Your Vote

Your vote belongs to you.  If you know a strong Trump or Hillary supporter (why either of those things would exist is beyond me, but whatever), they will most likely tell you that you have to vote for their candidate, and any vote that isn't for their candidate is actually for the other person who is terrible, no matter who the vote is actually for.  This is a lie, and an insidious one.  The two major parties don't own your vote.  You own your vote. 

Your job is to use your vote responsibly, but you get to decide what that means.  If I lived in a state where the Presidential election was going to be close, I would suck it up and vote for Hillary.  I wouldn't like it, but I would do it.  That's how I would use my vote.  That doesn't mean that's how you have to use it.  And if you decide to use it differently and Trump somehow wins, that is not your fault.  Ironically, Trump is the fault of the two parties.

Yes, Republican primary voters nominated a future war criminal, and they should be ashamed of themselves.  Unfortunately, Trump voters can't read, so they will never know they should be ashamed unless one of you reads this to them.  And yes, the Republican party spent years cynically creating an environment out of which someone like Trump could crawl, and they should be ashamed too.  Plenty of shame to go around.

The Democrats don't get a pass though.  They had roughly six years to find us a proper successor to Barack Obama.  Did they spend those years introducing us to promising young Democrats we could get excited about?  They did not.  They spent six years clearing the board for Hillary.  The Sanders campaign wasn't some amazing story about the power of the people, it was an indictment of Democratic politics.  The guy who finished second in the Democratic primary race wasn't even a Democrat.  That's not a good thing.  If the Democrats had bothered to attempt nominating anyone other than the least likable person in history, that hypothetical other person (cough cough, Cory Booker, cough cough) would be up by 20 points right now and we wouldn't even have to worry about the great fascist pumpkin.

8:51PM: Brett Baier just told me Trump had chicken for dinner.  I decided to watch on Fox tonight since Chris Wallace is moderating and I'm already kind of regretting it.

8:55PM: I wouldn't blame you if you just watched the Cubs game tonight.

9:00PM: Tonight's debate is in Vegas, which seems like home turf for Trump.  It seems like a pretty good city for groping strangers.

9:03PM: Apparently Trump invited some "controversial guests" again.  What a fucking child he is.  I have to admit that I'm not in the mood for his shit today.

9:05PM: Hillary Clinton is dressed like a storm trooper without the helmet.  Trump's suits never look like they fit right.  Don't rich guys have tailors?

9:06PM: Hillary wants a Supreme Court that will stand up for rights and say no to Citizens United.  She also wants them to stand up to the powerful, which is a worthy, if slightly ironic, aspiration.

9:08PM: Trump started his Supreme Court answer whining about how Ruth Bader Ginsburg insulted him and bragging about how she had to apologize.  Then he said the court needs to protect the 2nd amendment, and the other ones too, whatever they are.

9:10PM: Hillary says she supports the 2nd amendment because she lived in Arkansas and upstate New York.  By that logic she would also support meth and sadness.  I would vote for literally anyone who was willing to say that it's not the 18th century anymore and maybe we don't all need to be armed all the time.

9:13PM: Hillary just accused Trump of being a tool of the gun lobby, which he is.  Trump responded by saying Chicago has terrible gun violence, because anytime Republicans get stuck in their own circular gun logic they escape to Chicago.

9:15PM: Wallace asked Trump if he wants to see the court overturn Roe v Wade.  He refused to actually say he wanted that.  He just said that it would happen automatically because of the justices he would appoint.  That was odd.

9:17PM: Trump appears to have no idea that he's on camera even when he's not talking.  He may not even be aware that the world continues to exist when he's not talking.

9:19PM: Trump is describing late term abortions the way a 4 year old would describe how babies are made.  I never wanted to hear Donald Trump say the word womb, but there it was.

9:19PM: Hillary is making a very simple "the government shouldn't step in the middle of personal decisions" argument about abortion and I think she's doing a great job.  I always think it's weird that the conservatives wound up being the party that thinks the government should make medical decisions for people.

9:21PM: alkdjshfalsdhahjaghafg!!!!!!!!!!! Why are we talking about immigration again?  Apparently Mexicans are bringing heroin to New Hampshire.  Then Trump mentioned the wall.  He hadn't mentioned that in the first two debates.  I was afraid he forgot about it.

9:24PM: Apparently Hillary also supported some version of a boarder wall at some point.  Trump, because he's Trump, is just using this as an example of how he's right and super smart when he should be actually be using it as an example of how she's a panderer with no actual convictions.

9:27PM: Trump says President Obama has deported millions and millions of people.  I don't know if he means that as an insult or a compliment.

9:29PM: Wallace asked Hillary about the wikileaks thing where she talked about open boarders.  She quickly pivoted to how wikileaks is an example of Russian espionage and Donald should renounce Putin and Russia's help immediately.  Trump's response to that somehow got us to radical islamic terrorism.  It's like free form debate jazz.

9:31PM: Clinton just accused Trump of being willing to be a puppet for Putin if he's elected.  Trump responded by saying, repeatedly, "you're the puppet, you're the puppet".  This is rock bottom, right?

