How long have we waited to see a candidate in a televised debate open a can of whoop-ass on an opponent like Kamala Harris did? 

Well, that’s a relief. I expect we’ll see single-payer healthcare for everybody in the us, asap. I think it’s likely that the US will close pretty well all of their 800 foreign bases in all of the seventy countries in which they exist. After, that I expect that by Wednesday of the first week of the Harris administration, they’ll get after investigating the oddities related to the derivatives activities of Goldman Sach Bank USA, JPMorgan Chase Bank N.A., Citigroup’s Citibank and Bank of America, not to mention their $1.8 trillion in loans to hedge funds. Probably shut down the arms pipeline to Israel on Friday of that week, and get to work on closing Gitmo the following Monday. It’s morning again in America, I dare say.

I don’t think candidates’ TV-debates are pointless, but they sure can be a din of boring-times-stupid. So what IS the point?

One, I suppose, is that there’s an audience, so broadcasters love debates. Inanity can’t possibly get better ratings—at least not since Red Skelton’s demise. On the other hand, some debaters—I’d wager there’s a good many—approach a debate with justified trepidation because if the mashgichim finds a single blemish, then kosher status is refused. It hardly matters what or why, but losing the stamp of approval is sufficient to produce herd-allergy by rote, no further questions asked. Which of course terrifies the would-be champion.

I watched the Harris-Trump debate on mute, my darling (who’s in the Big Smoke attending to granddaughter number-two’s education) phoning to ask, “Are you watching this?” In fact, an old friend, berthed across the street awaiting a tide to sail across the Salish Sea, joined me for a pot of spaghetti, me with a glass of wine and him with a can of “Guinness Zero” (which I accidentally bought but which perfectly suited my old bro who is now sober and born again). Muting the debate was probably a good idea because I noticed he’s acquired an apologetic tone with regard The Donald. Although my rejoinders were somewhat muted in the way of a good host, he did concede that “God runs this world, that’s all I fucking need to know,” at last resort, impressing me with how much he’s cleaned up his logging camp lingo since the good old days when every IWA member voted NDP, no questions asked.

After sending him back to his boat with a small doggy bag of electric bamboo (thanking heaven, his sobriety would’ve been too exhausting otherwise), I tried to juggle watching the debate with my mute ‘off’ with my darling’s of rant-calls and the siren call of sleep—wonderful, peaceful sleep. Problem is that one is eventually forced to watch it, beginning to end, to make sense of the subsequent punditry—of which the next day (getting on to three days, now) is thoroughly nauseating.

There was pre-debate debate about muting whichever candidate didn’t have the floor. Was it an advantage or disadvantage? The concern concerned The Orange One for, as if anyone hasn’t by now recognized, there really isn’t any question that his opponent, VP Kamala Harris, is either a very accomplished politician and former public prosecutor or a “ho”, depending on which side of the Manson-Dahmer tangerine one is on. But the question, better put, was whether the muting would prevent Trump from condemning himself with his habitual Gish-Gallop technique or deprive him of his favourite tactic of fire-hosing critics with channeled Q-Anon. Turns out everyone’s already heard this joke—we just had to wait for the morrow for the “I-won-the-debate” punchline. I got a brief giggle—that’s about it…

But I was otherwise left nonplussed—just like I coulda told anyone that stiff-as-frozen-fish-sticks John Turner didn’t stand a debater’s chance in hell against the bombastic “Blarney Bulroney”. If Turner truly did have an option he likely would have given the TV debate a pass. He couldn’t fake a sincere smile if he tried (to be fair, he did show his capacity for genuine mirth when he slapped Iona Campangnolo future-Queen’s-representative’s fanny). He’d have done much better in that infamous debate to admit that instead of clearing his throat, clenching both sets of cheeks and mumbling that “this is the fight of my life.” In fact Turner enjoyed a long life after clearing his desk and leaving The Hill, notes-to-self clenched under both arms. In contrast, Trump really was fighting as if life depended on it—‘life’ in the sentence sense, that is.

