will benefit in any meaningful way from tonight’s debate, and it’s very possible she will benefit."
David Lauter: "Nothing that happened over the debate’s 90 minutes seems likely to wipe away the multiple problems that have enveloped Trump’s campaign since these two last met on a debate stage; it may have made them worse."
Doyle McManus: "Both candidates appeared to be talking mostly to their existing bases of supporters -- Trump with his now-familiar talking points (many of them factually incorrect), Clinton by mentioning every interest in the Democratic coalition (climate change, gun control, LGBT rights). Bottom line: This wasn’t a game-changer -- which means it was a victory for Clinton. She’s ahead; she doesn’t need the game to change. Trump’s the candidate who needed to alter the direction of the race, and nothing he said or did suggests that he achieved that goal."
One of the more insidious chunks of damage Trump's campaign has done came into clear resolution over the last day: As Republican leaders make excuses for Trump's conduct, they are now forced to try to claim that grabbing a woman by her genitals is not sexual assault. I hope beyond hope that they never are faced with the situation where a daughter or niece is groped as a frat house prank and the magistrate, prosecutor, judge or juror is someone who is being fed the Trump campaign's horrendously corrupt rhetoric seeking to trivialize the offense of criminal sexual assault.
We've also seen the resurgence of more generalized excuses for misogyny, implying that women should either speak with deference to men or be labeled shrill, screeching, etc. We've seen the resurgence of attempts to attack Clinton on her appearance rather than the issues, with comments about her face and her teeth. Even with an almost-70 year old woman, someone who spent half of her life accomplishing great things for the nation, you still have reactionaries trying to besmirch her because she's not a pretty, thin and alluring.
The resurgence of the barbarian is one of the more insidious chunks of damage Trump's campaign has done. How many children are watching their elders engage in this corrupt behavior and learning from it how they are going to behave in the future. I suspect the nation will more trouble in the decades to come from children learning how to act from Trump and his supporters than we can even imagine now.
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Originally Posted by chessgeek
After all, Trump perved on his own daughter Ivanka at least once in the past, saying it was OK to call her a "nice piece of a__!! Bill Clinton has never done that regarding his daughter Chelsea.
Heck: Trump respects Bill Clinton's daughter more than his own.
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Originally Posted by chessgeek
Trump has most of his base, but to get the undecideds to consider him, he had to be seriously contrite about the Friday videotape and say what he did was a disservice to women.
What's worse though is the outright lying Mike Pence engaged in yesterday, trying to pass Trump's non-apology off as "contrition". Pence is a devout Christian, so he cannot claim ignorance about what the word "contrition" means. He lied - blatantly and with malice aforethought. So it is not just the damage Trump has done to the nation, but the damage he's done to the soul of those who have had to make excuses for him.
Paul Ryan, another devout Christian who knows what the word "contrition" means, made a different decision. I don't agree with a single policy perspective Paul Ryan holds to, but at least I can respect him as a man of principle, today.
In the parlance of this election: Mike Pence has tagged himself as one of those deplorables - unredeemably beholden to the lies he's promulgated to support corrupt perspectives, while Paul Ryan has acknowledged the cancer that has grown to enormous proportion within his own party, and disavows it. He may not realize that his own perspectives to some extent have fostered the tumor, but at least he recognizes the tumor once it has grown.
How do you even know that? Polls are so vain and elusive.
In precisely the same way elections are, eh?
It does seem clear that the right-wing echo chamber is getting ready to make all manner of excuses for their failure at the polls. Like a spoiled child the Trump campaign will invariably go through a period of denial and then proceed directly to anger. And we're talking about people who have been proud of their penchant for aggression, intimidation and violence. There is so much that is wholly unique about this election, and I am therefore not going to be surprised if this is the first election in memory that is followed-up by substantial antisocial violence, looting, etc., conducted by a contingent of the most egoistic of supporters that Trump's dangerous and irresponsible rhetoric has, and perhaps will further, whip up into deliberately-irrational fervor.
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Originally Posted by don1945
Doom and gloom is a trademark of Trump and his back up singers. EVERYTHING is going to Hell in a handbasket.
It's worse than that. They're very explicitly disingenuous because in the next breath Trump says that a Clinton administration will be four more years of the same. So very clearly the campaign is simply about throwing words up in the air hoping something will support the corrupt direction they prefer. In interviews, like in no previous election in my lifetime, these surrogates are driving interviewers to leave dead air - dead air, an anathema in broadcasting - because the surrogates are saying such outlandishly corrupt falsehoods, on the order of "up is down". How do you interview someone to get them to provide insight into what their campaign promises to America when the campaign's surrogates are instructed to doggedly refuse to conduct themselves with any semblance of integrity?
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Originally Posted by Redraven
"Trump is no better and he continues his sniffles." What IS it with the sniffles? WHY do so many make a big deal out of that?
It's not fair to leave you in the dark, I suppose, so please rest assured that it's an in-joke. It is a bit of mirroring - holding up a mirror to Trump supporters showing them the ridiculousness of the tactics they've used in this campaign, most notably the response to Clinton's remarkably short bout with pneumonia.
We think that Clinton's answer to the final question during the debate was another in-joke - another bit of mirroring - holding up a mirror showing what misogynists like Trump regularly do, reducing an accomplished woman's life down to her spouse and children. To be honest, it was so subtle, and my receptiveness has been so badly dulled by the blunt oafishness of the rhetoric of the Trump campaign that, assuming that was an in-joke, it blew right past me.
And who is being polled by who and who is reporting it? exactly
The same exact apparatus that said that Trump was in the lead and winning the election in early September. I was surprised and dismayed by their polling back then, but I abide by intellectual integrity and granted the reality that, at that time, Trump would likely have garnered a majority of the popular vote.
