3 on 1 and Vance still won the debate handily

The moderators were not moderating the debate they were supporting panicky Tim Walz and still JD Vance was able to kick butt in the debate.  It was brilliant.  When polling comes in I'm sure it will be a win for Vance.  I'm equally sure, though it won't be polled, Vance pointing this out further chipped away at the abysmal levels of trust for the mainstream media.

Unfortunately, I'm also sure this debate will do little to move the polling, as VP debates have only a small impact.  I would caveat that a little here; it might mean more than normal, but just not a lot more.

I'm shocked that the fairest debate this election cycle was conducted by CNN (not really). Debate moderators have become useless given that they are all so left-biased now. 

How about the questions are pre-packaged and displayed on a screen to the participants and microphones are automated to turn on and off at set times? No people involved whatsoever. Questions can come from sources proposed by candidates and accepted by their opponents. For example Vance could request 10 questions come from Fox and Walz could request 10 from CBS. The questions would be asked alternately between both sources.  Just a thought.

Lies, lies, lies

Kamala's debate lies fact checked in real time:

Hugh Hewitt on the horrible debate performance by Harris, and ABC

I thought the debate was a tie.  But after watching Hugh Hewitt's take, maybe Trump did win based on the horrible performance by ABC and the dodgeball answers from Harris. He might be right.

What's the deal with the Ohio ducks?

Um, here:

I honestly don't think anyone won that debate. Trump lost in the sense that he missed a number of knockout punch opportunities.  Harris came across as snotty. Post debate insta-polls showed no real shift.  The media is claiming Harris won. I guess by not being as bad as Let's Go Brandon, she looks better by comparison. But I really saw nothing worthwhile in that debate from either candidate that would cause a voter shift.

Oh you'll see one, the fabricated polls will show another fictitious Kamala bounce. But it's designed to lead opinion not reflect it.  

There will be more bumps in the road to come before November.

Happy Labor Day

It's the unofficial end of summer, and I'm off to a slow blog start this month.  This after my busiest year of posting (so far) since 2011.  The next few weeks are likely to be a bit slower as I settle into a new role in my day job.  I'm hoping to have a decent reaction to the maybe happening Trump / Harris debate, but it will overall probably be a bit slower month for me.  By October, I'm hoping to be back in my regular swing of things.

In the meantime, Happy Labor Day. I hope everyone has a wonderful fall season, culminating in a big win in November.

Let's Go Brandon is going to be the nominee

You know how I know?  This CNBC article indicating that the Democratic establishment has not convinced him to leave; now they're backing the man.  Despite all the craziness that ensued in the media from the debate about wanting Let's Go Brandon to step aside, as Bill Burr once ranted "It ain't happening!"

Former Presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton on Friday tried to do some damage control following President Joe Biden’s debate fumble against his November election opponent, former President Donald Trump.

“Bad debate nights happen. Trust me, I know. But this election is still a choice between someone who has fought for ordinary folks his entire life and someone who only cares about himself,” Obama said in a post on X, linking to Biden’s campaign website. “Last night didn’t change that, and it’s why so much is at stake in November.”

Several hours later, Clinton mimicked the defensive play.

Sounds like they're now in a prevent defense.  Damage control for Democrats is defense against their own media and base, not against Republicans.

By the way, a great takeaway here is that it's easy to tell we're winning because our focus (at least in my case), is on what the Democrats are doing, not what the GOP is doing.  The lesson there for the GOP, as aptly demonstrated by Donald Trump during the debate, stay out of the way when your opponent is shooting themselves in the foot.  Let's hope the GOP do that this election cycle.

Adding to the debate fallout

 Let's Go Brandon shot himself in the foot Achilles heel in the June presidential debate. The Democrats are desperate. I think they may sentence Trump in NY to prison time. They're truly desperate.  They need to shake things up.  They cannot do it successfully any other way so far. They don't have much ammo to use. They're bereft of ideas. Lawfare is one of the few things they have left. I think it's probably going to happen.

