Thoughts on the third Presidential debate

[edschweppe]

Well, that wasn't nearly as much of a train wreck as I feared. That's the good news...

1) Big point: Trump refused, point blank, to say he'd accept the results of the election. Instead, he'll keep us "in suspense"

2) Trump keeps dodging hard questions (such as Roe v. Wade), and kept interrupting both Clinton and the moderator (Chris Wallace). Clinton was much more willing to actually answer the question being asked before pivoting away to whichever talking point she was working on.

3) Trump claimed that the stories about him groping women had been debunked; funny, I hadn't heard anything like that.

4) Apparently, it's all Clinton's fault that Trump moved jobs overseas and used Chinese steel to build his buildings. Also, everything that's gone badly in Iraq and Syria is her fault.

5) Neither candidate bit when Wallace asked if they'd consider an entitlement "grand bargain" of tax hikes and benefit cuts. Good for them.

Trump didn't suffer an obvious meltdown (although he still had the sniffles), so that's sort of a win for him; Clinton got her points across, so that's sort of a win for her. For me, the big question is going to be whether Trump can keep from blowing up over the various digs Clinton got in on him.

Comments

[stardreamer]

Immediately below this post I came across the following from someone else who was watching the debate:

Donald Trump literally just said he’d force women to carry out nonviable pregnancies, regardless of their health risks and NO ONE should be allowed to have an abortion in the last stages of pregnancies. So I guess if you miscarry in the final days, you should just die of sepsis.

Maybe he said more about the abortion issue than you noticed?

[edschweppe]

I definitely noticed his response on abortions, especially the bit about never allowing them late-term.

My comment was aimed at the fact that he wouldn't come out and say he wanted Roe overturned; instead, "it would happen automatically". (Things happening by magic because he says so has been a common theme of his.)

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

We haven't watched the third debate yet as it was my wife's birthday and we went out of town for dinner and a movie, but we've read a lot about it. As for the second debate, it almost seemed to me that Trump was running against Obama for his second term. He seems to have a reality problem, but that's been kind of obvious from the beginning.

It is amusing that he still has the sniffles. Maybe he should see that doctor who said he'd be the healthiest president ever.