Tornado Alley (PROG)

[BOREALIS]

Third Debate Takeaways Galore

Everybody and his uncle posted some takeaways from the debate. Here are a few of them:
Nicholas Confessore at the New York Times:

Trump finally cooled off and did what his handlers wanted him to do
Trump knows which voters he needs and fed them lots of red meat
Clinton knows her base, too
By the end, Trump was back to normal and his "nasty woman" remark will hurt him
Not saying unambiguously that he will accept the will of the voters is going to make more Republicans dump him
Trump had to reset the race and he failed

Jennifer Rubin at the Washington Post:

Trump was like low-energy Jeb Bush
Talking about "bad hombres" was a bad idea
Trump refused to concede that Russia was behind the email hacks
When he was asked about jobs, Trump talked about NATO, allowing Clinton to hit him on cutting taxes for the rich
No one will believe that the stories from all the women who said he groped them have been "debunked"
Clinton Foundation beat his foundation
Trump did himself in when he refused to say he would concede if he lost
Trump claimed [falsely] that he opposed the war in Iraq and argued that the battle for Mosul is political
Chris Wallce was masterful
Clinton simply needed to avoid a disaster; instead she eviscerated Trump and reminded voters what a nut he is

Glenn Thrush at Politico:

Donald Trump made the biggest mistake of his life by saying he might not concede if he loses
Hillary Clinton delivered the best performance of her career
Chris Wallace should do this for a living
Hillary got off the hook on the "open borders" issue
Trump doesn't understand that self-delusion (looking at Internet polls) is not a strategy

Eric Bradner at CNN:

By refusing to accept the election's outcome, Trump created a news story that will dominate for precious days
Every Republican is now going to be forced to either defend Trump on concessiongate or risk losing his voters
Trump's "Such a nasty woman" remark is not going to be a big hit wit the ladies
Trump always takes the bait
Trump's temperament is a huge liability that Clinton exploited over and over

Leigh Ann Caldwell at NBC News

Trump will still not agree to accept the election results
Clinton again ties Trump to Russia
Trump denies allegations by accusers
Trump says the Mosul operation is political
Clinton says Trump can't be trusted with nuclear weapons

Paul Singer and Cooper Allen at USA Today:

Trump might reject the result of the election
Clinton and Putin can now fight over who gets to operate Puppet Trump
The debate began with actual substance
The battle of the foundations
Democrats love Trump off script

Jonathan Easley at The Hill

Clinton looks to run up the score rather than playing it safe
Trump blew it with women
Trump shocks with refusal to accept election results
Trump is no longer in control of his destiny
Policy takes center stage

Aaron Zitner at the Wall Street Journal:

Clinton attacked Trump's character and he attacked her effectiveness
Trump is still not a traditional Republican
Clinton's message was of unity, Trump's was of revival
Trump returned to his strongest issues: change and the economy
The biggest news was Trump's refusal to say in advance he would accept defeat if he loses

Mollie Hemingway at the Federalist:

Chris Wallace is awesome
Trump had a good night, not a great night
Clinton was uneven, if it matters
Our media are awful

Jay Caruso at RedState:

Trump will pay dearly for contradicting Pence and Ivanka and saying he may not accept the results
Chris Wallace should be moderating every debate from here on out
Hillary Clinton did nothing to convince me to even consider voting for her
Donald Trump proved again that his lack of detail knowledge on the issues is disqualifying

Certain themes emerged here. Almost everyone hit on Trump's refusal to accept the results if he loses. This story is not going way until Election Day, and if he loses and doesn't concede, will never go away.

Many writers felt that Clinton was playing 3D chess and he was playing tic-tac-toe. The "bad hombres" remark may be less damaging than the "nasty woman" remark, but maybe not by so much. All in all, Clinton sliced and diced Trump.

All these remarks bring up the question of why Debbie Wasserman Schulz went to so much trouble minimizing the number and exposure of the primary debates to protect Clinton from Big Bad Bernie (thus antagonizing all his supporters). She is a superb debater, one of the best ever. She doesn't need to be protected from anyone. (V)


Third Presidential Debate Postmortem

The Las Vegas showdown between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump has been in the books for 24 hours. That is enough time for Trump to proclaim himself the winner (see below), and then another 21 hours for the rest of the world to weigh in. Here's what the non-Trump crowd is saying:
Left-leaning commentators

Dylan Matthews, Vox Winners: Clinton, Vladimir Putin. Loser: Trump. "All [Clinton] had to do was not lose. But she did better than that. After a more passive, less antagonistic performance in the second debate, she returned to and perfected her first debate strategy of purposely needling Trump in ways that appear benign to most viewers but provoke a massive, outsize response from Donald nonetheless."