If it does it will be the biggest backfire in political history.

After the panic settles down

What are Democrats going to do now that they have exposed what they have been saddled with in Let's Go Brandon as candidate? Dump him or stick with him? 

When they first announced that the first presidential debate would happen in June (JUNE!), I immediately wondered why the Let's Go Brandon campaign team, with their list of debate demands, wanted the first debate so early in the election cycle.  This right after Let's Go Brandon himself was basically saying any time, any place. My mind immediately went to "there's a plan behind this". With the scheming Democrats, that's what you have to assume. It's not conspiracy thinking to ask the question "Why?"

The logical conclusion (and there were other possibilities, but less likely) was that they wanted time to be able to dislodge Let's Go Brandon as the nominee if he tanked in the debate.  I think they probably knew he would - at least the insiders knew. And they needed to debate Trump because they are down in most swing state polls, consistently. They are playing catch up because the leftist policies are ruining the country, and more and more people know for themselves what the policies are doing, especially in contrast to how well things were going under president Trump. 

But with Let's Go Brandon it's a roll of the dice for Democrats; you either get the stumbling and mumbling version or the hopped up on goofballs, cracked-out Biden.  They got the former when they needed the latter.  But the planning behind the timing was certainly deliberate. What Democrats got was a disaster that most every Republican voter was expecting to see, but that Democrat voters were in many cases, shocked to see after the mainstream media has been running defense for Let's Go Brandon since 2020.

So all that was before the immediate panic set in (to be honest for both Democrats and myself). Democrat elites and operatives are reaping what they have sewn.  Did they honestly think they could make it through a second election cycle hiding Let's Go Brandon in a basement?

The immediate panic was along the lines of we have to get Let's Go Brandon to bow out of the race, and Kamala Harris too. We need to parachute in a winner. A bright, younger, shiny and slick snake oil salesman like Gavin Newsome who couldn't govern his way out of a paper bag but talks well. Someone like that can win the logic would go.

But after the panic settles down, there are some startling realities for Democrats to face. It's not so easy to just drop the top of the ticket this late in the game.  As has been mentioned in a few places, he's on the ballot in some states at this point unless he dies.  Wisconsin has been brought up as an example of that. If you hand Wisconsin to Trump, along with the other swing states that are probably unreachable for Democrats (Arizona and Georgia alone), Trump has won. You're a Democrat and you're going to do that? I don't think so.

Not to mention, can you imagine the chaos of a brokered convention, the nominee decided behind closed doors after a full slate of Democrat primaries where Biden was chosen? How many disaffected Democrat voters does that create - and not just for this cycle, but perhaps permanently. Danger to democracy is their current mantra, how does that scenario fit their narrative?

It's likely that Democrats are stuck with Let's Go Brandon. What that means in the bigger picture:

1. They need a strong second debate on September 10th
2. Gavin Newsome is probably positioning himself for 2028.  
3. Democrats may have to discourage early/mail-in voting
4. After the realization sets in, an avalanche of mainstream media support for Brandon

The first point is inarguable.  The taste left in voters mouths is going to linger for the summer. Unless every rally is great (or the media goes back into full cover mode to portray it as such) for Let's Go Brandon, he has to perform amazingly at the second debate. I don't think that's likely but they don't have much choice other than to try to make that happen.  Maybe a month of debate prep for the next one, Democrats?

The reason the first point is true is because of the third point, which I will get to shortly.  The second point, Gavin Newsome needs to say the right things now, because while I believe he wants to be president, I think this cycle is so tarnished for Democrats that he would probably prefer to run in 2028 and not have so many Democrat self-imposed hurdles to overcome.

