8:57: Having only just now decided officially that I’m going to watch this damn thing, I put on my Jackass wristband.
IMPORTANT NOTE: I’ve had this headline in mind since the first debate. Granted, it’s not the most subtle joke of all time, but I’m kinda pissed at Lin-Manuel for what happens around the three minute mark of this video:
Quit stealing my thunder, dude.
9:00: God, moderator dude whose name I used to know but can’t remember right now, I can’t handle your voice. This may be a terrible idea. I need to figure out what my picture theme is going to be. Moderator dude asks for “blessed silence,” and immediately Wolf Blitzer starts talking, which seems oddly appropriate.
9:02: I come up with a theme. I predict, in response to Wolf’s dumb question, that Trump will not take the high road.
9
:05: Technically, the audience hasn’t agreed to anything. They just didn’t argue with you when you said they’d shut up. The first question is about the Supreme Court, which is blessedly important and non-stupid. I think my biggest problem with the second debate was how dumb the audience questions were.
9:08: Clinton gives a typically substantive answer, although she doesn’t touch the “living document” aspect of the question. Meh. Two minutes. Trump takes the opportunity to take shots at Ruth Bader Ginsburg and then yaps about the Second Amendment. No Democrat in recent memory has taken even a half-assed shot at fiddling with the Second Amendment; I don’t have any idea how the hell Republicans are still scaring people with this shit. It’s not his worst answer in history, but that’s a crazy-low bar.
9:12: Trump opens his mouth as if he’s thinking about interrupting and then closes it again.
9:14: Toddlers shot 43 people in the United States in 2015, by the way.
9:16: Yes sure let’s talk about abortion. Trump hasn’t interrupted yet but he keeps opening his mouth and closing it and sometimes mouthing words. Not sure what’s going on there.
9:17: I thought this was going to be a table debate, by the way, and I’m kinda glad it’s not. I note that in this debate Clinton has gone on the attack before Trump. This surprises me.
9:18: Trump takes a drink and his hands are visibly shaking. There’s a bit of back-and-forth on late-term abortions. Clinton hits it out of the park.
9:21: Let’s see if Trump denies any of his previous statements on immigration.
9:23: Return of the Sniffles. Twice in less than thirty seconds. Make that three times in less than a minute. We have to “get” the drug lords, says the guy who is sniffling like a cocaine addict.
9:24: More water. He’s had more water in the first twenty minutes of the debate then either of them in the first two debates.
9:25: “Trump went to Mexico. Didn’t even raise the issue of the wall. He choked.” We’ll see if he can keep his shit together. I’m not sure Trump actually remembers the Mexican president’s name.
9:26: And heeeeeere we go. He cannot.
9:27: She’s absolutely right here. You curtail undocumented immigration by cutting off the jobs. This is why immigration is such a divisive issue within the Republican party— because the money people know they need cheap labor and the socialcons want fewer brown people.
9:29: Whatshisnuts is getting run over by both of them.
9:30: I love that Ecuador cut Julian Assange’s internet connection off, by the way.
9:31: Trump laughs at Clinton pivoting from Wikileaks to Russian espionage and then immediately begins talking about terrorism and ISIS. He’s moving into mid-debate Trump at this point; he kept his shit together for half an hour and that’s all that he can handle. He’s currently yelling “No puppet! You’re the puppet!” into the microphone.
9:33: Have we seriously never had a foreign government try to meddle in our elections? I admit that I can’t come up with an example but I’m startled at the notion that it’s never happened. She’s laughing at Trump again, who is insisting that no one has any idea who was behind the leaks.
9:36: Here we go again with the “we can’t afford NATO” nonsense. He literally said Saudi Arabia and Japan should have nuclear weapons. It’s like he has no idea that what he says gets recorded.
9:37: The next topic is the economy. I decide to check in on Twitter. More water.
9:39: I grayed out for a minute. Clinton is still talking so I assume we’re still on the economy? Sure.
9:40: It blows my mind that this whole “tax cuts on the wealthy” thing is still an idea. I’m super happy that Clinton passes on the phrase “Trumped-up trickle-down” this time. It was never any good. Trump goes right back to government-as-protection-racket. Sigh.
