What Each Candidate Needs to Do to Win the First General Election Debate
September 26, 2016. Political OP-Ed from the News Team.
Jill Stein:
Jill Stein won't even be on the the official debate stage. And so you ask, how could she win? Jill Stein will be answering all debate questions on Social Media. Polls show her positions match those of the mainstream public, 69 to 95%, depending on the issue. Her problem is that the Democratic and Republican Parties determine who will be in the debates and they have excluded third parties from the stage. Jill needs to be seen and heard to win the Presidency. It’s up to her supporters to make sure the world sees her answers. Multiple YouTube channels, Facebook pages and Twitter links to her responses will be necessary. If she succeeds in being seen, she will be the clear popular winner.
Donald Trump:
First, Donald Trump has to want to win the Presidency. Bill Clinton reportedly called Trump shortly before he entered the race and talked him into running to help Hillary become President. Everything Trump has done, since entering, plays into the belief that he is a shill for Hillary. Despite having previously endorsed Hillary Clinton and having contributed to her prior campaigns and Foundation and having been a longtime close friend of Hillary’s and Bill's, Trump has thrown away his lifelong positions of being pro-choice and a supporter of equal rights for immigrants and minorities to making buffoon racist remarks, seemingly designed to scare the average voter (all but the small minority of racists in the Republican Party) into supporting Hillary Clinton. Unlike Clinton, Trump has a history of giving equal pay to women and minorities. If he were to put up an immigration wall, he’d have to start with his marital bedroom. Trump, as a top one-percenter, has a financial stake in Clinton winning the Presidency as her policies are all about re-distributing wealth to the top one-percent. Every time a scandal breaks that could destroy Hillary’s chances of winning, Trump come to Clinton’s rescue by opening his mouth and making a buffoon comment guaranteed to divert attention from her seemingly criminal (felonious) or campaign-ending behavior.
Here is how you can tell, from watching the debate stage, if Trump really is a shill for Hillary. If he is, he will make anti-immigrant or sexist remarks or attack victims of police violence or threaten to jail Edward Snowden (who is significantly more popular with Americans than either Trump or Clinton).
Trump can crush Clinton in the debate (1) by stressing the need to restore Glass-Steagall, (2) by speaking against the TPP and fracking, (3) by expressing the need for the Attorney General to prosecute criminals regardless of wealth and status, (4) by showing he is not scary and racist and (5) by showing he is more Presidential than Clinton.
With regards to Clinton’s health, Trump needs to tactfully express concern and sympathy while making the the case that a President needs to be in good health to make last minute decisions to avoid wars and disasters. He needs to talk about the downside of Obamacare and how it is unaffordable for millions of Americans and how, while not ending healthcare, he would move on to a system that would allow more Americans to afford health care. He could do himself a lot of good by expressing a need for a greater right to privacy. He should also talk about the problem with media bias and Bill Clinton’s 1996 Telecommunications Act. He can talk about bringing jobs back by opposing the TPP and ending NAFTA. If he did all this, he would defeat Hillary Clinton by a very wide margin.
Hillary Clinton:
Hillary’s only official campaign strategy to date is to make people fear Trump. Her campaign rests on Trump helping her win the Presidency. Even with Trump’s loyal help, Clinton has been failing because only about 10% or fewer of the voters actually like her. Polls done by legitimate sources (as opposed to those tied to the Clinton campaign and her media advocates) establish that most Sanders supporters will vote for Jill Stein. Outside of rigging the general election, Clinton is in serious trouble.
Here is how Clinton could win the debate over Trump . She needs to come clean with Americans on matters where she is considered untrustworthy and to give them a reason to trust her in the future. (1) She needs to own up to the election fraud and apologize for it. It’s documented and so she won't be revealing anything the public doesn't already know. She cannot get around this issue if she wants to win back Democrats who have abandoned her. (2) She needs to agree to immediately release her Wall Street transcripts. (3) She needs to come clean about her health issues. It’s not about exhaustion, heat and pneumonia and everyone knows it. She needs to let the public know what she is doing to prevent down periods when emergencies arise. (4) As she has been moving so far to the right and away from her base, she needs to agree to true progressive appointments (Dennis Kucinich, Cynthia McKInney, Jill Stein, Ajamu Baraka, not Elizabeth Warren, not Debbie Wasserman Schultz, not Ken Salazar and not Huma Abedin) to her Cabinet. (5) She needs to agree to resign if she switches her position back to supporting the TPP or if if she unilaterally takes us into another war. This all would go far towards improving her image and winning her back a lot of the support her lack of honesty and trustworthiness has cost her.
In all likelihood, the debate will be nothing more than a show, a circus, with the only sane and trustworthy voice coming from off the debate stage but resonating strongly across the social media blasts. That voice will be Jill Stein. While Clinton will likely lie, attack and avoid and Trump will likely act like a buffoon, the wisdom and concern for real Americans will likely be coming from an unseen third party candidate, who is not part of the polling but is nevertheless becoming more and more beloved in the minds and hearts of Americans.