Post-debates, post... mortem? Hillary's ten mistakes. And Donald's missing veer.

All right, I've been typing too much about the G#!*&d@m election.  Oh, for it to be over! And yet, like Donald Trump, I get addicted to my audience -- which consists of mostly bright folks who want to get some off-angle perspectives, of the kind you get only here!  So what to I do with my backlog of extra material? 

Tell you what... I'll go ahead with this posting that was already prepared... but if you want to see my list of Ten Mistakes Hillary Made in the 3rd Debate, then scroll down and click on comments!  I'll post my list as comment number one.  She made some doozies... though of course, she still did a good job.

Perhaps you'll find that list more entertaining than...

== Why Donald Never Tried for the Center... ==

Way back six months ago I predicted – perhaps naively – that the Republican nominee would choose a couple of standard GOP insanities to drop during this campaign… both for the sake of the nation and for his own sake… and that with both nominees agreeing, we could finally turn our backs on insipid, disproved nostrums like climate denialism and Supply Side Voodoo Economics.  I even envisioned Donald Trump doing this!  Since he has no historic vesting in standard, GOP (loony) platforms. 

That – alas – did not happen.  DT has doubled down on every single Murdochian catechism, focusing solely on his base, for one reason an one reason only…

…because he gets off at those big rallies of his. They are his Big Man High. They are his universe. When he wallows in the cheers of thousands, it is easy for him to pander to their every bigotry and Fox-Limbaugh mantra, telling himself that these crowds represent hundred of millions.  

So, no veer to the center. No strategic re-ordering of the campaign. Sigh and alack, this is no “genius.”

Only… we did see one glimmer of might-have-been, during the Vice Presidential debate, when Mike Pence spoke of criminal justice reform… which means reducing penalties that have, for generations, been slammed on victimless crimes like simple drug possession and especially focused on minorities. Some other GOP leaders have spoken of this as one small area where they’d be willing to break Dennis (convicted sexual predator) Hastert’s Rule against ever negotiating with democrats.   

But Hastert’s influence still reigns beyond prison walls. “After promising to bring a package of reform legislation up for a vote in the House in September, Speaker Paul Ryan changed his mind last month, and Congress went into recess without moving forward. The problem, according to members and advocates, is not that the bills wouldn’t have passed but that they would have split Republican lawmakers — and GOP leaders were wary of a divisive intra-party fight just weeks before November’s election.”

Still, I’ll grab hope where I can find it.  If we can flip Congress, then this will be among the first items to get enough Republican support to pass.

== Bernie setting an example ==

Hey you grumbling Bernites: "The senator from Vermont just raised $2 million in two days online for 13 like-minded U.S. Senate and House candidates" 

Bernie is doing what I urged YOU to do. While campaigning for Clinton, he's focusing hard on Congress, where the legislation that he wants must pass, cornering HC to put up. So, are you just a grumbler? Or someone who can act, as well as gripe? There's likely a tipping point race for Congress or state assembly near you and it's not to late to help, or donate. In fact, your state assembly can be crucial, so step up. Or else know that you're just hot air.

== Crossover votes? ==

Democrats who once buzzed about a possible Hillary Clinton landslide aided by disaffected Republicans, are finally waking up. If U.S. conservatives have one renowned character trait it is stubborn loyalty. Hillary Clinton’s forlorn efforts to woo more than a few of the sanest are – and always were – doomed, as your neighbors who are republicans follow their usual pattern of coalescing around their nominee.  

Okay, it may work with college educated women.  And (again) those sane enough to have noticed that the GOP wages outright war on science and every other fact-based profession.  Beyond that, she and her advisers are being foolish in almost a dozen ways.

It is time (!) to shift 50% of efforts from 'sumo' politics to Judo. 

Okay, I've said some of these things before and hence this particular list of points to raise is rather late.  Still, these may help in arguments with co-workers or naighbors:

1- Plenty of Republicans dismiss Trump as a temporary disease-aberration. He is a symptom. Portray him as the natal outcome of Rupert Murdoch and Roger Ailes's takeover of US conservatism.