9:42: Holy crap. Trump said Japan shoudl have nukes while talking to Chris Wallace, who is currently moderating the debate:
Maybe bring that up, Chris.
9:45: Interesting how Wallace can remember previous interviews that he’s done when he’s talking to Hillary.
9:46: Has she described her plan as “from the middle out, from the ground up” before? I like that turn of phrase.
9:47: He’s reverted to Calm Trump. Time to needle him again.
9:48: More water. Calm Trump lasted maybe 30 seconds, sorry about that. He’s back to Turtle Smile Trump, where he sticks his lips out and looks stupider than normal. He gives her an opportunity to attack his connections with Chinese manufacturing and she takes it. There’s that needle I was wondering about.
9:50: “Make it impossible for me to be unethical and I won’t be unethical any more!” Good job, Donald.
9:51: Whoopsie. He gives her another chance to compare their records. This is not a good idea, Donald. You will not come ahead on this.
9:52: Count down to bankruptcies in three… two… one…
9:53: Wow. She lets Wallace change the subject without pushing back. Then again, Wallace changes the subject to Trump groping women, asking him “why would so many women make up being groped by you?” So… it’s a wash, I take it?
9:54: What the fuck is he talking about? The Clinton campaign paying people to be violent at his rallies? Are you fucking kidding me?
9:55: He denies saying that women weren’t attractive enough to abuse. Yeah he did. You’re on tape, you fucking idiot.
9:57: Clinton comes perilously close to saying “make America great again” and catches herself just in time. That would have been funny.
9:58: Oh god enough with the fucking emails.
9:59: There’s gotta be better ways to get famous than by telling the entire world Donald Trump grabbed you by the pussy. I’m just saying.
10:00: The idea that he’s blaming her for the violence at his rallies is flat-out insane. What the fuck is the tape he’s talking about? Does anyone know what he’s referring to?
10:01: I spend a moment thinking about praising Chris Wallace for being more evenhanded than I expected him to be and then he brings up the Clinton Foundation. Sigh. The Clinton Foundation’s books are open, folks, and the charity gets ridiculously high marks from watchdog groups. It should not be surprising that people with the money to make large donations to the Clinton Foundation are also people who are influential enough to meet with the Secretary of State. Trump calls the Foundation a “criminal enterprise” twice.
10:02: I’m guessing that “Because the money got spent fighting AIDS in Africa” is the reason why they aren’t going to give the money back. Trump somehow uses having been to Little Haiti somewhere in Florida as evidence of his foreign policy cred. Do you think he knows that they aren’t the same place?
10:04: Trump is blatantly lying about his foundation right now. Blatantly fucking lying. The state of New York has banned the Trump Foundation from continuing to raise money. Between this and the last couple of minutes of nonsense about Clinton taking money as if she got to spend Foundation donations herself. This is fucking ridiculous. And he goes back to the “I can’t be blamed for being unethical” bullshit again.
1
0:07: WHY HASN’T ANYONE STOPPED ME FROM BEING SUCH AN ENORMOUS FUCKING ASSHOLE YET??? Fuck you, Donald.
10:08: Trump refuses to accept the result of the election. Flat-out refuses, on stage, during a presidential debate. A moment later, he says that it’s because there are “people registered to vote” who shouldn’t be. Get this evil fascist fucker the fuck off the fucking stage.
10:09: We all know who the loser is in this situation, Chris.
10:10: Clinton rips his guts open and dances in a shower of his blood.
10:12: God, can we please ban the use of the word “surge” by any politician for at least, oh, I dunno, the next thirty or forty years? A generation or two? Please?
10:16: I stop paying attention to the several minutes where Trump is talking about foreign policy. It’s too fucking tiring. He’s denying supporting the Iraq war again despite the reams of evidence to the contrary. I suddenly really wanna go to bed.
10:18: blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
10:19: Clinton calls Trump “the most dangerous person to run for office in modern memory” or something similar, and Wallace laughs.
