I highly recommend listening regularly to Keepin' it 1600, a political podcast with former Obama aides Jon Favreau, Dan Pfeiffer, Jon Lovett, and Tommy Vietor. (Of course, not as much as I recommend the wonderful Professional Left Podcast with Driftgass and BlueGal or our own great Kagro in the Morning.) 1600 features liberal insiders — a pretty rare commodity on media, so it’s often insightful.
Last night they had a post-debate recap with guests Jessica Yellin of CNN and Tim Miller. Yellin’s comments go the heart of the clueless, soulless, craven media:
if you look at the swing voters who are the white college educated who can’t decide, it was a draw slightly tilted to Clinton. He didn’t disqualify himself, obviously. . . And he didn’t come off, really, as a bully toward her. . . It wasn’t wildly offensive
Yellin is not the worst of the CNN people, but this is ludicrous and exemplifies the problem. The media is unwilling to call Trump unqualified even though it’s blindingly obvious he is. He is grotesquely unqualified and dangerous.
That was known before the debate and Trump’s debate performance proved and expanded on it. To say "He didn't disqualify himself,” obviously betrays astounding cowardice or ignorance.
As usual, Charlie Pierce said it best:
But Donald Trump is so damned proud of how he doesn't really know dick about anything, and so damned convinced that not knowing dick about anything actually makes him smarter than the rest of us mortals, that he was utterly incapable of raising any of these points in a coherent fashion. There were two presidents on that stage on Monday night [Holt’s other] and he wasn't one of them.
Hell, I wouldn't let him park my car.