Debate followup: Why 'fact-checking' won't work without... judo!

Okay okay. I give up. I’ll comment on the presidential debate...

First off, it appears that the press and punditry are overwhelmingly declaring Hillary the winner.  And certainly she was, in most ways, first by displaying fiercely intelligent grasp of policy issues. Second, she succeeded in drawing Donald Trump to avow smugness in his true record, a past riddled with predatory and dishonest business practices.  Reports tell of sample groups of undecided voters “gasping” when DT proudly claimed to be “smart” by paying little to no federal taxes on annual incomes in the $500 million range.

Still, I don't see it as a blowout. In fact, I am highly ticked off at Secretary Clinton, for a rather shallow performance. Too many times, she wallowed in a Sumo match with Trump over this or that line in the sand, instead of using Judo to send him flying.

== The fact-check trap ==

Oh, there are plenty of sober sites and individuals out there doing truthiness checks. (Some of the best were done by NPR , PolitiFact, and The New York Times.) As someone on Twitter quipped: "We're going to need a bigger Snopes."

Alas, early on, Hillary Clinton invited viewers to go to her own web-site to scan a real time truth inspection of the debate. Seriously? You expect that to sway undecideds? All it did was add weight to the notion that “facts” are a matter of partisan interpretation. Trump has been very effective telling his followers that when a site like CNN or Politico debunks one of his statements, it only means that they are members of a liberal, “lamestream” conspiracy.

What would be effective? Try the following:

“Okay Donald, you dismiss any fact-checking service as biased. Yet the American people need fact-checking they can rely on! So here’s a challenge. You appoint six sages whom you trust – august and respected Americans who will likely serve on your cabinet or as court appointments. I’ll do the same. And we’ll ask retired Supreme Court justices like Sandra Day O’Conner, most of them republican appointees, to pick another six.

“Those 18 folks will meet immediately to set up a truly non-partisan fact checking service, with a million dollars from my campaign and from yours, getting it up and running by the next debate. Come on, let’s get this done, Mr. Businessman! Let’s do it for the nation, on time and under budget!”

That sort of thing would corner him. If he refuses or stalls, that fact becomes instantly clear. If he appoints shills, then those twits will compare unfavorably to HC’s choices and O’Conner’s. And if he goes along, he’ll know he’s about to be fact-checked by a service partly of his own devising, designed from scratch to be impartial.

In fact, there are dozens of areas where Clinton and the dems could issue simple, direct and unavoidable challenges. For example, below I’ll offer one that would corner Trump regarding his tax return.

It is called jiu jitsu or judo.  And by now Clinton should be good at it.  Alas, she seems stuck in sumo mode. And I find that unimpressive.

== The Missing Elephant ==




Want more such off-angle perspectives? I got a million. Here’s one that’s simply gigantic. It’s… well… huge. I have to wonder – am I the only one who noticed the elephant that was missing from the room?  

Go ahead and do a word search in the debate transcript. Except for a couple of blithe, offhand references to bipartisanship and past officials who have defected to her, there were no uses or instances of the word "Republican." None by Clinton or Trump.




Indeed, if you scan the transcript, you'll find zero uses of the word "Congress," the other and equally important political branch of government that is at-stake in this election.  

This despite the fact that the Republican Party has dominated Congress for 20 of the last 22 years. Two decades of sullen, glowering indolence, during which role models like Dennis (convicted child molester) Hastert and Tom (convicted felon) DeLay transformed the world's greatest deliberative body into the nastiest and laziest in U.S. history, completely obedient to Fox chairman Roger (sexual predator) Ailes.

Sure, democrats have accused these and other GOP leaders of dogmatism in the past. But it is the laziness charge that I find sticks in even conservative voters’ craws. 

Seriously, who is advising Clinton to lay off Republicans? 

She could ask: what kind of party does not even mention its last two presidents, during their national convention? 

Indeed, tally up every GOP leader between Reagan and Ryan -- only one of them was even mentioned at the recent Republican National Convention! The words “Bush” and Hastert, DeLay, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Gingrich, McConnell and so on are unutterable by Donald Trump, or any other Republican, so why does Hillary refrain?

Apparently, she has been advised not to go partisan because some moderate Republican voters might make a lifetime exception, hold their noses and vote for her instead of Trump. Also, Trump is ready with a comeback – “I’m a rebel against all those jerks who ran the party before me!”

Fine. Then use that!  The more he says it, the more he’ll undermine and anger down-ticket Republicans. It’s called judo.

