Leopards and Spots
"If only Trump would..."
I've heard forms of this more times than I can count. Especially, ahead of the debate with Kamala Harris. Seemingly everyone had helpful suggestions for The Untethered Orange Id, suggestions that if heeded would have in almost all cases benefited his performance. Before all that, there have been years of laments as to Trump not being more… normal? rational? tactical?
Such utterances are, as history has proven time and again, wishful thinking. Or Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect. Or Charlie Brown thinking that, this time, Lucy won't snatch the football.
There is a reason I dubbed Trump The Untethered Orange Id way back during the 2016 GOP primaries. He has shown himself to be a "seat of the pants" actor, a creature of impulse rather than a calculator. 4D-chess boasts notwithstanding. His instincts have served him well in many cases, but his lack of self-discipline has done him much harm.
Harris, or more likely Harris's handlers, saw opportunity in this. The game plan was apparently to goad Trump, and by many reports, that plan worked quite well. Some have argued that Trump was underprepared, but that is again based on "if I were Trump..." rather than a recognition that he is who he is.
Ditto for the press. Much grumbling has ensued about the moderators carrying Harris's water, but seriously - what did you expect? If so, why? What reason could you possibly have to think that the left-stream media would do otherwise?
As for Harris herself? Here I admonish those who might be inclined to believe her newly moderate ways. Take it from Bernie Sanders:
No. I don’t think she’s abandoning her ideals. I think she’s trying to be pragmatic and doing what she thinks is right in order to win the election.
Put less artfully, she is lying in order to convince people skeptical of her past leftism to vote for her. It's bad enough that she's overtly plotting to steal as much as she can from the successful, give away as much Other People's Money as she can in order to buy votes, and go fascist on businesses by telling them how much they are allowed to charge for their products. Anyone who believes she won't ban fracking (likely via some under-reported subterfuges) or that she won't turn the government's hounds loose on people who exercise their First and Second Amendment rights, is doing exactly what the "If only Trump would..." hopers have been doing.
Past performance may be no guarantee of future results, but history does rhyme, and people revert to form under pressure or when unfettered by the need to win an election.
The Trump-loving Right argued about the unfairness of the moderators, which as I already noted should have surprised no one.
The conspiracy-minded latched onto a photo of Harris's earring and some supposed resemblance to a miniature receiver/speaker, suggesting she had talking points or other info piped into her ear.
The far-leftists dunked to their hearts' content, backslapping and glad-handing in their echo chambers while ignoring their new idol’s many flaws.
The left-stream media took their cues, as Matt Taibbi noted, from the DNC in writing their copy.
The Never-Trumpers continue to ignore the likely happenings during a Harris Presidency in their derision for The Donald.
The Harris joy brigade also appear to care little about policy, falling instead into starry-eyed adulation for someone who totally does not deserve it. And giving a free pass to the gibberish that she passes off as policy ideas.
Me? All I care about is policy. Policy persists, long after individuals have left the stage. Policy is what affects our lives. Policy is where we find the true differences between candidates.
Policy is, unfortunately, way down on the list of priorities in debates. They are about posturing, about gotchas and sound bites, and about selling an image to the voters. Why else would there have been such an ado about whether Harris got to stand on a platform to equalize height? One commentator (of course, now I can't find the citation) noted an aphorism that the best way to watch Presidential debates is with the sound off. Another noted that "if you're complaining, you're losing."
Given how little policy revelation we get from debates, I would argue that debates should not matter. Excepting the revelation of Biden's senescence - something that should not have required a debate to unearth. But, yeah, now I gotta put myself in the dock for expecting better from the press.
Back to Trump and the rather broad consensus that he lost the debate. Truth be told, it'd have been a surprise if he won it via focus, restraint, and resistance to baiting. In the first debate, his instincts kicked in, and he gave Biden enough room to implode, but Harris is a parrot, and the only way to expose her as the fraud that she is would be to get her off script. To do that, he would have needed to be less... Trump, and in that he failed.
What next? This gives Harris apologists something to latch onto. It'll allow a "basement" strategy, where she hides from the press and any instance where extemporaneous replies are expected.
Leopards and spots.
Her camp has already asked for another debate, figuring they could repeat the script and get Trump to bury himself (as he did in his 2020 debates against Biden). After all, he wasn't able to knock her off sound-bite the first go-round, so why not play the same hand?
As of my typing this, Trump rejected a “third” debate. And, frankly, I don’t blame him. At the minimum, he’d be facing the same handicap from the moderators’ biased behavior, so why step into the same pit?
Trump will continue preaching to the converted, holding rallies that draw people already apt to vote for him. He loves that adulation, so once again…
Leopards and Spots.
As to who will win? The gambling markets tweaked a bit in Harris's favor during and after the debate, but it's still a toss-up. Some polls suggest that viewers felt Harris won on style, but Trump won on substance.
Whether the debate will affect the final electoral result is hard to say. Its impact isn’t going to be meaningless, but the indications are that its effect will be relatively small.
Small might be enough. The race is tight, with the states that will ultimately decide the election remaining near-tossups.
I remain unchanged in my belief that Pennsylvania will decide the election. Whether Trump can pull that state (he's currently a slight favorite there with the gamblers) remains to be seen. If he does, it'll be by Trump being Trump, not by any new strategy or altered behavior.
Leopards and spots.
As clear eyed a take on the debate, race, and candidates as I've seen. It played out as we all should have expected, and will matter not at all, unless the ultra relieved Democrat herd get even more wild eyed and manic, and the insufferable Never Trumpers snarkier and more condescending.
Peter, how about a word for Libertarian candidate Chase Oliver?
Of course he's not going to win, but for me I have to vote for Chase because otherwise I am not coordinated enough to hold my nose while I mark the ballot. And maybe, just maybe, we can again elevate LP vote totals to something more than election night round-off error and put libertarian ideas into the political conversation (Gary Johnson, we need you!).
There was a time when, for a libertarian, the nominal Republican, at least paying lip service to free markets and limited government, was a (barely) acceptable lesser-of-two-evils. But with MAGA mania, that's gone out the window.