Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton speak during the third presidential debate at UNLV in Las Vegas, Oct. 19, 2016. (AP)
Hillary Clinton called Donald Trump a “puppet” of Vladimir Putin. Trump said Putin has “outsmarted” Clinton “every step of the way.” She said Trump “choked” when he didn’t tell Mexico’s president that his country will pay for the wall. He suggested the recently launched offensive in Mosul was timed to advantage Clinton.
Trump called for a repeal of Obamacare. Clinton said payroll taxes will rise for the wealthy to replenish Social Security. Trump refused to say whether or not he will accept the outcome of the election. She called that “horrifying.”
In between, the third presidential debate in Las Vegas was peppered with the candidates positions on gun rights, abortion, immigration and growing the economy.
How will what we have heard from Trump and Clinton impact the election on November 8, and afterwards?
Donald Trump vs. Hillary Clinton: How Trump Exposed Americans’ Divisions
Daniel McCarthy – The National Interest
Republican U.S. presidential nominee Donald Trump is shown on TV monitors in the media filing room on the campus of University of Nevada, Las Vegas, during the last 2016 U.S. presidential debate in Las Vegas, U.S., October 19, 2016. (Reuters)
Trump is a seriously flawed candidate who has one great virtue: he has forced American politics to look itself in the face. Our elections almost certainly are not rigged in the literal sense; but they are illegitimate in the eyes of millions of Americans….
But won’t Trump’s supporters run riot if he doesn’t concede? Won’t they go on those lynching sprees that we all know they’re just dying to get started on? This is less a legitimate fear than an expression of the elite’s—and the left’s—own paranoia. It’s exactly parallel to the fantasies some on the right had indulged in of blacks running riot if Barack Obama had lost in 2008.
Trump Finally Delivers – but it Won’t Keep Hillary Out of the White House
Michael Goodwin – New York Post
Trump had done well, delivering his best prepared and most substantive performance, but it wasn’t nearly good enough to reshape the race. He came into Las Vegas trailing big time, and surely leaves the same way….
The final stage of the long, nasty race now begins, and if last night is any guide, Democrats will seek to expand the battlefield not just to secure Clinton’s victory, but also to go for a victory in Congress.
WikiLeaks Emails Will Poison Hillary Clinton’s Presidency
Jonah Goldberg – Townhall
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton answers a question during the third presidential debate at UNLV in Las Vegas, Oct. 19, 2016. (AP)
During the Cold War, the Russians mastered the use of slow-acting poisons to kill victims long after they were stabbed with an umbrella tip. Fittingly, the WikiLeaks emails may act like ricin or anthrax, wreaking havoc on Clinton’s presidency long after they’re released….
The populist Sanders-Warren wing of the Democratic Party has been given ample evidence to support their suspicions of Clinton as a conniving and cynical politician. The populist Trump wing of the Republican Party — and large swaths of the rest of it — is already locked into the belief that Clinton is a singularly nefarious force in our politics. If elected, she will have fulfilled the only mandate that unites large numbers of voters: She’s not Trump.
Maybe Trump Won’t Be Clinton’s Biggest Problem
Albert R. Hunt – Bloomberg View
If Hillary Clinton wins the presidency, she’ll take office in 13 weeks. The left wing of the Democratic Party isn’t waiting….
(Senators Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren) are campaigning strongly for Clinton, who wants their help mobilizing young voters and those on the left wing. That’s giving them potential clout and giving Clinton a problem: The more they succeed, the more they’ll complicate a White House governing agenda that’s likely to include gridlock busting through compromise with conservative Republicans.
Clinton has little choice but to try to accommodate the Warren-Sanders wing while the campaign is still in progress, and probably as president too.
Trump’s Meltdown in the Third Debate
Michael Sean Winters – National Catholic Reporter
Trump can’t win the presidency without Florida, and he can’t win Florida without the support of the people reading their Orlando Sentinel this morning. And those people are reading that Donald Trump is not quite willing to trust them, not willing to admit that the decision about who will be the next president belongs with the people. Those readers are recognizing that while his conspiracy theories against the Clintons may even sound plausible to them, this is a conspiracy theory designed to rob the voter of her rights. These voters may have stood for election themselves, to the school board or to the parish council, and known that the price of participation is an agreement to abide by the result.
Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump debate during the third presidential debate at UNLV in Las Vegas, Oct. 19, 2016. (AP)
The fact that none of this seems to have dawned on the Donald attests to one of the central lessons of this election: There is a lot to be said for familiarity with the democratic process before getting into it, and doing so at the highest level. His signature line, the line that most appeals to those who feel disenfranchised and left out of the nation’s prosperity, is that he, as a businessman, can fix what is wrong in Washington, that it takes someone like him, and only him, to make America great again. In a flash, he demonstrated definitively that he does not know the first thing about what makes America great.
After Trump Loses: An Ominous American Future Imagined
Damon Linker – The Week
Here we are in July 2019. The country is wracked by violence, hatred, and economic despair. President Hillary Clinton just declared martial law. And rumors are swirling that the 2020 presidential election might need to be suspended.
How did it come to this?…
With three federal government shutdowns and a (failed) presidential impeachment trial in the last two and a half years, there has been no time to address the nation’s problems…