Tonight’s Debate Forecast

The sass and sarcasm filled smackdown that’s sure to ensue

Tonights+Debate+Forecast

Raymond Matthews

Immediately following both of the outlandish and highly controversial recent presidential debates, it seems that analysts, news anchors, politicians and spectators were all breathless to know who was the winner and who was the loser. However, all things considered neither Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump actually lost either debate. The true loser has proven to be the American public.

This election, or more appropriately titled the “I don’t believe in past lives, but I must have done something really truly terrible in a past life to deserve this I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry 2016”, has been a political spectacle rivaling all others. Each candidate has fully capitalized on each debate as an opportunity to criticize one another both personally and politically, leaving minimal time for in-depth policy discussion.

The first presidential debate was a verbal smackdown the likes of which hasn’t been seen since the last Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion special.

Hillary Clinton threw the first punch; when asked about her tax policies she chose to attack Donald Trump’s tax policies, referring to his economic policies with the now famous tagline “trumped up trickle down.” She then proceeded to condescend and belittle Trump, implying that his success was only inherited from his father and that he isn’t capable of efficiently managing an economy.

From there she decided to shift the attention to herself, and in an attempt to seem more relatable brought up her father whom she implied was Trump’s opposite, as a hard working, small businessman who represented the group of Americans she appealed to during the debate, the middle class.

By building herself up so much and directing so much attention toward tearing Trump down, she only used a small fraction of her remaining time to actually answer the question. The actual answer was highly unsatisfactory, with no specificity to be found.

She chose to grandstand, establishing herself as a candidate for the middle class, proclaiming that, “the more we can do for the middle class, the more we can invest in you, your education, your skills, your future, the better we will be off and the better we’ll grow.”

This may sound all well and good, but for the actual American citizens in the middle class this wasn’t very comforting as she never offered them a clear answer as to how she would actually help them. Empty platitudes, shallow responses and pandering sound bytes seemed to be all she had to offer them.

When Donald Trump wasn’t busy randomly interjecting or interrupting Secretary Clinton (which he did 51 times), he chose to attack her on points which often times had little or no truth behind them.

For instance while Hillary Clinton was explaining one of her plans to improve the economy, he interrupted her to declare that she had no plan. To which she responded that she had written an entire book outlining her economic plan titled Stronger Together, prompting an eye roll from Trump.

However, he didn’t stop there. When analyzing America’s job loss he chose to blame politicians “like Hillary Clinton” for exorbitant taxes and bureaucratic red tape, while never specifically outlining any of his own plans to bring jobs back.

After this attack, Hillary simply responded by saying “I have a feeling that by, the end of this evening, I’m going to be blamed for everything that’s ever happened.” In all honesty she wasn’t wrong, as most of Trump’s speaking time was spent blaming her directly or blaming “politicians like her” for America’s problems.

Trump was candid in his response, simply asking “Why not?” You have to hand it to him for his honesty, if only some of that candor had been shown in his answers on the actual issues he was presented with.

The second debate wasn’t much of an improvement, both candidates still left the American public with many questions, which was ironic given that the questions all came from the public themselves.

When Donald Trump was asked to explain the recent leaked audio of him bragging about sexual assault he simply brushed it off as locker room talk, avoided the discussion and promptly employed his typical fear mongering anti-ISIS rhetoric.

However, what was truly sad about his performance and his responses throughout the night was that he didn’t give any clear answers on domestic or foreign policy, and often times avoided discussing his plans all together. His buzzwords of the night were job creation and ISIS, and he employed them regardless of whether or not they had anything to do with the questions he was asked. Even when he used them he couldn’t even be bothered to say elaborate as to what he would actually do to stop ISIS, or to create jobs or don our country any service at all.

So, what can you expect to see tonight? In all likelihood it won’t be the intelligent, thought provoking sort of event we’ve become accustomed to in past elections. Although it won’t be aired on Bravo, there probably won’t be weave pulling or finger snapping and neither Wendy Williams or Andy Cohen won’t be moderating, don’t expect much. It will most likely be used by both candidates as a final attempt to tear each other down and build themselves up, but why?

Why is it that they want to win so badly, when they can’t effectively tell us why exactly they want to win in the first place? We know that Donald Trump wants us to make America great again and “cut taxes bigly” but how will he do those things? And we know that Hillary Clinton as promised to be “ready on day one” but what exactly is she ready for, and what will she do in office?

Of course one can learn their specific policies without watching the debates themselves by researching them, but the entire point of having these debates is to hear the candidates discuss their policies in an in-depth, intelligent argument, & needless to say that’s not what’s been happening.

So in tonight’s debate we can’t be sure who’ll win, but if it’s anything like the previous debates, it’s safe to say that Americans will prove to be the losers.