Oh, this is stunning foolishness in several ways! 

(1) Because these associations will help, not hinder, her campaign to defeat Donald Trump. Moreover…

(2) Suppose she does win, but those same Republican voters then reward GOP down-ticket candidates, returning the Senate and House to GOP control. Then Hillary Clinton’s "honeymoon" as president will last three minutes and the rest will be a volcanic, accomplishment-free, living hell. There is only one way to prevent that, and to give the American people what they need, a functioning second branch of government filled with pragmatic, negotiating adults.

(3) Conservative Americans will benefit if their party is demolished – immolated - in 2016, giving them a couple of years to rebuild something that is not just another mad, sequel-froth of Bushes, Cheney, Trump, or Rupert Murdoch. Conservatives might come roaring back as a party of grownups, no longer sending us lazy, dogmatic, gerrymandering cheaters who wage war on science and every other knowledge profession in American life.

Hey, it could happen! Two years in the wilderness and you might achieve that wonder!  But first. Get out of the peoples’ house.  We have work to do.

== Tax returns ==

Clinton did really well exploiting Trump’s refusal to release tax returns, luring him into admitting – in fact proudly avowing – that he was “smart” to avoid helping pay for roads, schools and national defense. She’d have done better still by asking everyone in the audience if they paid any federal income tax last year, suggesting it was probably more than Donald Trump did on 694 million dollars.

And yet, DT can continue to weasel out by claiming the “IRS audit” dodge, leaving this a matter of (again) sumo pushing and shoving to sway the next 1% of voters.

How could it be done as judo? Simple:

“Donald, the IRS has said you can legally release your return during an audit, but you claim your lawyers forbid it. The IRS could choose to waive any audit, removing that excuse. But then you could scream they did it for ‘partisan reasons.’

“Fine, then how about you right now publicly ask:

(1) the IRS to confirm that you are currently under audit – (so far all we have is your word for it) – and

(2) the IRS to drop the audit, in the national interest, so you can release your returns before the election. By asking, you’ll let them do it without accusations of partisanship. I’ll be happy to go along with it, so the American people can find out what you’ve been up to.”

It’s another of those jiu jitsu challenges that would leave him cornered. How could he not ask to have the audit canceled and to get immunity for this year’s returns? Any excuse he made at that point would sound way beyond smarmy and contrived.

== Come on, Hill, stand up! ==

Sure I know your advisers are saying that the public is too angry to listen to good news.  That any attempt to brag over the country’s direction and gains will backfire on you.

They are dead wrong. You can find ways to combine “things are getting better” with “there’s a lot wrong that needs fixing.” You have tried to do that, I admit… and done miserably.

Sure, you offered one sentence about how crime has overall declined. A lot, since your husband was in office. One sentence. Almost as if you were embarrassed.

Sure, FBI crime data published Monday said violent crime rose slightly in 2015 but remains near record lows. A few hot spots like Chicago have surged with violent crime, but even in Chicago, it’s limited to a small number of neighborhoods. Yes, we have some degree of crisis. But cowering and whimpering and dividing Americans will not help. 

Hey how about mentioning how technology is empowering both good cops and citizens, and law and order should be a lot better, once we work out the kinks on this transparency thing.

(Oh, by the way. I don’t expect this as a debate point, but crime was highest in the southern United States, the report found. At 45.9 per 100,000 people, the murder and manslaughter rate in the region was more than twice as high as in the West, the Midwest and the Northeast, according to the FBI. Rates of rape, assault and property crime were dramatically higher as well.  Just saying. We do not need lectures from the Confederacy.)

I’m not done. There are so many other places to angrily (!) stand up, Hill. Like this travesty by DT:

“Our energy policies are disaster. Our country is losing so much in terms of energy, in terms of paying off our debt.”

In fact:, as related by Scott Horsley in that NPR fact-check: ‘Domestic oil and gas production have increased steadily during President Obama’s time in office. The U.S. has been the world’s leading producer of natural gas since 2011 and the top producer of oil since 2013. The Energy Information Administration says gasoline prices averaged $2.17 a gallon last week — about a nickel cheaper than a year ago, and about 30 cents a gallon less than Obama’s first year in office, and about a buck and a half less than during George W. Bush’s last year in office.’

The Foxites have blocked sustainables at every turn. But they are arriving anyway. Arriving huge.

And I will offer further post-debate appraisals… more ways to do judo… next time.

== Continue to Part II: Fact-Checking the Presidential Debate