Faced with a misogynistic pig with a long record of belittling and objectifying women, Clinton leaned into the idea that voters want a feminist in office. (After all, the last president they elected is one!) Despite decades of pressure from the media to step back, soften her voice, be more submissive and bake more cookies, Clinton made absolutely sure that the debate-watching audience could not doubt her commitment to feminism.
Clinton is highly qualified to be president. Donald Trump is utterly unqualified. If he wins – which could happen if enough good citizens stay home election day – the shifts in American society affecting minorities, women, immigrants, Muslims and others will sharpen divides among us rather than healing them, as Clinton would try to do.
Even in his denials, Trump is acting like Trump, offering a string of epithets and diminishments that reinforce the idea that preying on women is a normal thing to do. It seems entirely clear that these allegations disturb Trump only because they inconvenience him. He has not once spoken about the matter as if he understands that groping women, in itself, is wrong.
On the way Trump treats women as objects, Tolentino writes:
Trump’s accusers have tellingly similar stories: he kissed them, he groped them, he leered at them, he seemed blind to the idea of mutual interest. He also did all of this in familiar surroundings—as if the women were merely part of the buildings and organizations that he owned.
Political rhetoric aside, Trump displayed a misunderstanding of how abortion works in the United States.
Doctors won’t perform the procedure at nine months because the baby is viable outside of the womb. If a woman’s or fetus’s life is at risk, doctors can induce labor or authorize an emergency C-section. Intentionally killing the baby in the process would be illegal.
Trump should pay premature babies a visit. No wait, that’s a bad idea. He would scare the shit out of them.
The chances that Trump wins the election are close to vanishing: he is behind by a margin that no one has ever returned from, and last night’s debate did not help. There is another possibility now, which is that the Trump faction will not accept a loss. So much depends upon the relationship between the candidate and his core supporters—on whether they view him as a convenient vehicle for their anger or whether they have a deeper attachment to his cult of personality. The electors, certified by the states, will meet on December 19th to pick a President. Maybe that will be the day when the darkness of the Trump campaign recedes. Maybe it will be with us even longer.
[B]y reverting to conspiracy theories and openly threatening to call the result of the election into question, he made plain that, at this stage, his primary goal is to find someone other than himself to blame for what he, along with virtually everyone else in the political world, evidently sees as an impending defeat. Trump entered the race as a can-do businessman intent on restoring the country to greatness. He’s going out as a sore loser, raving at the world, threatening to unleash chaos.
In 2016, a major-party nominee for President seems to have mistaken misogyny for an argument against democratic legitimacy.
She goes on:
At a debate in which his main strategic goal might have been to make her seem untrustworthy, he blatantly tossed reality away. Trump seems incapable of talking about women without lying.
Without a doubt, Hillary beat Trump in all three presidential debates and the final one demonstrates her intelligent and temperament to be our next president.
On experience, Hillary challenged Donald:
He raised the 30 years of experience, so let me just talk briefly about that. Back in the 1970s, I worked for the Children’s Defense Fund and I was taking on discrimination against African-American kids in schools. He was getting sued by the Justice Department for racial discrimination in his apartment buildings.
In the 1980s, I was working to reform the schools in Arkansas. He was borrowing $14 million from his father to start his businesses. In the 1990s, I went to Beijing and I said women’s rights are human rights. He insulted a former Miss Universe, Alicia Machado, called her an eating machine.
And on the day when I was in the Situation Room, monitoring the raid that brought Osama bin Laden to justice, he was hosting the “Celebrity Apprentice.” So I’m happy to compare my 30 years of experience, what I’ve done for this country, trying to help in every way I could, especially kids and families get ahead and stay ahead, with your 30 years, and I’ll let the American people make that decision.
On women, she defended:
At the last debate, we heard Donald talking about what he did to women. And after that, a number of women have come forward saying that’s exactly what he did to them. Now, what was his response? Well, he held a number of big rallies where he said that he could not possibly have done those things to those women because they were not attractive enough for them to be assaulted.
He went on to say, “Look at her. I don’t think so.” About another woman, he said, “That wouldn’t be my first choice.” He attacked the woman reporter writing the story, called her “disgusting,” as he has called a number of women during this campaign.
Donald thinks belittling women makes him bigger. He goes after their dignity, their self-worth, and I don’t think there is a woman anywhere who doesn’t know what that feels like. So we now know what Donald thinks and what he says and how he acts toward women. That’s who Donald is.
I think it’s really up to all of us to demonstrate who we are and who our country is, and to stand up and be very clear about what we expect from our next president, how we want to bring our country together, where we don’t want to have the kind of pitting of people one against the other, where instead we celebrate our diversity, we lift people up, and we make our country even greater.
America is great, because America is good. And it really is up to all of us to make that true, now and in the future, and particularly for our children and our grandchildren.
On “rigged” election and democracy, Hillary fought back:
[L]et me respond to that, because that’s horrifying. You know, every time Donald thinks things are not going in his direction, he claims whatever it is, is rigged against him.
The FBI conducted a year-long investigation into my e-mails. They concluded there was no case; he said the FBI was rigged. He lost the Iowa caucus. He lost the Wisconsin primary. He said the Republican primary was rigged against him. Then Trump University gets sued for fraud and racketeering; he claims the court system and the federal judge is rigged against him. There was even a time when he didn’t get an Emmy for his TV program three years in a row and he started tweeting that the Emmys were rigged against him.
This is a mindset. This is how Donald thinks. And it’s funny, but it’s also really troubling.
So that is not the way our democracy works. We’ve been around for 240 years. We’ve had free and fair elections. We’ve accepted the outcomes when we may not have liked them. And that is what must be expected of anyone standing on a debate stage during a general election. You know, President Obama said the other day when you’re whining before the game is even finished… it just shows you’re not up to doing the job. And let’s be clear about what he is saying and what that means. He is denigrating—he’s talking down our democracy. And I, for one, am appalled that somebody who is the nominee of one of our two major parties would take that kind of position.
In her final remark, Hillary makes her case for the presidency:
I would like to say to everyone watching tonight that I’m reaching out to all Americans—Democrats, Republicans, and independents—because we need everybody to help make our country what it should be, to grow the economy, to make it fairer, to make it work for everyone. We need your talents, your skills, your commitments, your energy, your ambition.
You know, I’ve been privileged to see the presidency up close. And I know the awesome responsibility of protecting our country and the incredible opportunity of working to try to make life better for all of you. I have made the cause of children and families really my life’s work.
That’s what my mission will be in the presidency. I will stand up for families against powerful interests, against corporations. I will do everything that I can to make sure that you have good jobs, with rising incomes, that your kids have good educations from preschool through college. I hope you will give me a chance to serve as your president.
Hillary has my vote and I hope she’ll earn yours as well.
Editorial boards from papers of Trump and Clinton’s alma maters:
Though Clinton embodies her alma mater’s institutional values, Trump does not. It is clear that Trump has failed to dignify the morals of his institution. Penn’s motto, “Leges sine moribus vanae,” translates as “Laws without morals [are] useless.” In evaluating Donald Trump through this context, the Opinion Board cannot say that his actions attest to his morals: He does not embody the spirit of the school.
It’s clear from Trump’s words and actions that he relates to women mostly by objectifying them. If he doesn’t like a woman, he calls her ugly. If he does, he calls her beautiful, suggests he’d like to sleep with her, or says that he would date her.
But disturbingly, this objectifying tendency also seems to extend to young girls.