2- Clinton used the word 'Republican' just ONCE in the 1st debate. It is time to use Trump as a wedge to go after the party that nominated him… yet was so ashamed of the Bushes, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Hastert and every other GOP leader between Reagan & Ryan that the RNC only mentioned ONE of them! What a zinger.

3- Add to that the pure fact that most measures of U.S. national health do far better across Democratic administrations, and we'd be father along if the GOP congresses had passed the damn infrastructure bill.

4- Answer the 'deficit' attack on Obama by pointing out that our interest payments have hardly risen at all. And the rate of change of deficits is what matters! They always slow down during Democratic admins and speed up during GOP ones. Always. People can understand that!

5- List the professions that the right now attacks! Not just science, teaching, journalism, medicine, economics… but all of the knowledg or fact-using castes. Dare Trump to name an exception.

6- Regarding Trump preparing to call the election 'rigged'… demand he appoint five trusted-adults to a commission to investigate the charges NOW, before the election, with five appointed by former Republican supreme court judges like Sandra Day O'Conner. Dare him to do it now, for the sake of the republic.

7- Further challenge him to name five respected conservative sages to another commission to do fact checking! Now! Before the election, so he can't dismiss every single fact-checking service as partisan. The fact that Hillary Clinton has not done this is simply unforgivable negligence.

8- Talk about gerrymandering.

9- Talk about how for 20 out of 22 years, the GOP-led Congresses have been the laziest in U.S. history! That accusation does a judo around partisanship and attacks the character of those bozos.

Which is vital, Hillary, if you want to have a Congress. If you want a honeymoon that lasts more than fifteen seconds.

== What we can't ignore == 

I have long railed against the blatant cheating in U.S. elections, especially gerrymandering, which these analysts show to be largely responsible for the Republican Party holding on to the House of Representatives, despite large majorities of citizens having voted for their congressional opponents. The standard excuses, like a disadvantage to urban populations, collapse on scrutiny. Paul Ryan owes his speakership to cheating and only to cheating. And he knows it.

This is one of the biggest reasons the GOP’s donor caste is pouring in money - despite their loathing of Donald Trump. Were either Congress (through the 13th Amendment) or a new Supreme Court to end gerrymandering and other cheats, the GOP would lose not just following congressional elections but likely a dozen or so state assemblies, where the real corruption lies. The transparency that follows would benefit we citizens — as it has in states that have banned such practices, like California, Oregon, Washington and a dozen other blue states. (Notably only one red state.)

Hence the cash flows to Trump and especially to Republican congressional candidates. Because when this crime breaks, it will break big.

There are other cheats too, of course, such as rigging voting machines. In most blue states there is a paper receipt or paper ballot that ensures the voting machines can be audited randomly, by precinct.  This prevents cheating by machine rigging... in those states. But not in most red states, where almost any result can be ordered up, on command.

Then there is more old-fashioned cheating, by intimidation, which Donald Trump recently called for in minority neighborhoods.

== political miscellany ==

After 7 years rebuilding our shattered Army and especially the Reserves and National Guard - which had been almost destroyed by George W. Bush - the Obama Administration has focused on improving the training of Guard units to ensure they are rapidly effective in emergencies.  The mythology that Republicans are better at defense is one of perhaps three dozen proofs of utter ignorance and stupidity. By the end of BOTH Bush administrations, not a single major US Army unit was “fully combat ready” and reserve units were in tatters. By the end of both the Clinton and Obama Admins, every single major Army unit was so rated. Despite GOP-ordered sequesters that robbed defense in order to maintain Bushite tax cuts for the rich.

There are no metrics of national health - including conservative desires like military readiness and fiscal responsibility, that don’t do better across democratic administrations.  None.  Not one.

The Clinton Foundation is small potatoes.  It is one of its sub-projects - the Clinton Global Initiative - that has done the huge accomplishments, by negotiating treaties among stakeholders from governments to NGOs to corporations, arm-twisting cooperative commitments that led the the purchase of billions of dollars worth of AIDS and other medicines.  Yes, much of that spending would have happened anyway.  But Bill Clinton's gladhanding and arm-twisting and cajoling and negotiation prowess made the whole thing cohesive, efficient and focused.  The Clinton FOUNDATION mostly contributed by helping organize the meetings and applying some seed money.

