Debate Reaction: Exhaustion Followed by Hope With a Bit of Worry

The choice should be simple for a majority of Americans because they prospered at the kitchen table under Trump and suffered there under Harris, yet it doesn’t appear it is.

First, let me start by saying the presidential debate on Tuesday night was, frankly, exhausting. It was exhausting to watch Kamala Harris freely lie again-and-again in virtually every response she gave during the debate without so much as a single fact-check or mild pushback by the ABC "moderators.” It also was exhausting watching the media yet again do everything it could do to hurt the Right and help the Left, including posing hostile questions that were so loaded they could have been written by Harris and doing "fact checks” on Donald Trump that were false as they threw softballs to Harris and allowed her to spew lies endlessly. This reality is EXACTLY why I wrote a month ago about the need for the Federal Election Commission to make the media and Democrats report the media’s massive in-kind contributions so Main Street America can see just how biased the media truly is. Lastly, it was exhausting to yet again watch Trump get so easily baited over stupid barbs (e.g., people leave his rallies early due to boredom) and to fail to make the very easy case simply and succinctly against Harris. Here is how easily he could have made the case for himself and against Harris that would have ended the campaign:

• Economy: low inflation, booming jobs for Americans, and rising wages for every demographic during my presidency versus skyrocketing inflation, jobs for foreign workers, and stagnant wages being crushed by higher prices on food, gas, and everything else you need to survive during her administration;

• Immigration: a secure border with minimal illegal immigration during my presidency versus an open border that has allowed over ten million illegal immigrants, including terrorists, criminals, human traffickers, and the drug cartels, to penetrate all areas of America resulting in the injury, rape, and death of innocent Americans, as well as the suppression of wages and the spending of billions of tax dollars on those illegal immigrants on hotels, food, healthcare, and other services vulnerable Americans aren’t getting;

• Global Security: a world at peace with Russia and its NordStream2 pipeline killed, Iran in a box where it was going broke and unable to fund terrorist proxies and peace deals being cut between Israel and Arab countries, China agreeing to a new trade deal and paying the U.S. billions for its trade violations, and North Korea refraining from launching ballistic missiles during my presidency versus the disastrous Afghanistan withdrawal; Russia’s invasion of Ukraine; Iran getting let out of the box and given billions allowing it to fund terrorist proxies in Yemen, Gaza, Lebanon, Iraq, and Syria; China advancing its prowess over the South China Sea; and North Korea resuming missile tests and growing its nuclear arsenal;

• Energy: the expansion of fracking and pipelines making America energy independent and a net exporter of energy that kept oil and gas prices low so consumers could prosper during my presidency versus restrictions on fracking and killing pipelines that rapidly ended America’s energy independence and drove gas prices at the pump much higher thereby causing pain for Main Street Americans; and

• Other Issues:

  • Harris wants to ban gas-powered cars and mandate electric vehicles;

  • Harris wants taxpayers to pay for transgender treatments and surgery for illegal immigrants;

  • Harris wants to enact the Green New Deal that will crush America’s economy;

  • Harris wants no limits on abortion;

  • Harris wants to place price and rent controls on food and housing; and

  • Harris wants to curtail free speech with government censorship and gun rights via a mandatory gun buyback program.

At times, Trump breezed over some of these points, but far too quickly and surrounded by other distracting comments. Thus, he not only allowed Harris to fight on another day, but may have stalled the momentum he had started to build after the Democrat National Convention.

Let me provide a maddening example. On Roe v. Wade, Trump loves to say everyone on the Right and Left, including all law professors, wanted Roe overturned and the abortion issue returned to the states. He is just absurdly wrong. The Left didn’t fight tirelessly and zealously since 1973 to protect Roe because it wanted states to decide the abortion issue. Roe established abortion rights in all fifty states through the first trimester. If overturned and returned to the states for each to decide, given that a majority of states are controlled by the Right, it was guaranteed that restrictions well within the first trimester would be enacted in many red states, thereby limiting abortion rights beyond what Roe allowed. I don’t believe Trump is lying. In fact, I think Trump is less of a liar than he is an embellisher and repeater of whatever someone once told him. He rarely says something he knows to be false; instead, he says stuff he thinks is true (e.g., the 2020 election was stolen) or embellishes things (e.g., greatest economy in the history of America). In stark contrast, Harris constantly says things she knows are false (e.g., Trump referred to white supremacist as fine people; Trump said if he lost the 2024 election there would be a bloodbath; Trump incited the 1/6 riot; etc.). 

Regardless, there is hope that the debate won’t have the impact the Left thinks it will have. It appears a majority of undecided voters who watched the debate leaned toward Trump after watching the debate and independent voters tracked with Republicans far more than Democrats during the debate. Those results could mean that the debate won’t move the needle. When the former political director of ABC declares that the moderators were grossly biased in favor of Harris, you can assume low information voters also picked up on the not-so-subtle sandbagging that occurred at the debate by the ABC team. My anecdotal discussion with low information voters confirmed that assumption and my fourteen-year-old son easily noticed the difference in questions and tone by the moderators when speaking to Trump versus Harris. Thus, Trump may garner sympathy for fighting the fight as the debate fades in the rearview mirror. 

