We stand on the railroad tracks, looking nervously up the hill. Somewhere up there is a burning runaway oil train headed our way, and we have been tasked with stopping it armed only with a mop handle and three cans of expired beans. Welcome to calm before the third and final 2016 presidential debate.
This is usually the day when helpful pundits have a go at explaining to America what each candidate must "do" in order to be seen as winning the debate. Most of these are usually exercises in expectations-setting, lowering the bar for one candidate or raising it for the other, but they've taken on an especially maudlin tone this year with the certain knowledge that no matter what advisers suggest Donald Trump "do,” he will not do it, and no matter how much national pundits speculate on whether we will see a serious Trump or a scenery-chewing Trump, Serious Trump has proven to be more elusive than Bigfoot.
Here's our debate-news roundup. Everyone grab their mop handles.
• The biggest question of the evening is whether Donald Trump remembers who he is running against. For the last debate his guests were women who had bad things to say about Bill Clinton; this time, he's invited President Barack Obama's estranged Qaddafi-loving Hamas-supporting half-brother, which could indeed slightly discomfort the president if the president was expected to be in the building. But, and this may come as a surprise to Trump come this evening, he's not.
So why do it? Because Donald Trump launched his political career obsessing over the supposed Kenyan otherness of the first black American president, and continues to spend the election courting the same collection of racists and conspiracy twits whose support he has milked ever since. He might be debating Hillary Clinton, but LOOK OVER THERE FOR SOME REASON!
• The Breitbartization of the Trump campaign doesn't stop there. Also possibly making an appearance in Las Vegas: Maybe Sarah Palin. Maybe ACORN pimp guy: Maybe some guy who claims to be Bill Clinton's "abandoned son." (This particular Some Guy is also a frequent Alex Jones guest whose claims were put in doubt by DNA tests over 25 damnhellass years ago.) It’s a cocktail party in far-right hell, and we’re all invited! (And, once again, the campaign doesn't seem to quite be sure who they're running against.)
• There will be no handshakes or other contact between the Clinton and Trump families after the debate commission itself squashed a Trump campaign attempt to "confront" Bill Clinton with detractors during the last debate. Clinton's team made sure the formality was axed entirely to avoid a repeat.
• How bad are opinions of Trump at this point? A new Quinnipiac poll finds that 59% percent of voters believe Donald Trump does not have a sense of decency.
• Trump skipped his pre-debate walkthrough today.
• Fox News-based moderator Chris Wallace won't be wading in much, saying he "would prefer not to" intervene and that he would be a "timekeeper", not "a participant."
• As far as the technical details go: The debate will be 90 minutes long, in six 15-minute segments devoted to the Chris Wallace-chosen topics of immigrants, "entitlements", the Supreme Court, the economy, foreign policy and candidate "fitness." Translation: Fox News chose the topics.
• After Trump's repeated insistences over the last week that the election was being "rigged" against him by the media and nationwide voter fraud, that might come up tonight. Especially because even his own campaign team isn't backing him up.
• Roger Ailes is reportedly no longer advising Trump after the two men had a falling out.
“Ailes’s camp said Ailes learned that Trump couldn’t focus—surprise, surprise—and that advising him was a waste of time,” Sherman said. “These debate prep sessions weren’t going anywhere.”
On the Trump side, Ellison said the story is different: “Even for the second debate, Ailes kept going off on tangents and talking about his war stories while he was supposed to be prepping Trump.”
Least. Surprising. News. Ever.
And with that, we can only sit back and see what the evening brings us. God help us all.