Doing What It Takes To Win

Full disclosure. I feel the frequent need to recap where I stand this election season. I'm an open Bernie supporter, otherwise I consider myself an independent. So there. The context may or may not be important.

If I were writing this post Wednesday, in the aftermath of the first Presidential debate, and the day after the Donald Trump vs. Miss Universe dust up, I'd be writing from a completely different perspective. Because on Wednesday, after what seemed like an unrehearsed and unhinged ("bigly"?) debate performance, doubled down by Trump's subsequent attacks on the former Miss Universe now employed by Team Clinton, I was pretty confident that finally, finally Donald's 15 minutes/weeks/months of fame were in the last call stage.



La Donna E Mobile. Woman is fickle. Actually, I'm referring to me, not Hillary. I just love this song (it's from Rigoletto - Verdi). The tangential reference to being fickle is that, in the 48 hours between Wednesday and Friday, I went from thinking "this race is (effectively) over, let's move on to something interesting" to "Whoa. Wait a minute". So what happened (to me)? Read on.

I spent too much time Wednesday trying to understand how someone so undisciplined and seemingly unaware could have gotten this far, to the doorstep of the Presidency? Along the way laying to waste upteen other professional hacks that have spent their careers and millions of their supporters shekels grasping for the brass ring. The more common descriptors for the Donald have seemed to me inadequate in fully capturing, concisely, what exactly it is that makes him so...yucky. Then it hit me (figuratively, not "literally", as the cool kids say). Donald Trump is dumb. Not dumb as in uneducated, him being the "Wharton School of Business" alumnus (I'm sure Penn hides under the table whenever that's mentioned). Dumb, as in a utter lack of awareness, of self-consciousness, of perceptions of others, of social norms and cultural standards, you name it, he doesn't have it. Unless you include bravado. He has that in excess.

"Dumb Donald Trump" was my theme heading into the weekend's blogging, and I was mentally building my case Friday when serendipity intervened and I happened to hear a clip on the radio of Trump during a deposition, where he was answering questions about his speeches lambasting Mexicans as illegals and criminals. The deposition Donald Trump was so different from Presidential candidate Donald Trump that it would have made a great episode of Star Trek, when aliens inhabit the body of Captain Kirk and his personality becomes someone else's. Then it struck me (again, figuratively). "Am I being played?" by Donald J. Trump, star of The Apprentice and king of reality TV? Could the Donald, in fact, be the next B-list Republican actor to become President? Maybe...

So this week's blog is supposed to be about "what does Donald/Hillary need to do now to win?". Let's start with Trump first, building on my budding "he's an actor" theory. It'll be brief. Win or lose, it's absolutely all in for the Trumpster. If he loses, it's 100% due to his own unfiltered choices. But if he wins... he did it a la Frank Sinatra, "My Way".



How 'bout Hill? Similarly easy, but even easier after you've watched the skewering she got from Kate McKinnon during this skit on SNL this weekend. Hillary has just one month in which to get voters, any voters, to like her JUST a little. Just. A. Little. Not a lot, just a little. Can't say it enough. Ms. Clinton, do something, almost anything, that IS spontaneous. Not "planned spontaneous", because, as Ms. McKinnon so deftly points out, people will know. Which people? Everyone. May I make a suggestion? Next time you're in New York, take your grandchild to the park. If you can't sincerely enjoy being with your grandkid for a short photo op you simply don't deserve to be President, and I'm likely to vote for Trump out of spite. "I don't want to make my family a part of this campaign?" Shut up, you're lying again. Just do it. You're welcome.

Look at Hell tonight, it may have frozen over, because I'm close to agreeing with Michael Moore.



Sorry to close with a warning, but if you believe in global climate change, then you should take to heart Mr. Moore's dire prediction. Running on the current platform, as the Clinton campaign has done, that "Donald Trump is a crazy guy with crazy ideas and the wrong temperament", gets a lot weaker in the next few weeks if some alternate-universe Donald Trump begins to show up that isn't as crazy, who doesn't have crazy ideas, and isn't the racist misogynist he plays on TV. Now that would be scary, just in time for Halloween. In short, Hillary, give me the reason. You've got a month. Don't blow it.