L&T Publisher Earl Watt
In an election cycle that has voters wondering who is the incumbent, it comes as no surprise that a top-billed debate will do little to change anyone’s minds about who they will be voting for in November.
Call it Monday morning quarterbacking, second-guessing or any other way you want to describe it, Donald Trump had a chance to end the race, and he didn’t do it.
Likewise, Kamala Harris had to simply prove to the public that she was not suffering from Dementia, and she would be declared the winner of the debate. To her credit, she cleared that bar, albeit the bar was lying on the floor and all she had to do was not trip over it.
While Harris continued to push the concept of being a “new path forward,” Trump closed the debate by asking a new knockout punch question that landed, it just didn’t show just how fatal it was and won’t until about the 10th round — a week before Election Day.
The knockout punch was not Ronald Reagan’s question, “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” The biased moderators got that out of the way with the very first question of the night, a question that Harris never answered.
Trump could have set the tone early by pointing out that she never answered the question. She instead provided a biography lesson about her life.
Trump’s answer should have been, “Are you guys going to repeat your question to the vice president, because I think she missed it. She gave a biography instead of an answer. Can you follow up and ask her if you are better off now than you were four years ago, because she never answered it.”
That should have been a tone he repeated throughout the night when she simply would not answer any question when the rare occasion came up to try to hold her accountable.
She never addressed the border crisis. She never said what restrictions, if any, she would apply to abortion. She never explained how she would lower inflation and reduce the cost of groceries.
She used the strategy of deflection, and it is a good strategy when you have no plan for the future. Despite being part of one of the most divisive administrations in history and earning the rating of not only being the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate but also being the least likely to support bipartisan legislation, she claimed she would be the person to “bring the country together.”
Joe Biden made the same claim, and then later said what he meant was that he would represent Republicans “who voted for me.”
Bringing the country together is the goal of the left, but what they don’t tell us is that bringing us together means abandoning our view of freedom and our personal identity and embracing their socialist view wholeheartedly.
That will never happen. Nor will the leftists all of a sudden support babies in the womb, set high academic standards or trust the people to be in charge of their own lives.
We are politically very different, and the only way to “bring us together” is to recognize that it is okay to have different political views.
We aren’t going to agree. That’s not only unique to the American experience, it is a cornerstone to our existence.
One of the surrogates for Harris accidentally made the case on the flip flop on fracking. According to the surrogate, the reason Harris is no longer against fracking is because the technology has changed and made it safer.
Fracking is the process of injecting liquid at high pressure into underground rock formations to force open existing fissures and extract oil or gas. The leftists oppose this because it continues to extract fossil fuels and, in their view, increases the carbon footprint on the planet. This has nothing to do with safety and everything to do with political reality. Harris was losing on her anti-fracking position, but she still maintains her anti-carbon position.
The Harris surrogate exposed that the Green New Deal is really a hoax, because you can use the process of fracking to extract fossil fuels and add to the carbon footprint. Also, if Harris has been able to ban the process, then the surrogate claiming it is now “safer” to do because of technological advances would never have been able to advance under Harris.
Which brings us to the knockout blow that has started the 10-count.
Trump ended the debate by stating if Harris believed in everything she was saying, if she has the answers and can solve all the problems, why isn’t she doing it now? She is the vice president trying to run as if she is an outsider. The fact is she is not only an insider, but she is the second in command of the administration that she claims she can fix what happened during its reign.
Trump’s parting shot left a cut, one that will continue to bleed from now until Election Day. There simply is no avoiding that fatal blow.
Harris will spend the next few days on another false high, believing she won the debate.
But the public will be left with the question of why hasn’t she done anything to fix the problems now? If she is the solution, why won’t she implement strategies that would reduce the price of gas and groceries, why won’t she secure the border and stop the senseless murders by illegals? If she has the entire power of the federal government at her disposal, why do we have these problems in the first place?
That crushing parting shot may not seem as damaging now, but it is the biggest question facing the voters — “Why would I vote for someone who claims to have the answers when they had the power to implement their plan now and hasn’t done it?”
Harris has tried to run as if Trump is the incumbent, claiming he is part of the past while she is part of the future.
The problem is the present.
And she is in charge of what is happening now. In Trump’s final words, if she can fix it, why hasn’t she?
