Only one thing left to do

The third and final presidential debate of 2016 was today, and it went... poorly. For me, I had a horrible time watching it, it was so grueling and I am just done with Trump basically forever, I hope he is devoured by parasites, those gross ones that get in your feet and make them swell with growths to ridiculous proportions, I hope his terrible carcass becomes home to numerous species of rare and terrifying flesh hungry arthropods that can't be killed because they are on the endangered species list.

That aside, the debate was really positive for Clinton, she is criticized as being a poor debater, but that isn't true, she has been an indifferent actor, coming off as a robot or cold, but that I think is mostly due to the fact that women are discouraged from showing emotion and not from an inherent limitation in her abilities, she isn't Obama sure, either of them, but no one else is either and that is not a fair comparison, at this point I think she does almost as well as her husband as a speaker, and without his unfortunate sexual history.

Today she showed emotion and expressed it in ways that were believable, you could tell particularly during the abortion segment when she defended her position on being pro late term partial birth abortions, this is historically not a position that many candidates would feel comfortable being in favor of outright, but she spoke in no uncertain terms of the impact that it has on women, and how she felt the impact would be on women if the ability was taken away. I feel like that was her strongest segment and it is unfortunate that it will be overshadowed by the man in the discussion, we'll get to him in a minute.

Her weakest moments were attempting to defend herself against the emails attacks, the leaked campaign communications stuff that Wikileaks dumped the other day, and the accusations of "pay for play" against her own charitable foundation. Now personally these mean nothing to me, I don't care about the emails and I don't think very many people do anymore, the campaign communications show a well run campaign coordinating itself, and her charitable foundation is entirely above board and has never had any real hint of scandal other than being run by the Clintons, however defending these attacks requires nuance that is hard to convey in our debate format and she really didn't even try, kind of clumsily evading the questions rather than attempting to challenge or bring context to them, was it the right play? I dunno, but she seemed vulnerable there.

But she had an advantage tonight that basically made her immune to any of this, that advantage was Donald Trump, Trump started the day seemingly half asleep, and ended with the usual insane word salad answers we have come to expect from him, he did start out relatively strong putting in his best half hour or so of debating ever, but remember that good for Trump is abysmally bad for anyone else, and he went downhill too. He failed, once again, to pursue usable lines of attack in favor of defending his own record of accomplishments or using frankly bizarre attacks on Clinton that make me believe he has no idea what a Senator or Secretary of State actually does, accusing every bad thing that happened over the last thirty years of politics to be her fault for not fixing it. His performance was pretty bad overall, but will in the end come down to three elements

1. Bad Hombres.
   Trump spoke about the need for border security and increased restrictions on travel, then said there were "bad hombres" here and we needed to get them out, this is at the very least insensitive and a chunk of the Latino electorate may find it racist as well, he surely made no friends with the line, not with any group he needs to gain ground with anyway.
2. Nasty Woman.
   Reacting to a zinger Clinton hit him with about his propensity for tax evasion, he interrupted her talking time to lean into the mic and call her names. This wasn't a stump speech or private event, this was a debate between two people, and he literally called her names, not only that he chose to make it gendered as well.
3. Refusal to accept election results.
   This is the one getting the most coverage right now, and many are finding it rather shocking, I don't, but this position shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone who has followed him, especially over the last month or so, the fact that he said it at a debate, one with a live Super Bowl sized audience is significant though and this might end up being the most important moment to come out of the debate.

These are only the most important parts I think, there was a lot to hit him on, including his tacit admission that he hasn't paid taxes for twenty years. But those are the ones that will generate a lot of press, and none of it good.

Speaking of good things though, Chris Wallace showed that he can journalism a little bit, pressing Trump and Clinton for real answers more than once, and gamely attempting to shout the candidates down when they went long or got off topic, his questions were loaded conservative talking points, which is to be expected from a Fox News commentator but I think for all that they were evenly applied and reasonable questions even so, he was by far the best and most involved moderator of the season, and I am sure Trump will accuse him of being in cahoots with the Clinton campaign soon.

Updated predictions: Hillary Clinton still wins by 400+ EVs, also wins Arizona and Utah goes third party, Texas is on the cusp but I think it stays red this year as much as I wish it were otherwise. National polls go to an average of an 11 point lead for Clinton and stay there until the election. Trump loses Georgia too.

Unless a new video drops or something, I am gonna dial back the campaign posts until election day, gonna try to focus on finishing the How Did We Get Here? series and talk about other stuff a bit, no promises though.