We’ve yet to have our sideburns singed with a televised leaders’ debate here in BC where there’s a general election in only five weeks. The last one was between incumbent NDP Premier John Horgan and the new BC Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson, a cringeworthy, nonstop pissing-match of such critical depletion from shouting over each other that both candidates looked like baked prunes by the end of it. Virtually nothing was intelligible, let alone intelligent, but the outcome was a forgone conclusion. First, Horgan’s first term (the NDP’s first in 16 years) provided an easy and relieving contrast to the corrupt BC Liberals and the trend couldn’t work for Dr Wilkinson with his sternly anguished expression throughout which was easily outshone by Horgan’s huge grin the whole way. Pundits immediately wondered what the point of all that yelling was. Retrospect seldom anchors to the most-recent TV debate but if I struggle just a teeny bit I’d have to say the point was to somehow show—not explain (none was discernible through the shouting anyway)—that the NDP was worth re-electing. As it turned out, Horgan turned a minority (supported by three Green seats) into a large majority, not to mention that it was the first time in BC history that an NDP leader won two mandates in a row. Contrast that with the 2013 election debate where premier Christy Clark mopped the floor with then-NDP leader Adrian Dix whose self-imposed “positive politics” campaign strategy precluded him from responding to any or all of her ad hominem provocations—the reverse of the Harris-Trump debate even though the mics unmuted (the NDP blew a 20-point lead going into the campaign and Dix, joining a growing trend among defeated leaders it seems, resigned during his concession speech).

Dang!—things bein’ what they is, so different now than even seven years ago (which my old buddy reminds is straight outta the Good Book), perhaps TV debates are the only politically consistent metric available: the elements are pretty much scripted, boxing tropes still applicable (like, a missed swing, jab or uppercut depletes more energy than a landed punch), hyperbole blasting into orbit or aimed at other hyperbolic space-junk already there; heck, even tasty Haitian feline canapé recipes from Springfield are still hitting the same old Homer.

Perhaps it all comes down to the evolution of muting, the indispensable adjunct to modern-day multitasking. Yet I do note the effect of grinning (excuse my french) like a shit-eating hound. What, after all, did Bulroney, Christy, Horgan, and now Harris —who I must say has a very beautiful smile which she deftly deployed, albeit mutedly—all have in common? Trump, on the other end, had the grimace of one who’d just drank a flagon of Richard Nixon-sweat preserved ever since his 1960 TV debate with future President JFK. Mind you, I was on double-mute for the first round, so maybe my ‘smile-and-the-whole-audience-smiles-with-you jingle’ is a bit off.

By shear coincidence, another old friend from the same logging camp some 40-odd years ago is visiting me today from Quebec (so many of us have passed on that my old buddy quipped that our dear departed foreman was trying to get the crew back together—hopefully, I assumed, in a cooler place). Both she and her husband are politically engaged—like I discovered most Québécois are when I lived there a few times over the decades. I look forward to their takes on all of this political tumult and more—from ‘the mute’ to ‘La Meute.’ It’s my first opportunity to get first-hand info about the NDP’s astounding 54 seat-win in Quebec under Jack Layton. Perhaps I’ll glean why it was that his demise left the party in an existential snit rather than ready to follow the steps of his remarkable success.

It sure wasn’t politeness. Was it mutable? It’s still debatable. Even in Alberta.

Usually I don’t watch the debates. Its boring or too many people talking at the same time, but decided to watch this one. It was “what could possibly go wrong” which will provide me with a few laughs. It was worth the watch. Fun, laughed a lot.
This time of year there isn’t much on t.v. but we had the Paris Os, the Democratic Convention and the debate. It was fun. Now of course the debate wasn’t meant to be a comedy hour, but it is what it is.
People alledgedly eating cats and dogs, omg. Didn’t really think he would go there, but he did. Perhaps it is best the family and party engage a competent doctor to assess the man to determine what is going on with his health. He could just be bat shit crazy or auditioning for a new comedy show, who knows, who cares, unless of course he is elected to office. Then all bets are off.