Trump is out of gas but keeps farting

Donald Trump’s performance last Tuesday night in the debate with Kamala Harris was pitiful. He has been griping ever since about the moderators, but most of the country knows the truth. Trump was unable to hold his own while Harris established her credentials as a worthy contestant for the presidency. Whether you agree with her policy proposals or not, she looked, acted, and spoke like a president. He did not.

It isn’t over yet

But there are still more than seven weeks to the election. Battered, Trump will now fight back harder and dirtier than ever. The Republican Party will do everything it can in the battleground states to limit voting by minorities, citizens born in other countries, and younger people. It will try to hinder vote counting in big cities and cast doubt on the outcome in any state that produces only a narrow margin for Harris.

The Democrats are prepared for this onslaught and will counter the Republicans in court, both before and after the election. Both parties seem to be hard at work registering new voters. But just the confusion of claims and counterclaims will create problems, including a media frenzy.

Some of this could work against Trump. Even the Republican governor has said the claims about illegal immigrants eating pet cats and dogs in an Ohio town are untrue:

But Trump and Vance are not saying things like this because they think them true. Vance has admitted he is prepared to “create” stories he thinks represent the interests of his constituents:

What Vance and Trump are trying to do is attract attention and subtract from Harris’ momentum, using racist tropes. That is having some success. Half of America is now thinking about immigration rather than Trump’s felony convictions or Harris’ economic proposals.

Harris is proving wise

Harris did challenge the pets story, but she does not challenge all of Trump’s falsehoods or defend the Biden Administration at every opportunity. According to CNN, he told 33 lies (“false claims”) during the less than 45 minutes he spoke during the debate. It would have been impossible to take them all on. If she had, it would have looked as if he set the agenda, not her.

I regretted that she did not counter his assertion that immigrants are committing a lot of crimes, though she no doubt knows they commit fewer per capita than people born in the US. I also regret that she failed to respond to the first question in the debate: are Americans better off than four years ago? She should have. Unemployment, growth, energy exports and many other parameters are dramatically improved since January 2021.

Harris’ virtues

But Harris is persistent and tireless in claiming to serve the American people. That is what some of us want to hear. We don’t hear it from Trump. He disowns responsibility for any failures, even claiming he did nothing to encourage the January 6 attack on The Capitol that he spent weeks inciting. Trump claims to be the best president ever and that Biden is the worst. He claims he can fix everything and Biden could fix nothing. Anyone even vaguely familiar with the Biden legislative accomplishments compared to Trump’s knows that isn’t true. Harris certainly does.

I attended a Harris fundraiser Saturday here in DC. She seemed to me, at a distance of 150 feet or so, to be genuine and sincere.

She is animated, vigorous, and coherent. I can’t say that about her opponent. Trump played golf a lot while president. He is still doing it during the campaign. He offers little more than tariffs on everything, replacing the Federal civil service with his cronies, and concessions to Putin and other dictators. Trump is out of gas but still farting.