All Over But The Shouting

The speed of the news cycle turn-and-churn means it's a few days too late already to talk about the first presidential debate from Monday night. I mean, since then there's already been a new episode of Modern Family and another trailer for Doctor Strange dropped. I know where America's priorities lie. How long are we supposed to retain this stuff, anyway?

Besides, the results from the debate is settled science by now. Popular opinion is beginning to harden around the idea that Hillary won rather handily. Or if the Trump camp's position is to be believed, he actually won the debate unless he actually lost, in which case it was totally rigged. I wasn't able to watch the event live, but I did catch it on DVR and I will say I'm not totally unsympathetic to that last position. The whole night he was forced to face down contradictory and inconvenient facts, a moderator who once or twice politely insisted on being able to get his question out and a crowd that at no time seemed willing to set themselves alight on the outside chance it might please the faintest whim of the god-emperor.

The last part was the most interesting and I think probably the main reason why Trump got louder and nastier and less coherent as the night went on: he's not actually running for president of all of America over the course of a long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long long campaign season. As he has been from the beginning, he's running a series of hundreds of micro-campaigns to have himself elected by adulation and voice vote as President of Whatever Room He Happens To Be In At The Moment. That thing in November, yeah, whatever. It's in the future, an abstract place of lonely sadness after which there are zero events planned where anyone will drop a ceiling-wide raft of balloons on you. It's the land of electric cars and Mars colonies and other wild hippie fantasies in a warped world nobody alive today would ever recognize. In those closed rooms during rallies though, nothing is not permitted, up to and including suggesting the murder of your political opponent. Heck, the crazier you get, the louder the screaming, hand-stinging applause gets. There's nothing any boring-ass inauguration party is going to provide that's going to match that palpable, real love in the moment.

He's used to that rhythm of building the un-measured rhetoric, fueling the self-sustaining feedback loop pushing the mood of the room from inspiration to encouragement to outright incitement, until (ideally?) somebody somewhere punches an old lady in the face. And in the debate hall, despite a couple of outbursts (about even in support of each side), he was getting nothing. So he retreated to what knew: to ratchet up, add more crazy, stir the beasts that reside in the breast of each man. Instead he just got beat.

But at least it was only in front of the largest viewing audience ever.

And in the days since, what I really don't get is how polling works. It's been excessively rollercoaster-y this cycle with big swings up and down for and against both candidates. And we're starting to see a post-debate bump for Hillary, but seriously, at this point, how are there that many people either a) just making up their minds or b) completely affecting a 180-degree change from one candidate to the other to the degree that we're seeing these kinds of support swings? I'm not really asking in order to pressure anyone in danger of being polled* to hurry up and make up their goddamned minds because I do believe in the blah blah sacred whatever of the franchise. BUT SERIOUSLY if you could stop being a wishy-washy wuss-face and just accept the inevitable: Hillary's not as bad as you thought, Bernie's not coming back, Jill Stein is a left wing Ben Carson and Gary Johnson is a milquetoast goofus. If you're undecided, you're not a Trump voter probably. Those are the true believers locked into ideologically unassailable positions like white supremacy or Hillary=Satan. You're either going to not vote or eventually come around to Hillary, right? Again, not trying to pressure your vote, I'm just saying if you'd go ahead and figure this out, the polls would stabilize and I'd be able to sleep. Don't do it for America. Do it for me.

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*Yes, I hear it too when I read it back