During last night’s Presidental debate, Kamala Harris led Donald Trump to the slaughterhouse and gave him a quick kick. He marched inside, where the two ABC News moderators butchered him. That’s a fair assessment of how efficiently Harris taunted Trump, and he overreacted. Over and over.
The tactic let the Democrat largely ignore most questions directed by the moderators. She repeatedly deflected by switching to Trump, effectively making his record—and let’s be honest, ego—topic du jour. Not only did the moderators fail to call out her lack of answering, or ask her follow-up questions, they pestered the Republican with corrections even though, by my count, her lies massively eclipsed his. The, ah, event started out one-on-one but quickly disintegrated into a three-on-one beating.
That’s not to shift blame from Trump. He appeared to be unprepared and either unwilling or unable to strike argumentative blows that could either have disabled or knocked out his opponent. Had he taken charge early, biased moderation wouldn’t have mattered and would have been blatantly obvious to anyone with an inkling of commonsense.
Funny thing, the Democrat’s performance is palpable. When my wife returned from food shopping this morning, she remarked about how uncharacteristically friendly everyone was at the supermarket. Our area of San Diego is quite liberal, ranging from deep blue to rainbow—depending on which letter of the alphabet coalition the person adheres to. I speculated that Annie perceived the mood of people reacting to Harris debating Trump.
Let’s assume that’s true. What will the reaction be should Trump win the election? Where we live? For months, I have wondered about the answer, and now there is foreshadowing. Polling and pollsters can’t be trusted. My profession, the news media, is even more unreliable; the majority shill for Harris. The point: Trump easily could become the 47th President, despite all the clamoring enthusiasm today about Harris’ debate performance last night. I don’t bet, but if I did my money would be on him winning. Hey, just saying.
That brings us to the Featured Image, which I quickly captured yesterday using Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra. The plumeria protruded over a fence into an alley somewhere in my neighborhood of University Heights. Vitals: f/1.7, ISO 12, 1/1000 sec; 8:21 a.m. PDT; composed as shot and straight from the smartphone (e.g., no edits).
Returning to the candidates, you choose. Would you like to give the flowers to Kamala Harris in congratulations for a debate well done or lay them at the grave of Donald Trump’s Presidental campaign? Or would you prefer to preserve them in expectation that Mr. “Fight, Fight, Fight” will prevail on November 5th? You tell me.