What to Expect in Tonight's Debate

(photo courtesy of WikiCommons, Flickr and Gage Skidmore)

Here’s what’s likely coming in tonight’s debate.

This is Mrs. Clinton’s last chance to put away Donald Trump, since the last debate will be ‘moderated’ by Democrat Chris Wallace, who works for Fox and can be expected to at least provide a modicum of fairness.

Tonight’s debate will be ‘moderated’ by Anderson Cooper and Martha Raddatz, both very partisan Democrats. And they will both be striving to avoid winding up like Matt Lauer. Ms. Raddatz, you might remember was the ‘moderator’ for the 2012 Vice Presidential debate where she leaned heavily on Paul Ryan while allowing Joe Biden to behave like an eight-year-old who’d missed a few days’ dose of Ritalin.

It’s a town hall type event, which will feature selected undecided voters asking Trump and Hillary questions. It goes without saying that just like the last debate, Mrs. Clinton will have received all the questions in advance, and will know which questions she’ll be getting and which one’s Trumps getting, so she can have carefully prepared and rehearsed answers to the former and suitable one line zingers to the latter. She will also be wearing her little earpiece again so she can receive backstage reminders and remember her lines.

And she will be jacked up on enough drugs to allow her to last for 90 minutes. She dropped out of site for almost a week after the last one, so she could dry out.

Trump’s questioners will likely underline the Democrat talking points, and they won’t be undecided at all. Mrs. Clinton’s questioners will be partisan Democrats.

Trump’s microphone will likely be tampered with again so the audience can’t hear him and cheer in response. Any applause he happens toget will be quickly shushed by the ‘moderators’ while any applause Mrs. Clinton gets will be allowed to continue, just like last time with Lester Holt. Trump will be challenged and interrupted frequently, while Mrs. Clinton will not.

Here’s how Trump wins if he’s learned from the first debate. He has to ignore the agenda that has been set up and calmly but clearly attack Mrs. Clinton where’s she’s vulnerable; on the e-mail scandal, the Clinton Foundation, her enabling of her sexual predator of a husband, and her repeated lies to the American people. He will, if he’s smart ignore the ‘moderator’s’ attempts to shush him and have some nice one line zingers of his own to respond to Mrs. Clinton. If he gets questioned about the twelve year old illegally leaked ‘sex’ conversation, he should respond that he’s already addressed that, and compared to the problems facing the country and compared to Mrs. Clinton’s history on women and her plan to allow thousands of unvetted Muslims into America, this is a non-issue.

In other words, he has to upset the carefully planned script Mrs. Clinton and the ‘moderators’ have arranged, go off script and tie things to his own talking points and agenda at every opportunity.

If he does that, he’s going to win in spite of the odds. As I pointed out earlier, he actually did a lot better in the first debate than the media’s cooked polls indicated.

So we’ll see.