The value of debates is debatable

We all just witnessed the great debate which wasn’t. What was said in this press interview? What was said about what was said after it was said? In other words, substance. Let us look for the substance.

On the Kamala Harris side of the ledger, the first impression and the last impression were consistent. The woman whines like a 4-year-old complaining when she has been told to eat her peas. “I don’t want to. I don’t like peas. We always have peas. Peas are awful.” She grates on one’s nerves. She appears to be in a permanent state of childhood.

Then, if you take away the phrase “I will address that …” and the phrase “I have a plan …” there was no substance to her remarks. If she really has a plan for all the problems facing America, what the hell has she been doing for four years? The proof she is adrift in presidential politics is the fact she was named border czar and could not or did not bother to find the border, let along “have a plan” to do anything to protect our civilization.

Kamala Harris was on that debate stage thanks to California voters. California is a disaster area, and one of the most tragic disasters within the state is Oakland where Kamala Harris cemented the foundations of failure and her own future. In the matter of crime and punishment, Kamala Harris is clearly on the side of crime. She certainly cleaned up San Francisco as district attorney, returned California to greatness as attorney general and then as U.S. senator. She was so popular when she ran for president the first time she could not win a single delegate. So what’s not to like?

As for the press representatives, every question asked by ABC, without exception, was taken from the Democratic Party platform and the socialist point of view. It was a reminder why few people watch ABC News and why it is not sourced on major new events anymore. Most Americans saw those two ABC stalwarts for the first time.

The idea of televised presidential debates is 60-plus years old, and it has regressed into a staged reciting of campaign talking points interrupted occasionally by taunts and insults.

The whiny and vapid Ms. Harris spent two hours telling Americans she has a plan to address their problems. Essentially, that plan is to tax people and return a portion of that money in the form of bribes for votes in the next election. Phase 2 of her plan is to regulate everything, so we all will do without what we want and be happy with what the government thinks we should be allowed to have.

Then there is Donald Trump. Trump does not whine. He blusters. He is repetitive. He is long-winded. He rushes the conversation to give himself credit. He subscribes to the notion “if you do not blow your own horn, no one is going to blow it for you.” Hence, everything is the “greatest ever.”

Trump could have focused on one issue, the incredibly stupid idea of taxing capital gains before the anticipated profit is real. A median-priced home in California now costs more than a $1 million in the suburbs, and nearly that across the state.

Your parents may have purchased their home in the 1970s or 1980s for $20,000. Now it is worth a million bucks. At the very least, without Kalama’s plan, grandpa and grandma have a nest egg to pass on to their children and grandchildren. But if Kamala Harris is elected president and has her way, they will lose that home. Why? Their Social Security median income is less than $20,000 each, and they will lose the home to pay the taxes on an “unrealized capital gain.”

In effect, the Harris plan for housing is to make sure we all live in public housing. She said so during the debate. She is going to build thousands of homes.

If the government taxes gains that are suspected but not real, people with investment money will click a few keys on the computer and move their money offshore. When the City of Los Angeles applied a special tax against millionaires, the folks with the five-acre estate overlooking Malibu bought a home on the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe, and registered to vote there. Taxes avoided. Most of us do not have that kind of flexibility, so the tax-the-rich schemes proposed by Harris will have a diminishing return. In fact, owning a home in a Harris administration will be a liability.

Just days before the debate, Gov. Gavin Newsom refused to sign legislation giving illegals $150,000 to make a down payment on a home. He got credit he did not deserve for that veto. It is an insane idea. The governor, however, lamented in his veto message, saying he was for buying homes for illegals, but the bankrupt state could not afford it.

Trump should have run with this issue of “equity” through tax suppression of free markets. It applies to energy, climate change, all the other favorites of the socialist left. He did not do that effectively. Trump’s political instincts are solid, but he is not articulate. He is verbose.

Why does Biden-Harris want to fight a war in Ukraine when the administration already has surrendered to the Taliban in Afghanistan? So many opportunities, muted by overreach.

Trump could have opened and closed with his most famous line yet, “Fight! Fight! Fight!” He could have expressed concern for Kamala Harris by remarking he hoped “her Secret Service protection is better than mine.”

This debate, in this year, with people openly expressing fear of civil war at home and World War III everywhere, was, as expected, disappointing. It was disappointing because it left Kamala Harris standing, when she could and should have been vanquished.