Well, the debates are over. They ended relatively uneventfully, which I think is a good thing. Biden is polling very well, and the less time there is for the other shoe to drop, the better. The final debate was last night. I watched most of it (I missed the first 15 minutes or so, see below, and flipped to Thursday Night Football intermittently, which was a good idea, if only for this play) and felt it was pretty much a stalemate. Trump was much more subdued and came off as less insane than usual, which I'm sure was a conscious decision, but the problem for him is that I think he's actual less effective in a "normal" debate because he has nothing of substance to say. He might have been better off ranting and raving and trying to turn it into one of his rallies, rather than have voters completely forget what he said three days from now. It's like when you're way behind in football and have to start throwing risky passes downfield. Chances are they will be intercepted, and you will lose by even more points, but it's better than just running out the clock.
Maybe he did kinda try to go long with all this Hunter Biden stuff, but few people outside of his little cult seem to believe it or care. That strategy worked in 2016, in part because he was running against a Clinton and all the baggage that brings, but it's a different opponent this time. Similarly, he repeatedly tried to paint Biden as a radical socialist lefty, which is a totally anemic line of attack. Nobody believes that. Biden easily parried away such declarations, by pointing out that he beat a field of Democratic challengers running to his left. I must admit, however, I did get a little worried about Biden's comments on the oil industry. But he later walked those comments back a bit. Plus, he's not wrong. I think most voters either agree with him -- many want him to come out much more strongly against fossil fuels -- or, at the very least, they already know that transition away from oil is a pretty mainstream Democratic position, so it's likely not the big gotcha Trump tried to play it out to be.
One area where I thought Biden didn't do as well as I would have liked is in defending his record. Trump kept goading him for not getting anything done while he was in office, and Biden just kinda took it, and only once mentioned that there was a Republican held congress. I wish he would've thrown this back in Trump's face by a) rattling off the Obama administration's accomplishments (Obamacare, Dodd-Frank, Dreamer Act, stimulus, etc.); b) reiterating the obstinacy they faced from a Mitch McConnell, John Boehner Congress (and taking the opportunity to remind everybody that it's important for Dems to retake the Senate as well); c) pointing out that that was in the past and Trump is the president now and he's done absolutely nothing. He never really did that. Biden never explicitly said how absurd it is that Trump, the actual president today, is running as if he's the challenger and the actual challenger, who was vice president four years ago, is the one in charge of things. But maybe he doesn't need to say this explicitly. The voters probably get it without it being said. Let's hope.
My favorite part of the debate was when Biden referenced the "Poor Boys," and then completely butchered Trump's infamous "stand down and stand by" quote. That was an old guy moment right there. But I'm glad he got the name wrong. Those bozos have gotten enough free press as it is.
Anyway...
I missed the first part of the debate because I was capturing a mouse that somehow got into our house. We actually got lucky I noticed it when I did, because it just happened to go into our basement bathroom where I could easily seal off it's escape routes. I don't know if you've ever tried to catch a mouse in an open area before, but it's damn near impossible. They are so fast and can fit through the smallest cracks and crevices. I had one in an apartment once, and it took my roommate and me hours to capture it, and the only reason we were successful at all was because we had one of those glue traps and were able to set it along one of its escape routes, and it eventually went into it and got stuck. Then we had a mouse in a glue trap that we didn't know what to do with, so I put it in a plastic bag, slammed it against the side of our dumpster a bunch of times to put it out of its misery and threw it out. Sorry, Ralph.
This time the mouse survived. I trapped it in a Tupperware container on the ground and was somehow able to slide a thin plastic cutting board under the Tupperware to contain it. I was very proud of myself, because if you give it any space at all it'll squeeze through and run away. Then I flipped the Tupperware over, holding the cutting board on the top super tightly, and ran out of the house barefooted, down the street to a little wooded area, and released it. Done and done. Lil' S1 was my "helper" in this endeavor, by which I mean he opened the door and watched me do it. (He was also listening to me try to catch it in the bathroom, and at one point it ran across my foot, and I did one those surprised/creeped out "yeeee"s, and he laughed and said, "You're scared of a little mouse, Dad!") S just kinda stood there freaking out (to be fair, the cutting board was her idea). She hates, well, pretty much all invasive critters, but especially mice and cockroaches. She was on the phone with pest control first thing this morning.
Alright, gotta go cook some turkey burgers for dinner. It might be the last time to grill this year.
Until next time...
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