Chris Cillizza, Washington Post Winners: Clinton, Chris Wallace, Putin, David Fahrenthold. Losers: Trump, down-ballot Republicans. "The Russian leader had to be thrilled about the amount of airtime he and his country received in the debate. And Trump, while insisting that he and the Russian president are not, in fact, friends, repeatedly said that he knew for a fact that Putin had no respect for Clinton. Any airtime for Putin in a debate with tens of millions of Americans watching probably make him very, very happy."

Doyle McManus, Los Angeles Times Winner: Clinton. Loser: Trump. "What will be remembered from this debate? Three things: Trump's refusal to say he would accept the result of the election if he loses. Trump's inability to answer charges that he has behaved abusively toward women. And Trump's return to the truculent, angry man of the first debate, interrupting Clinton repeatedly (saying, at one point, "Such a nasty woman"). Trump, who's behind, needed to change the direction of the campaign and show undecided voters that he can be thoughtful and measured when the situation requires. He failed."

Jason Easley, PoliticusUSA Winners: Clinton, viewers and voters. Losers: Trump, Wallace. "While Trump sounded like a rambling lunatic, Hillary Clinton showed that she is the only candidate in this race who is competent and fit to be the next president."

Roxanne Jones, CNN Winner: Clinton. Loser: Trump. "Hillary Clinton is not perfect—I've yet to see a politician who is—and she faces legitimate issues with trust among voters. But she was the only person on that stage fit to be President of the United States, the only candidate who can move America forward. The win goes to her."

Right-leaning commentators

Ed Rogers, Washington Post Winner: Trump. Loser: Clinton. "Trump isn't particularly light on his feet, but he was confident and competent talking about the economy. It's a wonder he hasn't talked about the economy during more of the campaign. Anyway, he even showed a much better understanding of geopolitics than I would have thought. He sounded like a Republican on most issues. For Trump, it's too bad there aren't more debates."

Caleb Howe, RedState.com Winners: Trump, Clinton, Putin, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), Mitt Romney, Barack Obama. Losers: Everyone else. "Remember candidates capable of debate? Of clever turns of phrase, respectful forcefulness, and deep knowledge of the topics at hand? Yeah. Miss em now, don't ya?"

Bill Whalen, Fox News Winners: Clinton, Wallace. Loser: Trump. "Thrice now, Trump has had 90 minutes to make his argument for his brand of change over Democratic status quo, with tens of millions of voters tuned in. Thrice now, he's failed to seal the deal."

Kelly Riddell, The Washington Times Winners: Wallace, Clinton. Loser: Trump. "There was more policy spoken in the final debate's first 30 minutes than the entirety of the first two debates combined."

Andrew Sullivan, New York Magazine Winner: Clinton. Loser: Trump. "In my view, this was easily the most decisive debate. She devastated him. He melted down. His refusal to accept the results of this election disqualifies him automatically from any office in the United States. There were several areas where he was utterly incoherent, grasping at 'facts,' without any understanding of policy. His personal foulness emerged."

Foreign commentators

Cristina Silva, International Business Times Winner: Clinton. Loser: Trump. "Hillary Clinton sighed and rolled her eyes through the final presidential debate Wednesday night, emerging the winner largely by ignoring Donald Trump's bait about her husband's many alleged affairs, his accusations that she created ISIS and any probing questions about her use of a private email server as secretary of state."

Rituparna Chatterjee, Huffington Post India Winner: Clinton. Loser: Trump. "What's the Trump dictionary definition of a woman who is prepared, earnest, ambitious and ready to move past mistakes? Oh yes, nasty."

Anthony Zurcher, BBC Winner: Clinton. Loser: Trump. "[A]fter roughly half an hour of something resembling an actual policy debate about the Supreme Court, gun rights, abortion and even immigration, the old Donald Trump—the one who constantly interrupted his opponent, sparred with the moderator and lashed out at enemies real and perceived—emerged."

Tim Stanley, The Telegraph (UK) Winner: Clinton. Loser: Trump. "Trump came off as a sore loser conceding the inevitable. A sad, pre-emptive end to a remarkable, charismatic candidacy."

Nick Allen, The Telegraph (UK) Winner: Clinton. Loser: Trump. "Disaster for Donald Trump. He undermined his own composed and reasonably effective performance in one moment, when he refused to say that he would accept the result of the election if he loses. That overrode any good work he did during the debate."

Across these 15 commentators, the tally ends up like this:

Clinton: 14 wins, 1 loss
Putin: 3 wins, 0 losses
Wallace: 3 wins, 1 loss
Obama, McCain, Romney: 1 win, 0 losses
Trump: 2 wins, 13 losses

So, it's a landslide for Clinton, with Vladimir Putin taking the silver, and Chris Wallace the bronze. Trump, of course, does not accept these results, and suspects that most of Clinton's support may have come from dead black voters in Philadelphia and Chicago.

