2020 DEBATES RECAP

I normally make it a point to watch all the debates so that I remain informed regardless of who I support.

But not this time

I only watched the first debate out of mere tradition and the vice-presidential debate for the reasons as I stated before. I did not watch any of the dueling town halls that replaced the second debate because I felt that doing so would only feed Trump’s ego.

For the third debate, I barely watched any of it and caught barely any of the post-debate coverage. The third debate would not have changed my mind since I am one of the over 93 million people that have already voted.

Pretty much I agree with the consensus of that the first debate was a disaster and how Chris Wallace allowed the debate to spin out of control that allowed Trump to dominate the process. If that debate was your introduction to American politics, you had to wonder to yourself, “how did this guy get elected in the first place.”

Trump’s strategy to re-election appears to be like it was four years ago when it looked like he was losing and that is to run against the system by claiming that it is all rigged against him: the polling, media, reporters, debate formats, imaginary opponents in the shadows conspiring against him.

Yes, the guy whose father was successful in New York real estate in the 1970s and early 1980s is at such a disadvantage in life.

Trump has been hoping for another eleventh-hour miracle as it was at this time nearly four years ago when then FBI Director James Comey dropped his infamous letter that certainly changed the trajectory of the 2016 election in the final days. It appeared that was the case when the New York Post – whose reputation is known for sensational headlines and promoting a conservative viewpoint – reported on that Joe Biden’s son Hunter dropped off three laptops that contained classified information at a pawn shop.

However, the story has been discredited and linked to a Russian disinformation campaign as an effort to influence the 2020 election. Several intelligence agencies have warned that outside provocateurs are doing what they can for a repeat of 2016 as well as once again weaponizing social media accounts. Twitter has gone as far as locking out accounts who share that story in an effort to contain the spread of misinformation as well as providing an extra level of confirmation when users share articles. This has outraged conservatives about how social media is censoring their voices despite that they have a cable news channel, several radio shows, podcasts, other social media outlets such as Facebook and Instagram, newspaper opinion writers, and many think tanks to promote their world view.

And in a way, that story has boomeranged back on to the Trump campaign specifically on his lawyer Rudy Giuliani.

It turns out that Giuliani had an embarrassing scene in the recent Borat film where he was in a hotel room with the actress playing the titular character’s 15-year old daughter. One has to wonder if this behavior has been standard for him on his international sojourns doing Trump’s dirty work in investigating Biden. The dirty work that resulted in Trump being impeached.

Trump, his campaign, and his surrogates cannot defend this: over 225,000 Americans have died from COVID-19; there have been 8.7 million cases (and two of those were Donald and Melania Trump); and the unemployment rate has nearly doubled to 7.9% with the peak being at 14.4% in April.

This was all due to this administration’s mismanagement through gross negligence, denial of the facts, and outright lying.

And the Trump campaign is not helping. While they mock the Biden campaign for his sparsely attended events, Biden is doing that due to the circumstances of the pandemic. On the other hand, Trump is continuing as if the pandemic is over. According to a recently released Stanford study, his campaign rallies from June until September caused an additional 30,000 infections and 700 deaths.

It is also worth mentioning that the campaign left rally attendees out in the literal cold in Nebraska and Pennsylvania, and the Florida heat in Tampa resulted in 17 attendees requiring medical attention.

There was an effort – more like a deflection – to try to steer the attention from Trump’s disastrous COVID-19 response but instead how the Obama administration responded to the 2009 swine flu outbreak.

One problem with that: the Obama administration actually executed what was in the pandemic response plan as set by the George W. Bush administration. They did not throw the book out and improvise one thinking THEY could do it better like what the Trump administration did.

The person who tried the deflection tactic was Mike Pence during the vice-presidential debate. Pence was put in charge of the federal government’s response for COVID-19 and the only prior experience he had in dealing with infectious diseases was making an HIV-AIDS epidemic worse when he was Indiana governor.

That tactic did not work out as well as Pence thought and Senator Harris does not play when fools like him come for her.

Deflection again returned when Pence accused Harris that once Democrats gain control of the White House and Senate, they will engage in a court packing plan. The only party that has been packing the courts was the Republicans for the last 35 years and have been aggressively doing so under McConnell’s stewardship as majority leader.

Senator Harris also pointed out that many of the Trump appointees via the Federalist Society approved list has been very melanin deficient.

Overall, the debates appear to not have changed the trajectory of the race. Biden is still leading in the national popular vote comfortably to where it should get him above the 270 electoral votes necessary to put him in the White House and boot Trump out on 20 January 2021 at noon. The swing state polls show the same trend as nationally. Biden is leading in the states that Trump narrowly carried four years ago – Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin – as well as in the recent battlegrounds of Arizona, Georgia, and North Carolina.

It is likely that we are seeing the final days of the Trump presidency.

And I for one am relieved.