Surely Americans Know a Winner

Read the transcript. That’s my advice if you want to know who won the great debate. Forget the pompous pundits. They are either left-wing hacks or prissy conservatives impressed by style over substance. Trump won the debate in a landslide despite facing three opponents. Of course, it doesn’t matter what I think or what the aforementioned pundits think, what counts is what independent and swing US voters think.

This what I think about them. They are not idiots. If in fact they are idiots then our civilisation is lost. But they are not. If, understandably, you have creeping doubts in view of the election of the Teals, remember that over 60 percent of Australians voted No. This despite the opposing weight of money and of corporate, institutional and church propaganda. Absent the campaign rigging, I dare say, the 60 percent might have been closer to 80 percent. That result can be reliably mapped and projected across the Pacific to the United States.

Let me give you a small sample of the debate with an accompanying assessment of what Americans heard, as distinct from the pundits. The sample is broadly representative of the rest. As I said, the whole transcript, not the fake news, tells the real story.

The ABC’s David Muir, the Democrat operative posing as a journalist, kicked things off. “Do you believe Americans are better off than they were four years ago?”

“I was raised a as middle class kid,” Harris informed us, before telling us she planned to build “an opportunity economy” and had “love for our small businesses.” No answer to the question. All hollow and no follow-up by the moderators

Trump focussed on the deleterious effects of inflation and of immigration, and he did it well enough.

Kamala responded by saying that Trump left the Dems with “the worst unemployment since the Great Depression [and the] the worst public health epidemic in a century.”

Trump extolled his performance in tackling the epidemic and pointed out that “the only jobs they got were bounce-back jobs.”

What do insightful Americans take from this? They know that it is ridiculous to claim Trump was responsible for the pandemic and its effect on employment. They know he created a vibrant economy. And they know he reduced illegal immigration, which has exploded since he left office. Ergo she tried to make up a story which simply can’t fly. A bad mistake. For her future reference: only make up tall tales when the facts are vague and relatively unknown.

Postscript on this exchange. Harris accused Trump of thanking President Xi for what he did during Covid. She quoted his tweet: “Thank you, President XI!” Irony is lost on airheads; fortunately, not on most discerning Americans.

Muir’s co-moderator, fellow Dem Linsey Davis, turned to abortion. As I read the punditry, Trump lost this one badly. Au contraire.

Ms Davis tried to pin Trump down in opposing the six-week ban in Florida as being too short and then supporting it. “Vice President Harris says that women shouldn’t trust you on the issue of abortion because you’ve changed your position so many times. Therefore, why should they trust you?”

Leave aside why the moderator posed the question as she did, effectively speaking for Harris, the question itself was fair enough — as was Trump’s answer.

He explained that he was faced with a choice as a Florida voter of either supporting the over-six-week ban or of tacitly approving abortions up to nine months; and over nine months, which he referred to as “execution after birth.” And, separately, he made the telling point that six Supreme Court justices had quashed the Roe v. Wade decision and properly sent the issue back to the states to be decided by voters.

Davis, in passing the baton to Harris, felt obliged to inform her audience, again on behalf of Harris, that “there is in no state in this country where it is legal to kill a baby after it’s born.” How deceptive are leftists? Very. Perhaps babies who are alive when aborted cannot be killed but they can and are left to die.

Harris accused Trump of conspiring with his three appointees to the Supreme Court to outlaw abortion. And that he would, on becoming president again, “sign a national abortion ban.” She did well describing the plight of women denied a legal and safe abortion. It is familiar territory, never left unoccupied by those on the Left. However, it became largely lost in the fanciful idea that Congress would or could succeed in passing a bill banning abortion, which Trump would sign.

Trump said that he would not sign such a bill and such a bill would never come forward for his signature. In my view Trump won the logical argument but you have to say that so-called reproductive rights (i.e., unsaid, the right to kill unborn babies) always favours the Left. One, no doubt,  to Harris among a section of the sisterhood. But Trump did okay in a difficult area for conservatives whose positions are usually nuanced.

Muir turned to immigration. “We know that illegal border crossing reached a record high in the Biden administration.” How embarrassing. Though Muir added that since June, when Biden introduced new tough restrictions, the numbers had dropped significantly. Note the rider. Included by Muir advisedly in order to blur the premise. Namely, the Biden-Harris administration’s abject failure to control the border. Which by now, remember, even hardened MSNBC Democrats know about. So to the question to Harris: “Why did the administration wait until six months before the election to act and would you have done anything differently from President Biden on this?”

Harris didn’t answer the question. She replied by saying that she was “the only person on this stage who has prosecuted transnational criminal organisations for the trafficking of guns, drugs, and human beings.” And this was typical of her responses. Well-rehearsed and off the point. And that is the point. Supercilious pundits might be impressed. Most ordinary people are too bright to be taken in. Sounding good with no substance won’t cut the mustard among blue-collar workers and those out in the boondocks.

Trump nailed the issue. “What have we done to our country by allowing these millions and millions of to come into our country. And look what’s happening to the towns all over the United States.” Unfortunately, he got distracted by reports of migrants eating cats and dogs. Muir was onto this and batted for Harris by claiming that the city managers the ABC had reached out to had denied the existence of credible reports of domestic-animal eating. Trump should have known better than to be dragged into this trashy to and fro.  But it was yet another example of Trump vying with not one but three interlocuters.

I will go finally to Harris’s policy -shapeshifting while, in her meaningless words, having unchanging values. Davis reminded Harris that she previously wanted to ban fracking, to mandate gun buybacks, and to decriminalise border crossings. “So then, why have so many of your policy positions changed?”

A fair question deserving an answer. As per usual, no answer was forthcoming. None at all. And as per usual, the moderators let her get away with it scot-free. However, Harris did reveal in her non-answer that she was “raised by a hardworking mother who worked and saved and was able to buy our first home when I was a teenager.” Spiffing!

I don’t care how smooth her well-practised delivery. I am confident that ordinary people of commonsense saw through it for the pap that it is. Trump went a bit all over the place during this exchange, as is his wont, but, nevertheless, he made the point that Harris would ban fracking if she got the chance: “…if she won the election, the day after the election, they’ll go back to destroying our country and oil will be dead, fossil fuel will be dead.” Listen to this typically Trump way of putting things:

“She went out – she went to Minnesota and wanted to let criminals that killed people, that burnt down Minneappolis, she went out and raised money to get them out of jail. She did things that nobody would ever think of. Now she wants to do transgender operations on illegal aliens that are in prison. This is a radical left liberal that would do this. She wants to confiscate your guns and she will never allow fracking in Pennsylvania. If she won the election fracking in Pennsylvania will end on day one.”

Wonderful stuff and basically true enough. And, to repeat myself, people know it. They increasingly know who she is. The debate drew attention to her mind which, when not filled with wokeness, is empty.

I went through the whole transcript of the debate ticking many of Trump’s telling points. I couldn’t find anything from Harris that wasn’t lies, or vacuous or simply Trump-baiting. Sophisticates say he should have said this or that. He’s Trump. The important thing is that what he says is informed by commonsense even if he strays into backwaters at times. And, more to the point, he applies common sense when making policy. I think people see that and more so for the debate; and, at the same time, will see Harris as totally unfit to be the commander-in-chief.

Trump will win the election  if it is halfway fair. And this debate – which he won hands down — will help.