A Debatable Matter

It seems like as a nation we are increasingly becoming a dysfunctional mess. Americans are living in two separate universes - politically, ideologically and culturally.  Furthermore we have an economy that on paper is chugging right along but for many it seems stuck in neutral. To make matters worse both political parties are controlled by hacks and functionaries. And to top it off our Supreme Court, our ultimate legal authority, is guided by hard coded ideologies rather than an evolving objective interpretation of the Constitution.

Now it's presidential election time and one party has forced upon us a 'heir apparent' as if we had to continually tap into some kind stock of political-aristocratic families for leaders. The other party having tried to do the same with the hapless Jeb Bush has ended with up a dangerous usurper as their candidate.  As bad as the Demos are, the Repubs are far worse having long since gone off the deep end.  They have all lost credibility with most thinking people and certainly internationally by adopting a flat earth society approach to science and letting Christian fundamentalists bible-thumpers, a powerful gun lobby and oil companies commandeer their party. This while deviously relying on a voting demographic that hates reason and revels on irrational contempt. They have callously nurtured a Redneckian strain of Americana that thrives on fear and loathing of 'the Other' be it  blacks, native Americans, gays, liberals, environmentalists, immigrants, Muslims, elites, eggheads, hippies, you name it.  But to the  GOP's collective embarrassment their whole strategy has blown up in their faces. Now to their befuddlement they have been outmaneuvered by a garden variety demagogue as the 'ordinary folks' they relied on for votes have rebelled and produced the most absurd presidential candidate in American history.

With an unpopular hand picked heir apparent Democrat on one side and a madman Republican demagogue on the other we arrive at the televised Presidential  Debates - the big show. The presidential debates are always a media circus of the first magnitude with.over the top hoopla and lots of posturing but short on content.  The candidates will always promise way more than they have any chance of delivering. And the viewer-voters  are supposed to pretend to believe what they hear. It's all a fine show with the hope that in the process their candidate will expose the other side's candidate for a fool.  For the candidates the main hope is to demolish their opponent with a freshly minted perfect ad hoc rebuttal (AKA 'a zinger'). But so much of it is canned, choreographed and redundant since each has side has practiced lines like actors for a school play. Functionally the debates this late in the game are all about attracting the low information undecided voters in so-called "battleground states".  But this time it is also (for HRC, anyway) about corralling back into the fold the erstwhile Sanderinistas, many who are stilled seriously miffed at the shenanigans of the Demo Party big wigs who ramrodded in an unpopular candidate despite their candidate's strength and appeal especially among the white working class.


In any case by all accounts (except for the most Trumpian partisans) the first debate was a resounding defeat for  Project Donald. Viewers saw a  smiling, perky and well informed Hillery next to a sour, grumpy, scowling and accusatory Mean Mr Mustard.  More importantly the abject emptiness of his entire endeavor was on full display.  All that most people can remember about Mr Trump from the first debate was serial rude interruptions and speak-overs and gruff denials of past (proven) prevarication framed by his patent stump speech material which always contains overwrought accounts of a once great country now in serious economic and geopolitical peril.

Granted much is amiss in the US of A and the world in general but certainly the The Donald is not up to the job fixing anything. The devil that you don't know is clearly light years more dangerous than the one you do know. Despite one's grievances with Obama, HRC's implicit promise to keep the Obama ship steady as you go clearly points to one needing to vote for HRC - for better or worse. 


Even if it's a foregone conclusion that HRC will carry your state by a wide margin, one should consider voting for her just to get her popular vote count as high as possible   If she wins the overall election by a tiny margin or even worse loses the popular vote but squeaks by via the electoral college, the disgruntled Trumpians (replacing the nut case Tea Partiers) within the ever-whacho Republican Party will make Obama's bitter relationship look like a lovefest.  Of course that may happen anyway.

Polls tell us that many younger voters are refusing to hold their noses and vote for HRC.  Yet Jill Stein of the Greens is only at polling at a measly 7%.".  Apparently many of them say they are now going to (stupidly) use their 'protest vote' for that clown from the Libertarian Party Gary Johnson, probably because he's in favor legalization of marijuana  (isn't everybody?). This even though he thinks the government should do nothing about confronting global warming (let the corporations handle it as they are so wise and humane) and he certainly as a libertarian has no interest in governmental help in funding college educations. (Also he's not so good at geography  - or international affairs.)  Back in 2000 many of us in states in which Al Gore was expected to win overwhelming (like Calif) voted for Ralph Nader as the Green Party candidate because we were trying to get the Green Party up to a certain % nationally so as to become a functional third party.  Jill Stein is not even close to where Nader was.

The main thing here is that four years of Trump will be an unmitigated disaster for the environment and the Supreme Court even if nothing else bad happens (like declaring national bankruptcy or nuking Iran or North Korea). The Democrats may be part of the same dual-party continuum of corporate control and are no better than Repubs on many important issues but at least they acknowledge we are on the brink of something we as a species of have never faced before - irreparable damage to our entire global ecosystem.  Vote fof  HRC even if you can't stand her.  It does matter!