By Bryan Williams

I stopped watching cable TV news more than a decade ago, and anyway, because of my two-hour evening commute in the Pacific time zone instead listened to the first presidential debate of the 2020 season on National Public Radio.

The lack of visuals intensified the cacophony of people talking over each other, and all three men on the debate stage at Cleveland’s Case Western Reserve University did just that. And yes, President Trump started it and was the worst offender. What to think of 2020’s version of John McLaughlin (Trump) and Eleanor Clift (Biden)? 

Biden didn’t fall into guffawing senility as portrayed in so many YouTube videos, and he did a good job staying on topic and speaking articulately, was bright at times, and made some clean platitudes. I’m sure Biden looked nice too, but he wasn’t able to land a knockout punch. It wasn’t the storybook performance his supporters might have hoped for.

Trump, predictably, put on a bombastic show, and I laughed out loud at many of his quips and retorts. Did he knock it out of the park? Yes and no. He could have hit Biden harder on a lot of the former vice president’s more glaring racial remarks from earlier in the campaign season. Statements like, “If you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or for Trump, then you ain’t black,” and his comparison between political diversity in the Hispanic community, versus the Black community still makes me blush. 

Trump could have better connected some of his points about the way California is being run to what Biden has in store for the United States. I was able to connect those dots, and I’m sure others following the debate were able to as well. Those dots point to Joe Biden’s plan to move the nation toward what my home state is already: A bureaucratically bloated, ultra-liberal, high-tax, pie-in-the-sky progressive dystopia. Trump said, “What they’ve done in California is just crazy,” and he is 100-percent correct.

Williams is a mental health professional in California, and was involved in local, state, and federal Republican politics from 2005-2019.

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