One last piece of tea reading on the debate. Shortly after its conclusion, Harris’s team put out that they wanted to do another debate because they felt it had gone so well. In contrast, when asked after the debate, Trump said he thought it went well and wasn’t sure if a second debate was needed. Now, given where the race stood before the debate and the consensus view among pundits after the debate that Harris had won, why would Harris risk a Mitt Romney or Walter Mondale collapse with a second debate (meaning, both men won the first debates they had, but then lost the second debates badly)? If she won the first debate, momentum should shift towards her giving her the lead she needs to win. Conversely, if Trump lost badly, why wouldn’t he demand a second debate so he could recover like Ronald Reagan and Barack Obama did in 1984 and 2012, respectively? Perhaps the article above on how undecided voters moved towards Trump after the debate answers those questions. Specifically, you have to assume both the Harris team and the Trump team had focus groups of undecided voters hitting survey dials during the debate. What if their groups reacted the same way the group in the news article reacted, with movement towards Trump? If they did, that movement would explain why Harris wants another debate and Trump does not. Otherwise, each candidate’s response on having a second debate makes no sense given basic risk-reward analyses.

Next, let me paint a scenario that now has me greatly worried. Imagine if on November 6, 2024, you wake up to learn that Harris squeaked out an Electoral College win, Republicans failed to win a 51st U.S. Senate seat, and Democrats managed to win back the U.S. House, thereby giving total control of the federal government to Harris and her congressional allies led by Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi (or her acolyte). The Democrats have clearly stated that they will eliminate the filibuster in the U.S. Senate, thereby allowing them to ram through legislation with 50% plus one vote in both chambers. Within months of being sworn in in 2025, Democrats enact the following laws:

• Supreme Court expansion and term limits;

• Statehood for Puerto Rico and Washington, D.C.; and

• Amnesty for the ten million plus illegal immigrants they let in during Joe Biden’s term.

With statehood, Democrats will gain four permanent U.S. Senators making it virtually impossible for Republicans to get control of that chamber again. Similarly, by adding roughly ten Electoral Voters from the new states to their win column, the odds for Republicans to win the presidency will get steeper. That climb is made all the more difficult due to the massive addition of voters created by the amnesty, with many of those new citizens residing in battleground states that make winning those states even harder (and don’t think Democrats won’t bring in more illegal immigrants, place them in key states, and grant them amnesty during a Harris term). As several of the conservative Supreme Court justices are pushed to senior status replaced by liberal justices and supplemented by additional new liberal justices, the federal judiciary is forever changed to rubber-stamp every piece of legislation passed by simple Democrat majorities and to reject any claim coming from Red states in their effort to beat back the Democrat’s power grab. 

Democracy and America as we know them will die with whimpers.

Finally, the question is will red states just accept this new world order? I highly doubt it, which is why I previously sketched out a future in which America fractures. The Democrat’s power grab may just be the push that causes America to dissolve in a national divorce, with many red states forming a new country forged around Texas and Florida. I know this sounds far-fetched, but will YOU be okay knowing you and your “deplorable” political views will be permanently in the minority as the Left enacts its progressive wish list of social and fiscal ideas? I won’t be okay, so what choice other than dissolution will the Right have against the Left’s federal leviathan in which political victory is nearly impossible?

I apologize for delivering such a dark message, but I’ve been warning readers about the Left’s by any means necessary quest for power for some time. For the first time in my life, I seriously wonder if America is too far gone due to the control the Left has over the media, entertainment, academia, corporations, and, it appears, the military. If they succeed at adding the three branches of the federal government to those five industries, then what will stop them? After all, how can a majority of Americans vote for Harris given the records noted above? Yes, Trump can be grating and offensive, but he delivered a stronger, safer, and more respected America despite the overwhelming attacks he endured from the Left and its henchmen throughout his term. The Biden-Harris Administration has made us weaker, less secure, and less respected in the world. The choice should be simple for a majority of Americans because they prospered at the kitchen table under Trump and suffered there under Harris, yet it doesn’t appear it is. That is just shocking to me. It defies all common sense, which is what happens when the five industries above manipulate Americans from kindergarten through death. It is how totalitarianism prevails.

P.S. A word on the Cheney’s endorsement of Harris. I had the unfortunate privilege of working closely with Liz’s husband, Phil Perry, while at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He simply wasn’t a nice fellow. He was a proponent of an imperialist presidency when he supported President George W. Bush invoking the Insurrection Act during Hurricane Katrina so he could send active duty troops onto the streets of America. I argued forcefully with Perry and fellow NeverTrumper Jon Wood that what was happening in Louisiana wasn’t an insurrection under the act, but merely incompetence by state and local officials. Thankfully, Bush sided with my argument. I bring up that issue because it illustrates a mentality within the Cheney family of the uber president. One would think the Cheneys would oppose Harris given that her success would lead to a total emasculation of the Constitution and conservatism as described above, which the Cheneys claim to be fans of. Their Harris support only makes sense if one sees it through the lens of an uber president free of the pesky obstacles of checks and balances. Should Harris win, the Cheneys can celebrate the end of Trump at campfires behind the walls of their multimillion dollar compounds in Maryland, Virginia, and Wyoming. The problem for the Cheneys is that Trump was at most an irritant for four more years; the Harris-Schumer-Pelosi subversion of the Constitution and conservatism, however, will last generations and likely result in the end of America as we know it. I hope throwing the country baby out with Trump bathwater was worth it for them.