The August 23 Debate: Two Perspectives

I didn’t get to watch the debate, but I watched several dozen clips and a half-dozen retrospective reviews. This one from The Dispatch highlighted something that so many people on both sides of the aisle don’t want to accept:

On Trump’s Indictments, There Was No Debate 

“When the Fox News broadcast returned from commercial, co-anchor Bret Baier asked for a show of hands: Who onstage would still support Trump as the GOP nominee if he is convicted of a crime? All the candidates, save former Govs. Chris Christie and Asa Hutchinson, raised their hands.

“Most, when given the opportunity to explain themselves, went after the ‘weaponization’ of the Justice Department and ‘political’ prosecutions. None of the remaining candidates made any arguments that the charges against Trump in any of the four jurisdictions where he’s been indicted disqualify the former president, and Vivek Ramaswamy even challenged his rivals to follow his lead and commit to pardoning Trump if elected president. (Mike Pence was not amused.)

“It was a remarkable collective decision by the field not to use the frontrunner’s chief vulnerability against him. It reflects the broad conventional wisdom, which GOP strategists working for these campaigns espouse, that loyalty to Trump is itself a litmus test for primary voters.”

You can read the full review here.

And for another perspective, there’s this from Olivia Reingold in The Free Press.

I think both pieces made good points. But the elephant in the room – the fact that none of Trump’s adversaries (Republicans and Democrats) don’ t want to acknowledge – is that the indictments haven’t worked as planned. If anything, they have expanded Trump’s lead, and nobody knows what to do about that.