Now you are faced with the challenge to your intellectual integrity. How will you respond?
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Originally Posted by breakingbad
You're absolutely blind. She murdered people! That is okay to you?
I'm more concerned about your lying than about what part of the Benghazi tragedy that she is responsible for. The question I have is whether you realize that she didn't murder anyone, and you're just saying so because you don't care about the truth; that you were grievously duped into thinking that she actually did commit murder; or perhaps most amazing of all, that you don't know what the word "murder" means.
This is really what things are coming down to: Intellectual integrity. Clinton's supporters have acknowledged and granted the truth of mistakes she's made and unfortunate circumstances that will always be found on the "Con" side of any balance sheet for any public servant with thirty years of public service behind her. It doesn't seem that Trump supporters are able to shake free from the effects of the false equivalency-infested echo chamber that has corrupted their understanding of the reality of the matters they talk about, in order to be able to acknowledge and grant the truth of Trump's corruption and Clinton's comparative lack thereof.
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Originally Posted by McGowdog
The fact that folks even have to argue the issue means that Trump won.
I suppose that was the core of my logic as well. Before the debate I told my niece, who was watching with me, that this may be the end of the campaign. That was the expectation I placed on Clinton. She didn't achieve that. The reflexive expectation that I place on Trump was that he wouldn't be knocked out entirely. He achieved that. Based on these ridiculously non-congruent expectations for each candidate, Trump won the debate. It's a bit like saying that McDonald's made a better hamburger yesterday than Bobby's Burger Joint, even though Bobby's burger was far juicier, tastier and better presented.
And to what effect? This morning Paul Ryan directed other Republican Congress folks that they can do what they want to disassociate themselves from Trump in order to save their electoral chances.
Both those who were saying that the debate is about who throws the best zingers and those who were saying that the debate is about who answers questions the best are wrong. These debates are about convincing undecideds - period - full stop. To the extent Paul Ryan could be considered an undecided (which is being generous to Trump supporters), nothing belies my original impression that Trump won the debate more than Ryan's dissing of Trump on Monday.
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Originally Posted by pbmaise
Trump said his supporters won't vote for these GOP backstabbers they will lose their elections.
I think he's wrong - I think his supporters, while clearly afflicted by his rhetoric in some really terrible ways, are still smarter than he is, and won't want to just hand the opposition the White House and both houses of Congress.
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Originally Posted by Financialguy
If anyone claims their mind was changed, they're lying, especially those posing as independents who are suddenly voting for the woman who defended the rapist of a 12 year old and laughed about it.
Your abject ignorance of the Sixth Amendment to the US Constitution is duly noted. Beyond that, I want you to stop lying about what she laughed about. There is no place for such blatant lying at this point.
Johnson might not be perfect and he is certainly not as knowledgeable as Hillary, but I don't think he is nearly as bad a person as I think the the leading candidates are. (Of course, I could be wrong about that, but we all know that Gary Johnson won't be elected.)
Johnson is a non-starter. Even Bill Weld has tacitly acknowledged that.
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Originally Posted by AnywhereElse
CNN? CNN is owned by Time Warner.
Going back to the matter of intellectual integrity... Given that Chris Wallace works for Fox, owned by Rupert Murdoch, will you admit - right now - that the third debate will be horribly biased in Trump's favor, even if he loses it badly?
His "sniffing" was due to silly Hillary who made him very upset due to all her lies and this awful biased moderator Raddatz starting right off with this idiotic video, insisting on it for 30 minutes, what a crap.
That really got him going. But he recovered.
Trump is a complete anti-alcoholic, it is said that he never drank alcohol and is absolutely against drugs,
since his older brother died of an alcohol overdose.
People just blabber so much nonsense, especially during the debate, I was reading what people posted watching the debate, just pathetic, most probably it was them being close to a liquor stupor.
And, yet, his sniffing was obvious from the very beginning, when he first opened his mouth. He must have walked onto the debate floor very upset, eh?
The media forgets to tell the public it was McCain who came out first with the attack against Trump supporters.. McCain said about Americans.. Trump is bringing out all of the crazies.
Trump supporters were of course never defended against that attack from McCain.
Oh, gee.... not even by trump himself. Clear evidence that trump isn't at all concerned about anyone else, unless he can use it to his own advantage.
Clear evidence that trump isn't at all concerned about anyone else, unless he can use it to his own advantage.
This is a critical take-away from this election. Sanders' supporters went on and on and on with their complaints about super delegates, but even though it wouldn't have made a difference on the Republican side (because of how ridiculously stupid Republican voters were this year) we see now in clear resolution how super delegates could help reduce the possibility of worst-case scenarios, such as what the Republicans are experiencing now.
"Employment in the United States has increased steadily over the last seven years, one of the longest periods of economic growth in American history.There are about 10 million more working Americans today than when President Obama took office."
I rate the NYT fact checkers completely full of ****!
Look at the whole labor force, not just manufacturing. Manufacturing employment is not ALL employment. Here is a lot of details about the different sectors and how the recession affected them.
Non-skilled manufacturing jobs are simply not coming back the the US, because the workforce costs too much here compared to other countries. There is no way that cutting corporate tax rates is going to magically cause manufacturers to return from areas where they can use unskilled, cheap labor.
The key is to make the working population more skilled so that they can get 'skilled jobs'. Does trump suggest any job or career training or re-training for those displaced workers? Nooooo... Does clinton? Yessss.
"private employers have added 15.3 million jobs to their payrolls in the 79 months since February 2010, an average of 194,000 jobs a month. Total employment (private plus government) has averaged 190,000 a month over that period, as federal, state, and especially local government were net job losers."
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