However you look at it, you are left with the simple fact that Democratic ex-presidents and ex-VPs move on frenetic good works while GOP exes do the diametric opposite.  Noting could better outline the difference in fundamental personality.

== A good question ==

Why do evangelicals support Donald Trump? Turns out one trait overcomes any aversion to a philandering, gambling lord tax-cheater on his 3rd wife, who adores Putin and wants to pile ever-more huge tax breaks for the rich. Who surrounds himself with philandering multi-divorces and sexual predators and un-Jesus-like haters. What one trait overcomes all that?  Why, they share the same enemies, of course. Tribalism trumps all else.

Oh, one more reason? Well, Mike Pence is everything they want. (See? I  did circle back!) DT chose Pence as a peace offering to social conservatives. But he thereby proved his own low-IQ. Because even if he wins this election, Pence will betray him.

The Impeachment Gambit will let Ryan,  Rupert Murdoch and George Will seize back the party they see as “stolen” by Trump. All they need do is wait for some inevitable post-January Trumpian travesty. They’ll then tell the democrats: “Go ahead, impeach him. We’ll supply JUST enough GOP votes to ensure you’ll succeed.”

What a win-win! They get rid of the upstart and grab their party gravy train back with a puppet in the Oval Office… and no need to mollify DT’s infuriated followers; they can blame the democrats!  If the dems are so stupid as to fall for the trap.  I’ve written about the Impeachment Gambit before. And it is not just plausible. It is THE reason why Ryan, Murdoch & co are playing nice and working for Trump. If he wins, it is as inevitable as sunrise. 

== Post Debate roundup: Hillary's ten mistakes ==

Yes, yes, she won and most sane people are glad. Not my first choice but a solid, smart lady and I'll sleep well for four years.  (Even better if Paul Ryan is not 2 heartbeats away.)

Still, tactics are tactics and they could have been improved.  And I will give you my list Ten things Hillary might have done better, posted below in comments, as well as on the AmericanNewsX site..

POST DEBATE EXTRA - She won, yet I'm bummed

I am so bummed. Oh, sure, she dealt with him pretty well personally, including his huge self-indulgence promising a special prosecutor against her, if he's elected. (24 years and half a billion dollars in investigations and you guys still got nothing.)

Still, she left standing every one of his doom-gloom lies about the state of the nation. For example, assertions that:

- The EPA is killing energy companies.
- Health care costs are rising at the fastest rates ever.
- Manufacturing is in decline. 
- Crime is at its worst.
- Isis is an existential threat worth allying ourselves with Assad and Russia and Iran.

All of these are lies of such stunning magnitude - diametrically opposite to all facts - that she could have sent viewers to a neutral site -- instead of ludicrously suggesting HillaryClinton.com! To leave standing the right's all-out assault on American self-confidence is - itself - an act of betrayal.

In fact:

- Old-dinosaur carbon companies are in trouble because the U.S. has discovered so much oil and gas that we are now energy independent again, for the first time since the 1960s, allowing us to stop catering to petro princes in the Middle East. This plus the vast progress made in solar and sustainables have us in better shape than ever... except for those dinosaurs. 

... and the price of gas is half of what it was under GW Bush. So is the cost of a rooftop of solar panels. And US car companies are thriving under far better mileage standards and quality.

- Health care costs are NOT rising at the fastest rates ever. Since Obamacare, what was a disaster has become a mere irritant. What had been a skyrocket in health costs has slowed down to only slightly above inflation. It is a huge victory! Even though, in fact, Obamacare (which was originally the GOP's own plan) should be replaced with something simpler ASAP... once we get a sane Congress.

(By the way, no Canadian would trade their health system for ours - pre or post Obamacare. Not one. Watch. If we get a sane Congress, the first move will be simple: put all children on Medicare.)

- Manufacturing is NOT in decline. Spurred by cheap natural gas and good policies and new tech, manufacturing in the U.S. is rapidly rising. Why Clinton did not brag about the longest period in U.S. history without a recession, with major job growth the entire time since Obama took office, is beyond me.

