Joe’s Journal

Debating the debate

Ramblings from an old scribbler
Wed, 06/26/2024 - 7:00am

Well, here we go.

I don’t know what to make of the promised presidential debate scheduled for 9 p.m. this Thursday. If you want to watch, it will be all over the networks if you can stay up that late.

So, what will you see as you sit in your jammies? Will you learn some new information you don’t already know about the two candidates?

Will the show become a fun-filled geriatric iteration of “Let’s get ready to rumble,” featuring all the hoopla of grunt and groaners at a Saturday night TV brawl featuring Dick the Bruiser (the world’s most dangerous wrestler) and the evil Mitsu Arakawa?

Will it be a cinematic food fight aka John Belushi and the Animal House all-stars?

Will Grandpa Donnie spend his time trying to justify the Jan. 6 incident (or whatever you want to call it)?

Will Grandpa Joe use official statistics to convince us that the economy is in good shape while we try to rescue the family budget from high gas prices and grocery store-induced sticker shock?

Will Grandpa Donnie continue his claim that he won the last election? Will Grandpa Joe tell him to shut up, like he did last time?

What about a certain criminal court verdict in New York and another in Delaware? Will those decisions matter at all?

Or will we watch a pair of elderly senior citizens try to stay on message sans teleprompter?

The nation will hold its breath watching a pair of grandpas (DJT is 78, JRB is 81) try to survive a 90-minute grind on live TV.

If you scroll through your news feed, watch CBS, CNN, Fox, MSNBC, and read the NY Post or the NY Times, you will see valid and lengthy discussions of the key issues that should decide the election.

The two candidates might key in on immigration reform, border security, climate change, economic data, the wars in Israel and Ukraine, budget woes, the Ten Commandments, presidential immunity, the Supreme Court, Congressional inaction, and women’s reproductive rights vs religious beliefs.

All of these, and others, are important questions that could, or should, drive voters towards one candidate or another. After all, this is what the founders wanted when they gathered in Philadelphia in the summer of 1787. Right?

Of course, these sainted founders were immediately thrust into a squabble between the North and South, big states vs the tiny, and most of all, taxation and what to do with the money the taxes brought in.

If you think the Constitution was handed down from above by the heavenly choir to the pure of heart, you might want to check out the bitter fight between states who proposed using the taxes raised on imported goods to pay off the debts they incurred during the revolution.

Opposed were states that collected the most import taxes. They were reluctant to share their pot of free money with the other states.

The Constitution was adopted after the two sides, er, well, adopted a (here I apologize for using an unmentionable political word) compromise.

But, unless something terrible happens on stage to one or the other candidate, it probably won’t matter to about 80% of the electorate, that is if you place any stake in the polling data which claims about one-third of us have already made up our minds and are locked into our favorite, while being convinced the other guy is the illegitimate Spawn of Satan or worse.

Political pros say the election will come down to which grandpa wins in a handful of battleground states, like Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Georgia and Arizona.

I am most curious to find answers to some questions that the conventional wisdom avoids.

For instance, which candidate will benefit from Republican primary voters who supported former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley? She has endorsed Grandpa Donnie, but many GOP primary voters still selected her.

Will Demo voters who oppose U.S. policy on the Israeli war stay home?

We have seen how the women’s reproductive rights arguments following the repeal of Roe v Wade drove Democrat victories in the last handful of elections. Will that hold this time?

A NYC jury recently convicted Grandpa Donnie of a series of felonies. Will the verdict affect undecided or committed voters? It certainly has boosted his fundraising efforts, if that is any indication.

Of course, the debaters will probably avoid most of these topics.

Finally, for this time anyway, will the debate cause undecided voters to like one grandpa or the other?

In the Rogers and Hammerstein musical, “The King and I,” the confused king put it this way in a tune called “A Puzzlement.”

"One will seldom want to do what other wishes …

But unless someday somebody trust somebody,

There’ll be nothing left on Earth excepting fishes.”

But that would never happen in the good old USA.

Right?