Posted on 09/30/2016 5:10:45 AM PDT by Sir Napsalot
Monday’s presidential debate was a blowout, surely the most one-sided confrontation in American political history. Hillary Clinton was knowledgeable, unflappable and — dare we say it? — likable. Donald Trump was ignorant, thin-skinned and boorish.
Yet on the eve of the debate, polls showed a close race. How was that possible?
After all, the candidates we saw Monday night were the same people they’ve been all along. Mrs. Clinton’s grace and even humor under pressure were fully apparent during last year’s Benghazi hearing. Mr. Trump’s whiny braggadocio has been obvious every time he opens his mouth without reading from a teleprompter.
So how could someone like Mr. Trump have been in striking position for the White House? (He may still be there, since we have yet to see what effect the debate had on the polls.)
Part of the answer is that a lot more Americans than we’d like to imagine are white nationalists at heart. Indeed, implicit appeals to racial hostility have long been at the core of Republican strategy; Mr. Trump became the G.O.P. nominee by saying outright what his opponents tried to convey with dog whistles.
.... as recently as August Mrs. Clinton held a commanding lead. Then her polls went into a swoon.
What happened? Did she make some huge campaign blunders?
I don’t think so. As I’ve written before, she got Gored. That is, like Al Gore in 2000, she ran into a buzz saw of adversarial reporting from the mainstream media, which treated relatively minor missteps as major scandals, and invented additional scandals out of thin air.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
Several points I'd like to make -
(1) We all remember Hillary Clinton's "What. Difference. Does. It. Make" pounding the table moment, which Krugman described as 'grace and even humor under pressure'
(2) In Krugman's opinion, "Clinton missteps" were minor details or created out of thin air, and blown way out of proportion by a hostile media.
(3) Krugman was hopeful that Hillary Clinton's first debate performance would finally persuade the undecided and Sanders holdouts to buoy Clinton's poll numbers (But we saw the undecided breaking more Trump than Clinton). If all else failed, my prediction is that Krugman (and others like him) will become more hysterical and calling all of us Trump Deplorables even more degrading names. Less intelligent, less educated, less well-to-do, less ..., less .... etc.
(4) If you are interested, read this (How Donald Trump Set Off a Civil War Within the Right-Wing Media) It tells me that 'rightwing' "intelligentsia" (personified by, in this case, George Wills) shouldn't 'lead' any conservative movement. Even though the article is more sympathetic to Erick Erickson. BTW, did you know Erickson wrote "Reconsidering My Opposition to Trump" on 9/20/2016? Nobody cared or cares.
She is literally a corrupt banana republic dictator in waiting and they think she is awesome. She has been under investigation for 50 different crimes but at least she released her taxes!
Mr. Krugman is about to have a Pauline Kael moment on Nov 9
Likable???? She was as smug and douchy as ever.
My head EXPLODES !!
So any support for Trump is automatically racist, just as any attack of Obama's policies are also racist.
Do these people ever tire of playing the race card?
The weakness so many like Krugman have is that a LOT of people saw the first half hour. He doesn’t have the luxury of describing something they didn’t see.
And we are saying, “did you see the same debate you did?”
“did you see the same debate you did?”
Meant to be: “did you see the same debate we did?”
We have to go back to Teddy R to understand Trump’s appeal. The “Rough Riders” were a notorious gang of thugs (by some accounts, noteably, the Krugmans of the time) that stood unabashedly for Wild West Americanism, not hothouse, prissy elitism.
Couple this with a growing realization among the electorate that those in charge are moving the nation into the hands of a global autocracy.
Trump stands astride the core of the American Spirit. He is the Hero, warts and all, who promises to bring us back to a time when men were men and ladies were, uh, ladies and Americans were committed to their Constitution.
I think Krugman should make all kinds of Ads “FOR” Hillary. He is an A$$hole who is a known liar and Dem Operative. He has helped ruin this country’s financial position by using false theories and promoting them. Let him talk. It can only help Trump.
No, they never tire of it. The race card and lies has got them into and kept them in power.
Got close and has stayed close...it will be interesting to watch when Trump ends up with a significant percent of the minority vote.
Another man with a love for HIS country, soundly criticized by the rest of the world because he just kills drug dealers ... is an example of the fire Americans feel in the pit of their bellies, too many not even acknowledging that fire, but it's there.
For Duterte it's drugs and for Trump it's the government sponsored and assisted infiltration of illegal enemies into our beautiful nation.
If you ever get a chance to hear a Duterte speech, you'd be impressed, he speaks mostly in English, even to his people.
Is he actually blaming a hostile media for attacking Clinton unfairly? How out of touch is this lunatic? She was never really in a dominant position because Trump is a movement candidate. He upends the established assumptions. The polls are only starting to reflect the reality that has been there almost the whole time.
Smug and douchy is likeable to liberals.
But, but, but, those are ‘white nationalist’ minorities.
Hillary didn’t get gored. She just happens to be like Gore. Actually she is much worse.
I still remember Gore’s lockbox line from the debate. No memorable lines from Hillary. She failed to present a vision and just reacted to Trump the whole time.
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