Yes, the middle class and jobs would be far healthier if Congress passed the decade delayed Infrastructure Bill that has been entirely blocked by the Republican Party. Let me get back to that.

- Crime is at its worst? Another towering Trump lie. There have been small upticks this year, in a few cities, after 30 years of steady declines in crime in the U.S. Declines that were even faster across most of the Obama Administration. In fact Americans have never been - on average - more safe.

- Then there's this Trumpism. 'Isis is an existential threat worth allying ourselves with Assad and Russia and Iran.' What wimps! Americans have suffered almost no casualties per capita from those incompetent wretches. We must fight them and stop them - and it is happening without U.S. casualties, a switch from GOP ways to doing war. Nevertheless, panic is for losers.

SIDE NOTE: Notice how Trump went on and on about Mosul? Did you remark on that? Why did he do that? 

I suspect it is because he has had security briefings and now believes Mosul will fall to Iraqi forces soon! He does not want this to be an October Surprise to make the Democrats look good. Hence, he prepped the way for his response when Mosul falls, concocting a story that, by telegraphing the attack, our side allowed the ISIS leaders to "slip away."

The nerve! You don't 'sneak up' to a major city. You surround it and take the neighboring countryside. If there weren't a single news report, ISIS would know they were surrounded and doomed in Mosul. He knows his talking point to be fabulation. (And so does the military officer corps, so why doesn't HC speak of the far greater numbers of retired officers supporting her?) Moreover, for any Republican to accuse Clinton or Obama of letting the Jihadist leadership get away is hilarious! Beyond bin-Laden, they have snuffed almost a hundred major jihadist leaders, compared to the Bushite score of .... zero. (Though in fairness, vastly more Americans died under the Bushes.)

But there you get to my biggest complaint. She hardly mentioned the words "republican" or 'Congress' or "Bush." Or the fact that not a single GOP leader between Reagan and Ryan was even mentioned during the recent RNC, out of shame over twenty wretched, accomplishment-free, harm-doing, America-undermining leaders like both Bushes, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Dennis-pervert-Hastert, Tom-convicted-felon-DeLay and Roger-Sexual-predator-Ailes.

Indeed, DT himself disavows one of GW Bush's only two accomplishments... the Iraq War. Now if only he'd also drop Supply Side voodoo.

No, I cannot begin to measure my fury at HC's advisers. Yes, she seemed to have dealt with Bill Clinton's sexual past in a way that worked, by simply blowing past and ignoring DT's attempts to get a rise. I'd have preferred to get a couple sentences out of her, like: "This is you and me now, Donald."

But the thing I cannot comprehend is her refusal to make an issue of Congress. The public despises Congress! And for good reason. She could say that for 20 of the last 22 years it has been the laziest in U.S. history, seldom in session, holding hardly any hearings that did not involve Hillary Clinton, and blocking almost every effort to adapt to 21st Century problems. The word "lazy" would judo outside the normal left-right divide and she could slip in that those were years of GOP control.

She must do this! HC is acting as if winning the presidency is everything. It's not! Without a Congress, she'll be almost impotent and we'll be stuck with years and years of hell, with Paul Ryan both blocking her every move and sitting there 2nd in line to the presidency.

She could tell Republicans... "Hey, take your lickings in Congress now, and come back in two years with better GOP candidates who negotiate like adults." But for now? Well...

...Donald Trump is not a temporary 'disease' on conservatism. He is a symptom of a deeper aliment inflicted on U.S. conservatism and the Republican Party and America foremost by one man --

-- by Roger Ailes. Whose similarity to Donald Trump in all ways is no accident.

---

PS... I left out how she should mention the War on Science and all other knowledge professions. 

Or how desperately urgent it is to dare DT to help name a commission to do both fact checking and look into his accusations of election stealing.  

If his "election stealing" gambit is left standing un-refuted, then we are in for a tsunami of Timothy McVeighs, after November.  So please Hillary Clinton, grab this one by the horns.

Fact checking the Debate, part II

Following up on my earlier post -- Fact-checking the first presidential debate....

