The first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump of the 2016 presidential election cycle will take place on Monday. In anticipation of the debate I’d like to place a couple of questions on the floor:
- Will the debate take place? Will all of the debates take place?
- What will the outcome of the debate be?
- Hillary Clinton will wipe the floor with Donald Trump.
- Donald Trump will wipe the floor with Hillary Clinton.
- It doesn’t matter; nobody will watch the debate and everybody’s voters have already made up their minds.
- Hillary Clinton will look tired, old, and dyspeptic and will further reduce her credibility.
- Donald Trump will look crazy, poorly informed, and erratic and will further reduce his credibility.
- Some combination of the above.
- Lester Holt will lose decisively.
- What debate?
I think that the odds are about 50-50 whether this debate or any of them will actually come off. Hillary Clinton has much more to lose than Donald Trump has either to win or to lose and she has a plausible reason to beg off, at least from this debate—health. That will add fuel to the fires of speculation but that won’t make any difference to her core voters.
Assuming the election comes off, I think that Hillary Clinton will win on the substance, Donald Trump won’t be as much of an idiot as the NeverTrumpers would like, and Lester Holt will be blamed regardless of what happens. Basically, a combination of A, C, D, and G. I also think that, if either candidate does really badly and her or his poll numbers drop sharply after the debate, it will be the only presidential debate.
Holt loses. Clinton sounds too wonky and pedantic. Trump gets in good zingers. Both sides think the other side lost. Polls reflect the split in the country and it will be close.
Steve
F. Is it over yet?
Hillary will pass out, fall, and hit her head again, and the resulting national sympathy will vault her over the top although she herself will be only vaguely aware of it.
It almost doesn’t matter. The voters are beyond facts now, beyond reality. We have the least competent, least capable, most unsuited presidential candidate in American history, a man who is a fraud, a pathological liar, profoundly ignorant, entirely corrupt, a rip-off artist and con man, incapable of focus on anything but his own ego, and about 45% of the American voters are thinking, “Sure, let’s give the idiot toddler the nuclear launch codes.”
Nothing is more depressing to me than discovering that my cynicism doesn’t quite go deep enough. Somehow my very robust contempt for people just wasn’t quite acid enough.
M. Reynolds, I’m lost. Are you talking about the 2008 election?