With Democrats needing a Let's Go Brandon recovery, they face some additional obstacles. Illinois, Minnesota, Oregon, Vermont and most notably Pennsylvania all have some form of early/mail-in voting that could run up against the debate date. Oregon is all mail-in voting. Pennsylvania "does not offer early voting, but counties may make absentee and mail-in ballot applications available to voters in person up to 50 days before Election Day."  That 50 days is September 16th. They are going to need Democrat voters to see a second debate win for Let's Go Brandon before casting a mail-in or absentee vote. 

Here's the problem; the second debate will most likely be a replay of the first debate.  While the hopped up on goofballs Let's Go Brandon is more likely to be the one that shows up next time (he has to be), no matter what the stimulants they fill him up with, he doesn't seem capable of what he was capable of doing at the State of the Union a mere few months ago. 

I'm not saying this race is over, dirty tricks from the Democrats are inevitable, cheating is inevitable, a miracle performance is possible too (however unlikely). We are seeing that with this half-thought out plan to have an early debate in case Let's Go Brandon failed miserably and they could replace him. What I'm saying is that Democrats have screwed themselves with their insatiable lust for power to the point it has become untenable.  It's not about Trump Derangement Syndrome - they hated Bush, they hated Reagan,  heck they even hated RINOs McCain and Romney when they ran for president. There is no Republican they will ever paint as human, let alone respectable in an election scenario. It's about retaining power and drifting the country evermore leftward through lies, deceit, manipulation and whatever else it takes. That is a house of cards that eventually HAS to collapse in on itself. I think we are seeing the beginning of that now.

The Democrat Insiders plan

I think a faltering Let's Go Brandon is exactly what insider Democrats wanted all along, and they wanted it this early. Barring a remarkable performance, they wanted him to fail. Voters on the right expected this. We knew he was an often incoherent, often rambling mess.  We knew he was a train wreck. We expected a weak or else coked-out Let's Go Brandon. As far as I can tell, he did better than I expected. He didn't win, he was awful, but he did better than I thought he would.

Make no mistake, Let's Go Brandon was weak. But normally in that situation, Democrats rally around their candidate.  In this case though, they immediately dumped him like they were sneaking out of a bad date during dinner.

It's like this was pre-planned to have this notion be the message: "[Let's Go Brandon] needs to step aside." They want another candidate. And they don't want it to be Kamala Harris.  They are going to pressure him to leave.

It might actually happen.

As Let's Go Brandon poll numbers continue to crumble, it's more and more plausible that Democrats dump Let's Go Brandon after the upcoming CNN debate. When even The Hill is pointing Let's Go Brandon mistakes and freeze ups, the Democrat playbook is being exposed - they are probably going to replace him.  I don't like saying that because he is an albatross around the necks of the Democrats.  He will help the chances of a red wave in November. A replacement candidate would be a wildcard.  I don't think it helps the Democrats much and might even be worse. But you never know. 

The Democrats cannot run this guy and win. I think they are starting to finally realize that.  They can no longer lie their way into victory. They can probably continue to cheat, but when the scope of the cheating becomes too big, they have to roll the dice.   I once thought they Democrats wouldn't do that, but now, I'm starting to think it's a more than 50% chance.

The irony is that if they had eased up on the lawfare cheating, and actually started giving a damn about the  border, they might have continued to have a chance at a 2024 win. Not that I would have liked it, but those two changes could have really helped them. 

Post debate, Trump looking even better

Polling post debate looks like president Trump's non-participation is helping, not hurting his polling.  I think at this point no one should be surprised.

Full GOP Debate

In the interest of sharing as much information as possible here's the full first 2024 GOP debate from August 23, 2023.

Interesting take on the Fox-hosted GOP presidential debate

Megyn Kelly's take is pretty good on Trump versus Fox News regarding the presidential debate.

The takeaway is that without Trump, Fox is in dead water territory. No current, no movement.

The fallacy of the logic and facts approach

You have to talk to people in terms that they will understand.  I don't mean intellectually understand, I mean in a way that resonates with them.  The problem with conservatives is we believe in facts and we believe in logic. Facts and logic can bring you to the truth, but that in itself is not a universal truth because many people operate illogically.  That's a fact conservatives often overlook.  The logic and facts approach is pure fallacy in many situations.