Donald Trump railed about “jobs” leaving states like Michigan and Ohio. But unemployment in Michigan and Ohio is  down to 4.5%, excellent and below the national average. Ford is sending work to its Mexican factories building cheap, small cars. But small car production is always destined to go overseas and the fast-rising Mexican middle class buy our goods.  Meanwhile those Michigan factories are being retooled to make profitable larger vehicles and no Ford US jobs are lost. 

Also regarding jobs: For comparison: jobs added per year was strongest under Bill Clinton (2.8 million), followed by Carter (2.6 million), Reagan (2 million), Obama (1.3 million as of January, in much more challenging times.) And the record worst performers? H.W. Bush (659,000), and W. Bush (160,000).  Which raises yet again the judo challenge that HC should demand:

"Why at your party's recent convention was there no mention of the most recent GOP presidents? Nor the hames Cheney, Hastert, DeLay, Boehner, Ailes, or any other Republican leaders between Reagan and Ryan? Ashamed, a little?" 

Name a major metric of US national health that does not do better across the span of democratic administrations. As I show very clearly here. And yes, that includes fiscal responsibility.  Why leave the American voters assuming the polemic that Republicans are better on debt? When the opposite is true.

Here’s another of those judo challenges. Is Hillary aware (she has to be) that one of the most electrifying moments of her DNC acceptance speech was when she shouted “I believe in science”? Beyond science, name one - just one - knowledge profession that the Foxite cult is not waging war against. Every profession of skill and knowledge in American life, from teachers and journalists to economists, medical doctors... name an exception!

But yes, Donald Trump has repeatedly called Climate Change a “hoax” and helped egg on the War on Science.  The US Navy has issued many reports expressing worry and asking for more money to prepare for an ice-free Arctic. But this is not just Trump! It should be used as an attack against the Republican congressional establishment.

== Added debate fact-checks ==

The nerve of the guy, to raise the issue of our bridges and roads and infrastructure collapsing, when it is the GOP run Congress that has blocked infrastructure bills for a generation. And some have openly admitted that it is because the resulting economic stimulation would benefit a democratic president.  That is called treason.

DT: “NAFTA is the worst trade deal maybe ever signed anywhere but certainly ever signed in this country.”

Oh what nonsense drivel. As Marilyn Geewax points out: ‘Most studies show NAFTA had a relatively small impact on the U.S. economy. "NAFTA did not cause the huge job losses feared by the critics or the large economic gains predicted by supporters. The net overall effect of NAFTA on the U.S. economy appears to have been relatively modest," according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service.’

But that is myopic.  True, NAFTA’s short term effects on the U.S. have been fairly minimal. But the same is not true of its effects on Mexico, whose skyrocketing middle class is directly attributable to NAFTA.  And a prosperous, middle class Mexico is among the 21st Century events that US citizens should most desire, offering fantastic benefits in both trade and security, downstream. No one mentions this, because pundits do not think Americans are capable of understanding the concept of a positive sum, win-win game.

But moving on… the birther lunacy shows how deeply into madness some of our countrymen have plunged. Alas, while the news media has let itself be lured by DT into talking about birth certificates, it’s been easy for racist dopes to convince themselves that such a document can be faked.  

So it puzzles me why no one mentions how dozens of copies of the August 4, 1961 edition of the Honolulu Advertiser keep turning up in garages all over Oahu, containing the birth announcement of Barack Obama. Please tell us how he faked that -- such super powers. Please tell us, oh hypocrites who happily ignored Ted Cruz being born in Canada.

Oh, but the nonsense keeps on fizzing. DT: “We should have taken the oil” from Iraq."

Really.  Wage war against the country we just ‘liberated’? Really.  In fact, the last 70 years has featured more (if imperfect) peace and prosperity than any span across the existence of our species, largely because (1) Pax Americana kept that peace, and (2) we deliberately - in the late 1940s - did the opposite of the “winner takes the spoils.” The first conquering empire to be generous instead of rapacious.  It has worked.  Like scores of mature decisions that confederates and Trump now revile and abjure.

