Debate & Switch, Crash & Burn

Lots of people feared that the first presidential "debate" between our two designated right-wing codgers would end up being a train wreck. But nobody could ever have expected a reenactment of the Hindenburg disaster. That Nazi airship blew up in 1937 New Jersey, whereas the more modern fascist version exploded in Ohio on Tuesday night.

If you were still naively operating under the assumption that we have even the merest vestige of a functioning democracy left, than Tuesday night's spectacle starring human dirigible Donald Trump (with a largely muted walk-on assist from Joe Biden) should have permanently disabused you of that quaint notion.

The commentary running through many an aghast head as the grisly event streamed into millions of foreclosure-prone American homes went something like this:  (h/t Herb Morrison)

"Oh, the humanity, and all the passengers screaming around here. I... I can't talk, ladies and gentlemen. Honest, it's completely a mess of smoking wreckage. And everybody can't hardly breathe. It's hard, it's crazy. Honestly, I can hardly breathe. I'm going to step inside where I cannot see it.... This is the worst thing I've ever witnessed!"

The gasbag blimp known as Donald Trump has been blowing things up for quite awhile now, both verbally and operationally. And since his wreckage will be raining down upon the earth far into the future. the phrase "Oh, the humanity" can't even begin to describe what we witnessed on Tuesday night. For as much as we thought that we were steeled by the last three and a half years of Trumpism, could anything have prepared us for an American president publicly calling on the crypto-fascist Proud Boys militia to "stand back and stand by?" He also urged his ad hoc troops to converge on the nation's polling places on Election Day to monitor balloting and, presumably, to accost voters who look or act suspiciously un-American. Presumably, these volunteer monitor-militias will also be fully armed. Presumably, the very thought of armed freelance election monitors will also keep enough people away from the polls to even affect the outcome.

It's no wonder that Trump wants all the schools to reopen in the middle of a pandemic. Without schools, young people cannot be properly indoctrinated by his proposed Patriotism re-education curriculum. Without the monitoring custodial function which classrooms provide, students might even start to wake up and realize that their leaders in both parties are making a real botch of things.

If they watched the Tuesday night debate debacle, however, they are probably already realizing it.

If anything can finally terrify Undecideds or Stay-At-Homes into voting for the detritus known as Joe Biden, it was Tuesday night's dirigible disaster. Maybe we can pick through the wreckage and salvage something. Although, with such "gaffes" as Biden's indignant insistence  that he has "nothing against" Supreme Court nominee Amy Coney Barrett because she seems like "a very fine person" Biden does sort of evoke Trump's own infamous remark that "there are very fine people on both sides" of the racist/anti-racist divide.

Biden's disavowal of the Green New Deal, and his admission that his "public option" in health care coverage would just be a means-tested renaming of Medicaid, that he is more prone to starting a war with Russia than "Putin's puppy" is, that he repeated discredited CIA propaganda about Russia putting a bounty on the American invaders and occupiers of Afghanistan, and that he said all of these "reassuring" things with his beady eyes squinting straight through the camera at the terrified viewers at home, might still make some of those annoying  "purists"  out there continue to refuse to find their sustenance in a toxic landfill.

Here's what Biden said about the bait and switch of a "public option":

 "It’s only for those people who are so poor they qualify for Medicaid they can get that free in most States, except Governors who want to deny people who are poor Medicaid. Anyone who qualifies for Medicaid would automatically be enrolled in the public option. The vast majority of the American people would still not be in that option." (my bold.)

Translation: the option is not only restrictive, it is every bit as mandatory as a law requiring people living high on the hog of the minimum wage or reduced unemployment benefits to buy a Bronze plan which they can never afford to use because of obscenely high deductibles and co-pays.

Since cutting off Trump's microphone as he lit his own poisoned gas on fire apparently was not part of the plan by the ratings and profit-hungry corporate media outlets which created Trump in the first place, they will forge right ahead in their unending game of disaster-feasting:

"And, I - I've... lost my breath several times during this exciting moment here. Will you pardon me just a moment? I'm not going to stop talking.... I'm just going to swallow several times until I can keep on."

 

 

Our Man Holt

It's all about her:

Monday’s debate is not the only way Clinton hopes to restore a sense of inevitability to her candidacy, but the audience will dwarf those at rallies. “She takes it very seriously,” said (Communications Director Jennifer) Palmieri. “She’s going in front of tens of millions of Americans, maybe even 100 million Americans, to persuade them why she needs their vote.”

There they go again. Ask not what Hillary can do for our country. Remind voters, over and over and over again, that it's the country which owes her their votes. I highly doubt that anybody needs to be persuaded of her profound neediness at this stage of the game.

As a testament to its confidence in its candidate's debating skills, the campaign is imperiously announcing that it will be up to moderator Lester Holt - not Hillary - to toss Donald Trump's mendacious word salad down the food disposal. The Clinton-friendly Guardian obligingly takes the onus off Hillary right in the headline: "Habitual Liar Trump must be curbed in presidential debate." Ask not that Clinton herself call him to account. This is a woman who is highly accustomed to being waited upon. Don't ask her to curb anything. She presumes she has media chauffeurs like Lester to do that.

"Right ho, Jeeves," I imagine her pouting to Holt. "Carry on, my man. Please do bail out your Bertie like a good chappie and remove this vermin from my presence, wot?"