9:33PM: Trump refuses to believe that Russia is involved in any hacking, and even though Putin isn't his best friend, he knows Putin has outsmarted the Obama administration and Hillary over and over again.  He's a big Putin fan.

9:35PM: Trump just said "I have 200 generals and admirals, 21 endorsing me".  Wait, what are the other 179 doing?  What does he mean he has them?

9:36PM: Chris Wallace is openly mocking his own inability to control this circus.  I always liked Chris.

9:39PM: Three debates is too many.  They're talking about the economy now and it's like groundhog day, except this time Hillary didn't say trumped up trickle down, which was a good decision.  Trickle down economics is silly enough, you don't need to try to make it sound worse.

9:43PM: Ya know, I've been the first person to say it's not fair for Trump to try to hold Hillary accountable for her husband.  They aren't the same person.  But if she's going to stand there and try to take credit for her husband's handling of the national debt then I guess Bill's fair game.

9:44PM: Every time Trump likes something Wallace says, Trump chimes in to let Wallace know he approves.  Wallace seems genuinely amused.

9:46PM: Trump says India and China (GYNA) are growing faster than us.  Then Hillary accused him of giving jobs to Chinese steel workers instead of American steel workers.  Ouch.

9:49PM: Trump is mouthing words and rolling his eyes while Hillary is comparing their histories.  When he finally got to talk, he said we should run the country like he runs his company.  How many times can a country go bankrupt?

9:52PM: Why would so many different women make up claims about Trump groping them?  Trump has decided that the Clinton campaign put them up to it.  Apparently, the Clinton campaign and Obama are also paying people to start fights at Trump rallies.

9:52PM: And why would these women agree to do this for the Clinton campaign?  For their 10 minutes of fame.  Because every little girl dreams of one day being famous for being groped by Donald Trump.

9:56PM: Trump always says that nobody has more respect for women than he does.  Really?  Nobody?  Not one person in the whole world?  That seems unlikely.  Don't you think we could find even one person, male or female, who wouldn't even joke on a bus about groping women?

9:57PM: Trump really wants you to believe that the Clinton campaign created all these stories about him groping women.  I wonder if he has some of that evidence stuff.

9:59PM: Everything that anyone has ever accused Trump of doing is false, OK?  Is everyone clear on that?

10:00PM: Hillary says she is thrilled to talk about the Clinton Foundation.  I feel like she shouldn't be.  She went on for a little bit about the good things the foundation does and Wallace quickly interrupted her and let Trump talk.  Trump thinks the Clinton Foundation shouldn't take money from countries that push homosexuals off buildings.  If they actually do that in Saudi Arabia, I actually agree with him.  Saudi Arabia is the worst.  If I actually believed Trump really believed what he just said, or even just knew what he was talking about, I'd say points for him.

10:04PM: Did Trump's charity pay for some of his law suits?  Apparently no, they just put up the American flag.  Hillary used the charity discussion to sneak in a jab about tax returns.  Now that Trump has openly talked about committing sexual assault, the whole tax thing seems like not such a big deal.

10:07PM: Wallace asked Trump if he'll accept the election results.  He wouldn't say yes.  He said he'll have to look at it at the time and he doubled down on saying the election is rigged.  Even just letting Hillary run is, apparently, part of the rigging.

10:09PM: Hillary called Trump's answer horrifying, which it definitely is.  Then she ran down a full list of things Trump lost at and immediately claimed were rigged, including when his reality show didn't get an Emmy.  Trump responded by saying he definitely should have gotten that Emmy.

10:11PM: How do we make sure ISIS isn't just replaced by something worse?  That's a pretty good question considering our track record would suggest that it absolutely will be.  Hillary, like most politicians, appears to be in favor of defeating ISIS without sending any troops or doing anything.  I'm not in favor of sending troops, I'm just saying you can't wish ISIS away so we're going to need a better plan than defeating them without any troops.

10:14PM: Trump is all about the element of surprise in war.  Everything would be a sneak attack with Trump.  For the record, when Barack Obama blows up your compound with a drone, I bet that's pretty surprising.

10:16PM: Trump still insists he was against the war in Iraq.  That's just plainly factually inaccurate.  I sometimes wonder if Trump is one of those time travelers who changed the past and now he remembers a different past than the rest of us.

10:18PM: Chris Wallace is openly laughing at this debate that he is moderating.

10:19PM: Chris tried to ask a question about a few of the things Trump lied about in the last debate.  Trump wouldn't even let him finish the question, denied lying about anything, and then went back to blaming Clinton for everything.

10:21PM: Last time the cash we gave Iran could have filled the whole room.  This time the pile of cash was just as big as the stage.  What happened?  Are we just using larger bills?

I'm going to stop here because I just don't care anymore.  I can't imagine being an undecided voter and actually trying to use this debate to make a decision.  This entire election has been a fucking embarrassment.  I started this by saying you should vote for a third party candidate if you want to, but maybe you should just vote for Trump.  Maybe he's the nightmare this country deserves.  I'm going to go watch the Cubs win the world series, and then after that happens Trump can unmake the world.  And when that happens, it'll be our own damn fault.  See you on election night.