Slate Pitch: Hillary Clinton Was Terrible In Last Night's Debate, And JUST KIDDING!

I called my mom after last night's debate. At least she would enjoy hearing me say how terrible Hillary Clinton had been. But I was confused; I had thought she was terrible, but the first post-debate reax I saw were Chris Matthews saying Hillary had cleaned Trump's clock. "She was terrific!" my mom said. "She did clean his clock! She was concise. She didn't ramble or go into too much detail. She was funny. Her voice was low and pleasant. She looked great; red is great on her!"

My mom always did like her Mao/Star Trek outfits, even when she, a Bernie person, was doing her best to try to be able to stand Hillary herself.

[wonkbar]<a href="https: //wonkette.substack.com/p/come-play-wonkettes-national-enquirer-debate-liveblog-drinking-game-and-die-as-dead-as-vince-foster"></a>[/wonkbar]"She looked great, and he was unintelligible. You were watching it while you did your livebloog, weren't you? When are you going to stop that?"

When am I going to stop it? I promised to watch it again, without being three-quarters distracted with typing the whole time.

So Chris Matthews and my mom were on the same side. Had I really that badly misinterpreted the whole 90 minutes? I watched Chris Christie answer the question "how'd your guy do tonight?" with an ashen face and some rambling about do you really want four more years of Obama and by the way some very good presidents have had some very bad debates. Oh. Huh. I saw on Twitter that Trump campaign idiot Kellyanne Conway -- as brazen a spinner as most of us have seen -- had said that, if she had to grade the candidates, she would give them both "satisfactory."

Hooooly shiiiiit! It must have been an insane whomping! And here were pictures of Donald Trump yelling at his family -- people assumed because they'd talked him out of bringing Monica Lewinsky up onstage and having her tapdance, though I frankly bet Hillary Clinton's reaction would have been terrific, and besides the meanness of it, it's something I'd kind of like to see!

And I watched it again, in bed, only drifting off for the final "security" portion, and Hillary Clinton was terrific, with the clock cleaning and the pretty smile. She had sounded robotic while I liveblogged, and with my ear catching on every small trip of the words, they all sounded rehearsed. He had sounded masterful as I lost track of his actual ridiculous spinny mouthfartings and only heard that he was never letting her speak. What he said may not have actually meant anything at all -- and of course I knew that at the time -- but wouldn't low-information voters be blinded by all the sand he'd just kicked up? With enough words (it seemed like he talked for 70 of the debate's 90 minutes), he could trick them into thinking he knew anything at all about anything at all.

Watching it with my actual eyeballs instead of my keyboard? No. No worry of that at all. He was an insane person; she was not. It was clear he didn't know jack about shit; she knew stuff without being all Gore-y (or Clinton-y) about it. She mostly didn't let him steamroll her, and when she did, that was on him, not her. Her little cute dances and exasperations were fun and silly. He tried to be a gentleman, and when she didn't fawn in appreciation, he got mean, and it did not faze her. She's seen worse than Donald Trump.

I had just been wrong. It happens every great once in a while, and with Alex in the chatcave pulling a Hair on Fire Andrew Sullivan, he had INFECTED ME, so let's all blame him.

Nice job, Hillz! Sorry I doubted you like a common mainstream media person. You did real good up in there. You are good.

Love,

Wonket