When talking to a woke liberal, we often forget that facts don't matter to everyone.  What resonates with people are things that affect them emotionally.  Take for example the notion that inflation has recently been at historical highs. Telling someone that fact has far less emotional impact than saying simply "I can't afford eggs anymore."  Implicit in that latter statement are a couple of fundamental notions that all revolve around empathy;

• it is likely they are in the same boat, or a similar one and have similar complaints
• complaining sounds whiney and woke liberals love that (snarky but not untrue)
• they can sympathize and feel bad for you (woke SJWs have to have an underdog to protect)

You have not only started a discussion with something that they can empathize with and also get behind trying to solve.  It's the start of a more pliable conversation instead of a debate.  You have started on what is probably common ground or at least at a place of empathy or sympathy.  The way forward at least exists from that point.  Hammering someone with facts will more have the opposite effect; entrenchment.

We don't do enough as conservatives to understand our audience and with each generation that happens it gets harder and harder to do because each generation has been Overton windowed further away from the fundamental truths of life.  I'm not talking just religion here, I'm talking about even the fundamental basics of common sense (e.g. 2 genders).

We have to understand that we are currently on the losing side of the culture war.  We have not lost but we are losing.  That means we have to work both harder and smarter.  I'm not suggesting I have all the answers as to who.  But I think one of the key notions is that we need better understanding.  We need to understand how to connect, but in order to do that we need to understand the map, the lay of the land as it currently exists.  We cannot change beliefs for the better without having both a starting point and an end point.

Here, as an example of trying to get to that understanding, Ken Ham discusses the state of Gen Z as it pertains to (lack of) religious belief.  It's a specific but excellent example of how to change the direction of society from a massive leftward drift to back on course.

How To Argue With Someone Who Won’t Listen

This needs to be understood, and followed:

Every time Jordan Peterson speaks it's worth listening.  But even more impressive is when he engages in a conversation, particularly so when it's with someone who does not agree with him.  Stephen Fry to his credit, while disagreeing with Jordan Peterson on some issues, is more interested in finding commonality and solutions rather than drawing rigid lines.   These two men again prove the value of conversation.

The only alternative to discussion is violence.  Nobody rational wants that .

Pence destroyed Harris in the VP debate

 Another post where no additional words are needed:

Trump got the COVID

 And it doesn't mean much, as long as he gets well. But that won't stop Democrats from harping on his "irresponsibility" in dealing with the disease.  But if the president gets well in a couple of weeks, he has a huge arrow in his quiver against Democrat hysterics about the disease.  We shall see.

Expect Biden to call for a cancellation of the debate in the coming days. Expect the president to resist. Perhaps even expect the president to turn up and debate an empty podium as Biden refuses to show up (you know they don't want him to debate Trump).  That said, an empty podium might help Biden. It won't mess up as much. 

Maybe I wasn't wrong about the debate.

 I said this, then Tim Pool said this, making me think possibly I was wrong.  Nope. Ben Shapiro sides with me on the net effect of the cluster**** of a debate:

I think the big loser in this is Chris Wallace.  He did a terrible job, by any measure, he was uneven in his treatment of the two men (to be kind about it) and he did not control the debate nor step out of the way.  He tried to control the debate and kept interrupting but never gained control.  So he did not accomplish an open debate forum and he did not  keep both men to stick to the rules. He was less than impartial, and somehow seemed to be a co-debater of Trump along with Joe Biden.

None of that matters in the Rorschach test of a debate.  People saw what they were expecting to see on both sides; their man won or nobody won.  Anyone not decided was not persuaded by this fiasco.  That said, Trump held his own, and Biden cleared the low expectations hurdle.  But that's not a win for either man.

Am I wrong about the first debate?

 I called it a draw.  Tim Pool disagrees: