The local organized Hillary office was hosting a watch party for the town-hall format debate this Sunday night, so I decided to be sociable.
I brought an apple pie.
Sat around with about 20 people to watch the Internet stream of CNN. Sat solemnly while the debate organizers spent about half an hour explaining the rules and need for decorum. A lot of attention was paid toward showcasing how these debates "demonstrate to the whole world how a democracy operates."
And then they let Trump out to show how he'll tear it all down.
Dear F-CKING God. Trump could not answer the questions straight. He'd go off on tangents, jumping to talking points that didn't relate, and ending up pointing at Hillary going "she's worse, people. She'll wreck all of it, believe me."
The opening question on campaign decorum turned into Trump attacking Obamacare. It went downhill from there.
And he lied, sonofabitch did Trump lie during this town hall. He couldn't even keep the number of "deleted e-mails" straight.
When it got to the part where Trump went off on his taxes "Oh I pay millions in taxes" I was thisclose to dropping every F-bomb I had and punching out the walls. It was either that or walking out of the watch party in a rage.
So for that, I apologize to my fellow watchers.
It was just... GOD DAMN TRUMP.
Here's the biggest takeaway I got from last night:
If he's elected, Trump is going to jail Hillary. He openly declared this on the debate floor. I think this is a first in all of American History. Granted, we haven't had many years of head-to-head debates - we really started with Nixon vs. JFK in 1960, and didn't make these debates official until 1976 - but I can't recall in my studies ANY other Presidential candidate threatening to arrest his political opponents as a campaign pledge.
That's something dictators do. That's not at all representative of the Democracy Experience we're supposed to be displaying to the world.
Damn Trump. And Damn US if enough of us voters back this con artist into the White House. We're getting every warning red flag possible about the damage Trump can do if he's in power, and he's STILL getting 40 percent support?!
/ragequit
4 comments:
A good chunk of that 40% consists of people, largely evangelicals or doctrinaire ideological conservatives, who feel repulsed by Trump but are holding their noses (although by this point a stronger metaphor is needed) and voting for him out of fear of Hillary appointing liberals to the Supreme Court and creating a legal environment radically hostile to their sacred cows. They do realize how bad Trump is, they're just even more scared of the practical consequences of the alternative. Were it not for the fact that there will be several Supreme Court appointments in the next four years, they might well not be voting for Trump.
The rest are the fever-swamp true believers who are caught up in the political equivalent of mob frenzy or a drinking binge. Some of them will snap out of it after Trump loses, some won't. They're quite a bit less than 40% of the voting public, but they're going to be a huge problem for a long time.
But they'll be especially a problem for the Republican party, if it survives this mess at all. Who will they foist on the party as a nominee in 2020, after all? Ted Nugent? Phil the Duck? David Duke? They're an inoperable cancer festering within the right wing.
An unjustified fear of Hillary - who has never been proved the monster the Far Right Noise Machine accuses her of being - driving too many people to vote for a real monster whose own words and acts condemn him. I can't write fiction this horrifying.
Our national political system, like it or not, requires a two-party system to keep things balanced, and the parties themselves need balance on the issues to keep themselves honest. The Republicans are splitting right now because their 20-year RINO hunt removed their moderate core, leaving behind only the Far Right True Believers who started fighting among themselves over which ones were more equal than others. It'll be down to the party elite - which holds the money and organization - against the voter base of Fox Not-News acolytes no longer willing to answer their masters' whistles.
The autopsy on 2016 will read "we tried warning you in 2012 BUT YOU WON'T LISTEN." Any fix to the Republican Party is going to require such harsh measures - reeling in or cutting loose their worst actors (pundits like Coulter and Hannity and Limbaugh), giving up their mass tax cut agenda, backing off shutting down Planned Parenthood, immigration reform, anything that would bring back the RINO moderates - that I doubt they would deploy any of them. And they'll just get worse.
I wouldn't be surprised if Ted Nugent is the 2020 nominee. That's how horrifying the GOP will get.
I agree, it was hard to watch, but I knew it was going to be... My takeaway? My takeaway is that he wants to take away my health insurance. He stood up there and lied his ass off about the ACA, which contrary to his doctrinaire Republican lies, has dramatically slowed the rise in the costs of healthcare, and insured 20 million previously uninsured citizens. This is personal for me, as I have recent experience with the changes in the system. Last year I had cataract surgeries which brought me back from blindness. I would not have been able to afford them without the Medicaid expansion from the ACA. Thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster I live in California where they expanded it. Also, thank the FSM that I live in Alameda County, because I also have some pre-ACA healthcare experience: I had a stroke in 2008, and all of my treatment for it was under the old system. I hadn't signed up for the Kaiser plan offered at my new job yet, so I was uninsured. I got very lucky and got excellent care from the Alameda County Medical Center while my MediCal was still pending, but I saw others not nearly as fortunate. Trust me, we do not want to go back to that system. I saw people in acute rehab spending time and effort they should have been using to recover from their strokes (you only get one shot at your initial recovery) fighting with their insurance companies to cover their stays there.
And while we're talking about the costs he said were so outrageously high, let's look at some numbers from my own situation: If I had had access to regular yearly checkups with a doctor, I would have known that between 2004 (when I last saw a doctor for a foot injury at work) and 2008 my blood pressure had increased from 125/90 to 165/100. I could have been taking the medicine that now controls my blood pressure the whole time and avoided having the stroke. Now for the numbers: for the price of a few doctor visits and three prescriptions every three months, the taxpayers could have saved the quarter million dollars my nearly three month hospital/rehab stay cost them, the year of state disability I received, and the seven years (so far) of Social Security Disability Insurance I have collected. Add those to the payroll and federal income taxes I would have been paying were I still working, and the economic benefits of all of that money I would have earned and spent, and the ACA just doesn't seem that costly when you multiply my numbers by the number of citizens needlessly disabled under the old system.
My hope is that there are 20 million people out there who see Trump as the same threat to their existence that I do.
-Doug in Oakland
Well, Paul I like your style and agree. I just can't see the middle class and the poor having to finance the the top one percent.
I have marked my mail-in ballot for Pasco County (mostly by voting against anything the Tea Party wanted). The only spots left are the Mosquito Control Districts which I am researching now. Thanks for your take on those.
I have been following the national politics closely for the last two years and have found the clown car and the Orange Creep extremely repulsive. I can understand most of those people attending his rallies. Those who chant and raise their fists, the 'deplorables'. However I cannot understand the people who have any common sense at all who vote against their self interests or follow the Republican Party after this fiasco. I'm such a Yellow Dog Democrat but whatever.
Raz Kilmer
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