Trump was more on-target pointing out that the Obama Administration did poorly preparing the Iraqi military to resist ISIS and handling the aftermath to the ousting of Khaddafi in Libya.  These were foreign policy disasters… though the former was 90% a product of stunning incompetence by the Bush Administration, which left an Iraq so hostile to the US that we had to pull all forces. It was not our choice.

Trump is also right that NATO partners should shoulder more of the burden of their own defense.  This is already starting to happen, in part because of miscalculations by DT’s bromance partner Vladimir Putin. What’s not helpful is screaming at the most successful alliance in the history of the world.

The gall of attacking the state of U.S. military readiness is almost as astonishing as the fact that no fact-checker called Trump out about this. Let’s be extremely clear. 

At the end of either Bush Administration, not a single major US Army unit was “fully combat ready” and in both cases the Army reserves were almost destroyed. In sharp contrast, by the end of the Clinton and Obama administrations, every single major US Army unit was “fully combat ready”. The reserves have been repaired. And the US military is presently undergoing the quickest and most thorough modernization in its history.

Defense, like crime and fiscal responsibility, should not be left alone as some bulwark assumption of Republican superiority. They are not better at defense.  Not even remotely.

Despite that, Trump made a good point about North Korea.

The payments to Iran though, were simply returning to them their own money, of which we had free use for more than 30 years.

Trump claimed a “hundred generals and admirals” support him.  Ahem. Those are retired generals and admirals, and proclaiming this so loudly was not patriotic. We do not need even a scintilla of support for any image – ever – of partisanship by the officer caste. 

I do know that more retired generals and admirals support Clinton, by far.  But in this case she’s wise to be reticent and leave it a demure and understated thing. 

Let me be clear. The aspect that generals and admirals and admirals dread most about a Trump presidency – other than a return to Republican doctrines of war (see that laid out here)…

…is the very high likelihood that a President Trump would rashly force our flag officers into choices between obedience to the Commander in Chief vs. faithfulness to the nation and its citizens. This is a very real fear! It is discussed in muted tones, over sour beer, everywhere those officers now meet, after duty hours.

Only now, let me turn and accuse the democrats and pundit caste of a genuine unfairness! Re Trump's early ‘support’ of George W. Bush’s Iraq invasion, I actually have some sympathy for him. The one statement on the Howard Stern Show that is used against him is rather weak evidence for “supporting” the Bush misadventure. I don’t mind crediting Trump with being tepid-to-hostile toward Bush’s WMD lies and concocted excuses for a war that killed 5,000+ Americans and perhaps a million other people while benefiting only Cheney family companies. And Iran.

What is not permissible is for Donald Trump to shrug off association with the political party that deliriously supported both horrifically awful Bush presidencies and that fostered the War on Science and other insanities.  

Which brings us full circle to Hillary Clinton’s worst and most cynical sin.

In hoping not to offend wavering moderate republicans and drawing them to vote for her, she has chosen to ignore the Republican Party – the elephant that was weirdly missing and never once actually mentioned during the entire debate!  This was penny-wise, shortsighted and spectacularly foolish.

It speaks ill, suggesting shortsightedness, since only a GOP-trouncing will give her – even for just 2 years – a Congress that might pass the legislation that she (and we) need.

It also shows he limited perspective on her own self-interest! Because even if she wins the White House, leaving the monstrously dogmatic, hateful and lazy current (Murdochian) version of republicanism untouched will guarantee her presidency to living hell.

== Added matters ==

One of you reminded me about Gingrich’s Contract With America, which was one of the best bits of political polemic in decades. Note that Newt was just about the only Republican leader from the era between Reagan and Ryan who got a mention and a speech at the RNC.  Which was sweet revenge, since Hastert & DeLay & Boehner & Ryan betrayed and ousted him.

Why? For the crime of actually negotiating  with Bill Clinton some bills to benefit America. For that crime, violating the Hastert rule, he was sent into exile. The only sci fi author in Congress.

My twenty suggestions to the new administration in 2009 begins here: Unusual Suggestions to America and a New Administration.

Notable in the list is a proposal that the dems should study the Contract With America. It offers lessons and there are some (mostly liberal) ways that is should be emulated. 

== Return to Part I: Fact-checking the Presidential Debate.

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