The Guardian puts it only slightly less condescendingly:

Clinton’s concern stems from Trump’s fast-and-loose rhetorical style, which has been attacked by newspaper fact-checkers but proved devastatingly effective on TV, first against his Republican challengers in the primary and, more recently, in a candidate forum on national security in which he was allegedly allowed to airbrush his past support for the Iraq war.
“She will respond when he misrepresents her own record, but given the historic nature of how much Donald Trump lies, it cannot be only on her,” Clinton communications director Jennifer Palmieri told reporters by phone on Friday.
“If the moderator is not willing to stand up and challenge lies, [then] to not do that is to give him a very unfair advantage”.

Trump did not live up to the Code of the Plute-sters by airbrushing his support for the Iraq War. He should have hurled great big globs of oil paint on the canvas like Hillary Clinton did. In the drawing room. With a knife.

If Team Clinton gets its way, the marathon session of Trumpian lies and moot fact-checking will reward her with neither the time nor the space to get a word in edgewise. She can just stand there and save her precious breath and roll her eyes before delivering a few canned talking points at the end. Not only will she play hapless Bertie to Holt's brilliant Wooster, she's even positioning herself as Fay Wray to Trump's King Kong, with Holt acting the part of the intrepid rescuer.

 It seems to me that as a war hawk whose claim to fame is "muscular" national security experience, she'd be able to fight her own rhetorical battles on a debate stage with an aged orangutan.

She's setting herself up as her own straw-woman before she even gets started. Let the sexist attacks fly. Let the sympathy vote be milked. 

Playing Holt and Trump off each other: is that Clintonoid triangulation, or wot?

Whatever the theatrics and the outcome of the first debate, we can already predict the spin. Both sides will claim victory as they simultaneously claim that they were bullied, by their opponents and by the media alike.

If the voters have little to do with this process now, other than being cowed and bamboozled into serving the needs of their favorite plutocrat, you can only imagine how the ultimate winner will treat them come November.

And no matter the vitriol being hurled between their Pater and Mater and their staffs of high-level servants and publicists, heiresses Ivanka Trump and Chelsea Clinton both display a regal sangfroid about the staged nastiness. You see, it's all totally for show. Only the little people are conned into choosing a side to fulfill their dreams of belonging and participating in democracy, if only as bit players for a relative minute.

"We were friends long before this election, [and] we will be friends long after this election," she (Chelsea) said. "Our friendship didn't start in politics, it certainly is not going to end because of politics. I have tremendous respect for Ivanka."

One really must respect the chutzpah of an enormously wealthy woman who helped her Daddy swindle people out of millions of dollars in a Baja California real estate scam. Of course, Ivanka and other Trump spawn settled out of court, with all terms remaining strictly confidential.

Because when you're a dynasty, you're just like a bank. You're too big to fail and you're too important to jail. 

Neoliberal Death Match 2016 isn't a literal fight to the death between two plutocrats, of course The life spans of the wealthy are actually increasing as the wealth divide increases to epic proportions.

It's the center ring of the circus act which disguises the class war of the rich against the rest of us. Why else put all the pressure and the pre-emptive blame on a highly-paid journalistic servant? If Trump and Clinton fumble, it certainly won't be their fault. And they never perform without their safety nets.

It's all on Lester Holt, acting the dual roles of ringmaster and butler.

From Agence France-Press (sacre bleu!)

The journalist, a 35-year television veteran with 16 years under his belt at NBC, has selected three topics for the debate: America’s direction, achieving prosperity and securing America.
The 90-minute debate will be organized into six 15-minute segments, with two dedicated to each of the topics.
Holt will be the only person on the set with the two candidates. He has not revealed how he is preparing for the face-off, the first of three presidential debates ahead of the November 8 election.
The much-anticipated first debate is expected to draw tens of millions of American viewers. The two remaining debates, on October 9 and October 19, will be moderated by other journalists.
Holt, known for his calm and courteous manner, and a bass player in his spare time, probably will have uppermost in mind the recent flap caused by one of his NBC colleagues. (Matt Lauer).

It wouldn't do to be anything other than calm and courteous during a multicourse dinner party, especially when a couple of sensitive rich people will be asked about achieving prosperity as they sip their designer water. The unflappable, Woosterish, multimillionaire Lester Holt is supposed to break the ice and balance the trays and spill the beans without spilling any actual champagne. All this smooth service is to be provided with an earpiece in each ear so that he can hear the breathless fact-checkers above the clinking cacophony.

 Wealth is such a delicate topic. The rich do hate talking about their money and their war profiteering and their deals while they profess to care about the lesser people for purposes of further self-enrichment. Unless they're Donald Trump, of course. His fans love him because he exposes his fellow miscreants as well as himself. He makes himself one of the hoi polloi even as he brags about ripping them off. They don't care how much he lies or how ignorant he sounds, as long as they can wallow in a billionaire's mud-mind and feel some secure hate in the process.

Hillary Clinton has yet to find a way to let people in to her own cosseted world. It's the pathetic neediness - for privacy and for power. She simply doesn't share very well. She feels that she is owed and she can't hide it, even as she campaigns for the votes of increasingly distressed people.

And if Lester Holt invites her to apologize for her recent deplorable "basket of deplorables" remarks to the millionaires of the Cipriani Club, I suspect that she will respectfully decline: 

 "It is a good rule in life never to apologize. The right sort of people do not want apologies, and the wrong sort take a mean advantage of them."-- P.G. Wodehouse.