We (and everyone else) predicted that the big story of the night would be Donald Trump's refusal to accept the election results. But Trump knows that when he's stepped in it he should quickly change the topic, so that the story doesn't live on for days and days, dominating multiple news cycles. No, wait. It's Barack Obama who knows that. Trump's the one who makes it his mission treat his screw-ups like cats, making sure that they each have nine lives. So yes, the story did dominate Thursday's political coverage. And, as usual, Trump did his part to keep it front and center, telling a rally audience that, "I will totally accept the results of this great and historic presidential election ... if I win." Needless to say, many people on both sides of the aisle are not pleased to have something so important treated as a subject of merriment.

That wasn't the only storyline, though. Clinton made a few headlines with a possible screw-up of her own, namely that she may have let slip a bit more information about America's nuclear arsenal than she should have. A few observers wondered about her observation that roughly four minutes elapse between the president's order to fire nukes, and having actual missiles in the sky. This fact is not exactly a state secret. Well, actually, it is a state secret, but not a very well-kept state secret. Certainly, any 20th century military historian or nuclear policy analyst worth their salt already knew this. Nonetheless, if Clinton knew it because of classified briefings she has received, then it was a no-no for her to share it. Thus far, both civilian and military spokesmen, including Secretary of Defense Carter Ash, have declined comment on the situation. Luckily for Clinton, she said it on live tv, in front of only 70 million people. If she'd put it in an email, one that might literally be seen by dozens of people, then there'd be big trouble.

Now, the careful reader might have detected a wee bit of a sardonic tinge to the last few paragraphs. Well, at this point in a wild election cycle, that's where everyone seems to be at. Wednesday's event may have been the most Twitter-friendly debate ever. Heck, it may have been the most Twitter-friendly event ever, instantaneously producing at least a half-dozen memes. There was Clinton's white pantsuit, which inspired a tidal wave of Twitter users to post pictures comparing her outfit to other notable all-white-clad individuals: Luke Skywalker, John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever, Ralph Macchio in The Karate Kid, and "every chef ever" among them. Trump's #badhombre and #nastywoman trended for hours, as did the counter-hashtag #nastywomengetsh**done. Comedian Chelsea Handler even posted a poll, asking respondents if they considered themselves to be more of a "nasty woman" or more of a "bad hombre." "Nasty woman" won, 60% to 40%.

The very best meme of the night came from St. Louis mayoral candidate Antonio French (D), who tweeted that, "Trump's foreign policy answers sound like a book report from a teenager who hasn't read the book. 'Oh, the grapes! They had so much wrath!'" This promptly led to thousands of #TrumpBookReports, like these:

Those poor heights. They were wuthering. Wuthering so bad. Bigly wuthering. I'll make them great again.
Charlotte's Web...Spider dies at the end...no stamina. What a loser.
Uncle Tom's Cabin, worst cabin in the inner city.
It took Low Energy Harry Potter 7 books to defeat Voldermort. Sad! I would have beat him in the first book!
We're gonna catch so much rye, you won't believe it. We're bringing those rye catching jobs to America.
Juliet. Such a nasty woman. She made Romeo kill himself. And believe me he could have done better. Look at her.

But while those are pretty good, the person who may have done the best job of selling his bit is George Norman Davis. He said he'd rather die than see another Clinton-Trump debate. And then, he did.

The debate also had something of an epilogue on Thursday night, when Clinton and Trump were onstage together again at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation dinner, a fundraiser for Catholic charities. It is customary for the presidential nominees to appear, and to make a few lighthearted jokes at each other's expense. Clinton seemed to grasp this, making a joke or two about Trump's net worth and his views on women, like "Donald looks at the Statue of Liberty and sees a 4." Trump, by contrast, apparently missed the "lighthearted" part of the memo. And the joke part, for that matter. He launched into a harangue with "one-liners" like, "Hillary is, and has been, in politics since the '70s. What's her pitch? The economy is busted, the government is corrupt. Washington has failed. Vote for me, I have been working on these problems for 30 years, I can fix it, she says." Similarly, "We've learned so much from WikiLeaks. For example, Hillary believes it is vital to deceive the people by having one public policy and a totally different policy in private." Ha! Gotcha! The Catholics were not amused, and eventually booed Trump off the stage.

Anyhow, for better or worse—almost certainly for better—the presidential debates of 2016 have come to an end. 17 days until the election. (Z)

... and much more...


http://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2016/Pres/Maps/Oct21.html#item-1





Clinton=350 Trump=188 -- http://www.electoral-vote.com/ Oct. 21