Bag Job

I just listened to (not watched) the first presidential debate between Donald Trump and Hellary Clinton and I think I will try to capture my thoughts before I am barraged by the spin from both sides. First let me compare this debate to a tennis match. Trump was playing singles and Hellary and the moderator, Lester Holt, were playing doubles. So naturally the twosome had the advantage. I guess that this was what Trump anticipated and he thought he could handle it. He almost did. But he was on defense pretty much the entire debate ... on the trumped-up birther issue, on his taxes, on his bankruptcies, on his NATO comments, on his supposed misogyny, on his thoughts about Japan and South Korea getting nuclear weapons, on his cozying up to Putin, on Hellary's lack of a presidential "look", etc. He did a pretty good job in returning these drop shots but they kept coming ... served up by the moderator or Clinton as a result of her softball (set-up?) questions.

Hellary Clinton was never once put on the spot by the moderator ... not on her private e-mail server, not on her Clinton Foundation's pay for play, not on Benghazi massacre, not on her health issues, not on her Middle East and Russia screw-ups, really not on anything. The only time she was ever challenged was when Trump himself brought up things ... like the fact that, given all our current problems in the world, how come she never did anything to fix them? Even at that Trump didn't point out her hypocrisy in saying that we needed to get the guns out of the hands of inner-city criminals but wouldn't support "stop and frisk."

Also Holt never tried to fact-check Clinton ... whereas he did to Trump multiple times ... usually unsuccessfully. Add to this the fact that the student audience was, not surprisingly, clearly on Hellary's side ... and Trump had a slight case of the sniffles ... while Hellary never coughed once ... makes me believe that although she didn't score a KO, but will tomorrow be declared the slight winner on points. Whether this will slow down Trump's surge in the polls, I can't predict. This depends on how perceptive the viewing public is to how one-sided this tennis match really was.