10:20: Trump is now blatantly arguing with Wallace. I don’t even know what he’s talking about right now. Then again, no one does. I don’t think Trump knows what “fallen” means in this context.
10:21: Trump is praising foreign dictators again. God, the shit he’s saying just doesn’t make any fucking sense. We’re not in Syria right now. Does he even know that?
10:23: For the record, I have absolutely no idea how to cut the Gordian knot that is Syria, and no idea whether a no-fly zone has any chance of being a good idea. I do know the safest thing for everyone is to keep Donald fucking Trump as far away from the fucking decision-making process as we fucking can.
10:26: “We’re bringing GDP from one percent,” says a man who has no fucking idea what GDP stands for.
10:28: I love how every single one of Donald Trump’s plans is “We’re gonna make it great” with absolutely no goddamned details at all ever. Every single one of them.
10:30: “Can I say something?” Trump says. “No,” Wallace says. Trump says something.
10:31: You save Social Security by getting rid of the cap on contributions. It ain’t hard. Yeah, it’s a tax raise. They’ll live.
10:32: Trump says he’s glad that premiums are rising under Obamacare.
10:33: Pretty sure Clinton’s not about to tell the world she’s gonna slash SS or Medicare benefits. “Such a nasty woman,” Trump says. Guess which word is the one he really has a problem with.
10:34: “Your husband disagrees with you,” the misogynist says. So?
10:35: I predict that Clinton talks about why she should be elected and Trump talks about why Clinton shouldn’t be elected.
10:36: From literally the first words out of his mouth, I’m right. She doesn’t mention him at all in her final statement. Obama’s approval ratings have never been higher and he’d have 80% of the vote if he were running. Go the fuck away, you witless cretin.
9:05: EXCEPT FOR NOW!
9:16: What kind of downers do you think they have him on right now? And can he actually not breathe through his mouth? He’s already whining about fairness. Fucking loser.
9:28: Nobody gives a fuck. Still. And nobody knows what the hell Sniffly’s even talking about. Are we only on the second question from the audience?
9:38: Maybe if Trump had health insurance he’d stop sniffling. “We’re gonna keep pre-existing.” Idiotic.
9:49: Damn sure politicans should have private and public opinions. That’s because it’s politics. If you’re not going to move someone from A to C on your own all at once, shoot for B and talk like you’re a fan of B until everyone gets there. Then move them to C. This does not bother me.
9:57: Hillary is either really passionate about the tax code or her composure is starting to crack a little bit. She looks pissed for the first time during the debate.
10:06: My feed shits out for a few seconds. When it comes back, Sniffles is somehow claiming that Russia is “new in terms of nuclear,” which… what? That’s barely even English.
10:15: Wait, really, that’s your question? “Will you be a devoted president to all our people?” Are you fucking kidding me? You’re not Jules. Jules was cool. You’re the guy from Black Snake Moan. Trump’s yapping about the gold standard; I don’t even know what that means. He appears to be entirely unaware that black people live outside of the inner cities. He’s unable to even discuss black or Latino issues without talking about inner cities.
10:23: It was totally “check out a sex tape.” He tries to shoehorn in Benghazi, which is also something no one cares about. My feed is really starting to shit the bed.
10:31: I hear the name “Ken Bone” and start laughing. Then I see Ken Bone and what he decided to wear to the debate and I cannot even any longer. I don’t even know what the fuck his question was about; I was laughing too loud and didn’t hear it. Is it sleepytime yet? I want it to be sleepytime. I may be a little loopy by this point.
We’re about to have another dumpster fire of a town-hall debate, in about an hour or so, and I’m going to attempt to liveblog the thing again, although I continue to make no promises that I’ll actually survive the thing. I wanted to get one thing out of the way before the debate starts, however, in anticipation of a certain participant attempting to make hay of Bill Clinton’s record with women.
The election was always going to tighten. It’s in between the conventions and the debates. The natural impulse is to revert to the mean.
Once upon a time, there was a guy named Barack Obama. You may have heard of him. No one outside the great state of Illinois had any idea who Barack Obama was until 2004, when he delivered the (brilliant) 
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