Ahead of the tonight’s final debate in the US presidential campaign, Donal O’Keeffe offers the Democratic candidate some advice.
Dear Secretary Clinton,
Well, this is it. The final debate in the most vicious and divisive campaign in the history of the US presidency.
I’m not a US citizen and I don’t have a vote on November 8th, but I live on this planet and there are people I love that I’d just as soon not see die in a nuclear apocalypse, so if you don’t mind, here’s some free advice.
I hope it’s okay my writing to you publicly like this. I tried mailing you earlier but there seems to be something up with your email.
This is the culmination of your life’s ambitions and – most reputable polls suggest – the White House is within your grasp. So – going into tonight’s debate – it might not be a bad idea to remember exactly who and what your opponent is.
Donald Trump is a racist, a sexist, a liar, a coward, a cheat, a narcissist, a misogynist, a xenophobe, a bully, a buffoon, a blowhard, a bankrupt – multiple times, financially and morally – a sociopath, an egomaniac, a philanderer and – by his own bragging – a serial sexual predator.
Every week – hell, every other day – has seen this day-glo, candy-haired bozo disprove every suggestion that he couldn’t possibly go any lower.
Now he’s telling his followers – entirely falsely – that the election will be rigged and he’s urging his racist mobs to picket polling centres. There remains – frustratingly, upsettingly, maddeningly – still a chance this anti-democratic thug may yet be the next president of the United States.
Donald Trump has mocked the disabled, he has attacked a Gold Star family, he has branded Mexicans as rapists and drug-dealers, he has promised to deport an entire religion, he has not paid taxes for eighteen years and he has done this legally because in the mid-90s this self-proclaimed business genius managed to lose so much money that the IRS didn’t even offer sufficient space on its return form as they never expected anyone could write off a billion dollars.
Donald Trump has actively encouraged Russia to hack his nation’s classified files, he has promised to jail his opponent, and he has founded his entire political career on the lie that Barack Obama was not born in the United States – a dog whistle to attract the support of racists who just didn’t want a Black president.
(As you know, Hillary, he now lies that it was you who started the “birther” rabble.)
Donald Trump has said of a ten year old girl standing right in front of him “I’m gonna be dating her in ten years. Can you believe it?” (What kind of a man does that?). He has acquiesced to a radio host’s request that he discuss his own daughter as “a piece of ass“. (What kind of a man does that?). At tonight’s debate, there is every likelihood that he will even somehow top that video of his boasting that he has got away with serial sexual assaults. After all, this is the man whose best defence has been to say that the women accusing him are not attractive enough to sexually assault. (SERIOUSLY, WHAT KIND OF A MAN DOES THAT?).
Pretty much anything could happen tonight. I reckon there’s even a chance he might yet drop out of the race altogether and go found that nativist television network for the alt.right that some suspect was the real reason he entered the campaign in the first place. (Many people are saying this. Many people.)
It might do you no harm tonight, Secretary Clinton, to remind your opponent that for the Republican Party, Donald Trump is now so radioactive that there seems every possibility that not only will he cost them the White House, he may also lose them both the Senate and the House.
Good. Donald Trump is only the logical end result of decades of GOP tactics, the apex predator of know-nothing demagoguery. They have it coming to them and they have no-one to blame but themselves. Writing in the Washington Post last week, E.J. Dionne Jr put it well:
“For years, Republicans managed an exceptional acrobatic act: to mobilize right-wing populist anger and white working-class voters behind a program whose benefits flowed to the economic elites. The operation was supported by large expenditures from the very rich. The assumption was always that the base would get the noise and the elites would get the policy.
“Now the noise is deafening, a dangerous and profoundly flawed man leads the party, and its candidates cannot move one way or the other without falling off the wire. No one expected an implosion this spectacular.”
I know Michelle Obama says “When they go low, we go high” (and she is an amazing woman, landing enough punches in her Trump speech to kill a normal human being) but I think when Trump goes low, you need to go for the jugular. Your advisors won’t tell you this, Hillary, but most of us want to see Lisa Simpson absolutely destroy Nelson Muntz.
Anyway, my best advice is this: ignore your advisors.
I know they’re telling you that because you’re a woman, you can’t afford to lose your temper and that if you do, you’ll be deemed to have lost the argument.
As it happens, over here in Ireland right now, women are being told they shouldn’t raise their voices too, lest they sound too shrill or too hectoring or just too, well, female. You know something? The only people who don’t want women to raise their voices are the people who don’t want women to raise their voices. And those goons have been ruling the roost for millennia too long now.
So please raise your voice, Madam Secretary. You’re the smartest person in just about any room and at this point it’s frankly embarrassing that you share a stage with that preening, tangerine dunderhead. It’s past time you knocked Humpty Numpty off his moronic wall.
You’ll find better words than my suggestion, obviously, but I was thinking maybe you could try something a bit Aaron Sorkin in sentiment:
“You know something, Donald? I have had with you. I have had it with you, and America has had it with you too. All you have is hate, all you have is fear, all you have is rage.
“America is better than that, and America is better than you.
“You’re a bully, Donald. You pad around the stage, you encroach on my personal space and you try to intimidate me. But let me tell you something, Donald: you don’t intimidate me. You don’t intimidate me because I am smarter than you, I am stronger than you and I am better than you.
“You’re a bully, Donald, and like every other bully, you’re just a coward and a failure and a weak little crybaby. Your campaign has been a bully’s charter and let me tell you something, we are better than that.
“America is better than that, and America is better than you.
“You’re a bully, Donald and not only am I going to beat you, I am going to bury you. You are going to lose and you are going to lose bigly, to use your own stupid made-up word. You stir up hate and fear and rage because that’s all you have, Donald.
“America is better than that, and America is better than you.
“It’s over, Donald. You’re fired.
“Now get off the stage, you tiny, pathetic loser.”
Please, Hillary, please raise your voice.
Best,
Donal.
PS: When you’re done blowtorching that freak-haired orange weasel once and for all, you could do far worse than dialing 202-456-1111 and asking Michelle Obama to be your Secretary of State.
