The final presidential debate of 2020 is done.  Prior to the debate, probably something around one-third of voters already voted. And a large majority of people who haven’t voted who watched the debate, most likely won’t change their mind.

But there is always that small fraction of voters who have yet to make up their mind.  And the choice doesn’t have to be “vote for Trump” or “vote for Biden”.

In my case, I haven’t fully decided.  I won’t vote for Joe Biden.  If I heard all of the right things from today to Election Day, then I could still possibly vote for Trump or Jo Jorgensen.  My most likely vote will be for “Other”.

There are so many areas where I disagree with Trump, but it is hard not to cheer for the guy because of his enemies.  The worst elements of society are his enemies, and there is a reason for that. They hate it when Trump tells the truth about certain things, and they hate it when Trump delegitimizes the establishment.  Trump is a threat to their power.  This includes the establishment media.

Overall, I thought both candidates performed well.  Biden stumbled over his words on more than one occasion, but he wasn’t a total train wreck.  I believe he flat-out lied several times, but it might not hurt him much because anyone who is undecided probably doesn’t know they were being lied to.

Trump did much better than the first debate.  The bad thing for Trump is that he started out shaky.  He was making some weird movements with his body in the first few minutes.  I have no idea what that was about.  And his first question was on the coronavirus, which I believe he handled poorly, at least at the beginning.  It got a lot better after that.  However, if there was someone who isn’t a political junkie who just turned in for the first five or ten minutes, they probably wouldn’t have been impressed with Trump.

The moderator somewhat exceeded my expectations, which isn’t saying much.  It was definitely a much better run debate than the last disaster with Chris Wallace.  Perhaps part of that is because the microphones could have been cut off during each candidate’s two minutes after the initial question.  Part of it is also that Trump just didn’t interrupt as much, which actually served him well.

There was one part early in the debate when Trump was talking about the coronavirus and opening up schools.  After Trump had finished, the “moderator” said something to the effect that young people can catch it and spread it.  But she then proceeded to ask Biden a question.  In other words, she was just interjecting to oppose Trump. A moderator should never counter a candidate’s point unless it is part of a follow-up question for that candidate.

Anyway, the rest of the debate wasn’t too bad.  Of course, she could have asked some more direct and stinging questions, but that is the case with most establishment media figures.

As I said, Trump didn’t start out well.  He was bad on the coronavirus when talking about a vaccine and blaming China.  He quickly got a lot stronger, as he talked about the cure being worse than the disease.

Biden was all over the place.  He said he didn’t want shutdowns and then immediately talked about closing bars and gyms in concerning areas.  I would hope that there are no bar owners or gym owners across America who would vote for Biden.

Biden actually had two libertarian moments in the debate, but I’ll get to that in a bit.

The elephant in the room is Hunter Biden and the emails from his laptop.  From a libertarian standpoint, the information is no shock.  They basically show that Joe Biden was skimming money from foreign countries by using his position.  His son was getting big payouts from foreign countries while funneling some of that money to Biden.

Joe Biden is a corrupt good old boy.  He is a politician.  He has done what most politicians do.  He was able to do a lot of it because he held such a high position of power.

I think the bigger story here is the media cover-up.  Most of the establishment media will barely cover the story.  And when it is covered, they just pretend like there is nothing there.  Or worse, they say that it is a plot by Iran and Russia.  It isn’t clear why Iran wants to see Donald Trump reelected.

I thought Trump did an ok job of addressing the subject.  The moderator asked one somewhat direct question on the topic, but it was easy for Biden to avoid

When pressed by Trump, Biden said that he hasn’t directly received any money from any foreign power ever.  This may have been a technical truth, but it is a lie.  In other words, Hunter Biden would receive money from foreign countries for favors done by his father.  Hunter would keep a bunch of the money, but also send some of it on to his father.  So Joe Biden didn’t technically receive money directly from a foreign power.  But he did receive money.

The problem with this topic in the debate is that most people who don’t support Trump have no idea what is going on.  I think Trump made a mistake in not getting to the very basics of the story. Trump should have directly asked Biden if it was Hunter’s laptop and if those emails are real.  Pin him down on a yes or no question.

The problem is that Biden was able to sidestep several times and even change the subject.  At one point, Biden somehow managed to turn the subject on to Trump’s taxes, and Trump actually bit on it.  Trump started defending his tax returns instead of sticking with the topic and going after the Biden corruption.

Biden said that Russia and Iran will pay a price for interfering with the election.  Biden actually mentioned Rudy Giuliani first, probably to preempt Trump attacking his dealings with Hunter Biden.  Trump was weak in his response and should have challenged the premise.

Trump talked about how he has been tough on Russia instead of initially calling the whole thing a hoax.  I don’t know if Trump understood the first time that Joe Biden was saying the Hunter email scandal was Russian interference.  It would have been a great time to ask for specifics.  “Are you saying that the computer repairman in Delaware where Hunter dropped off his laptop is a Russian spy?”  “How exactly did Russia get Hunter’s emails?”

It was later in the debate that Trump realized that Biden was accusing Russia of being involved in the laptop scandal.  He rhetorically asked if the laptop is a Russian hoax now, basically making fun of the notion.

Again though, I doubt that many anti Trump people even know what is being talked about.  If someone just watches the establishment media outlets, they probably barely knew anything about Hunter Biden’s laptop and the emails.  And for the few who were aware of the story at all, they were probably believing that somehow it was Russian and Iranian interference.

It’s just ridiculous. Whenever Biden talked about the subject, he was either trying to change the subject, or he was lying about it, or he was avoiding the question.  This is no surprise because how could he answer it truthfully and not look bad? Even though we all know it goes on in Washington DC, what Joe Biden and his son were doing were criminal acts.

Anyway, there were two somewhat libertarian moments that Biden had.  They showed Biden’s hypocrisy, but I see it as positive that he said these things.

First, there was a moment when Trump was talking about China and this was in reference to the impacts of his tariffs.  He said something to the effect of “I just gave 28 billion dollars to our farmers.”  Joe Biden said, “taxpayers” or “taxpayer”.  In other words, what Biden was saying is that Trump didn’t give anything to farmers.  It came from the taxpayers.  This is an elementary libertarian point that can be used on every subject dealing with government spending.  It was a good Biden moment from my perspective, but of course, Biden doesn’t say the same thing when it comes to almost anything else.

The second libertarian moment for Biden was when he said that nobody should go to jail for a drug problem.  Now I don’t believe Biden when he says this, and it is counter to nearly everything he has stood for in the past.  I mean, maybe he has changed his mind because of his son’s drug problem, but I highly doubt that’s it.  Most politicians would be happy to throw away people in jail for an offense in which their own family is exempt.

I believe Biden said this because it is a more popular position than it was in the past. Even in 2008 when Ron Paul was running for president on the Republican ticket, he would say that he opposed the federal war on drugs when asked.  He was mostly ridiculed.  In 2020, it is considered to be a quite reasonable position to say that nobody with a drug problem should go to jail just for the issue of drugs.

Libertarians see negatives everywhere, and to be sure, there are a lot of negatives to be seen. But let’s acknowledge that in the year 2020, Biden said that nobody should go to jail for a drug problem and this is considered acceptable.  In fact, the candidates were trying to outdo each other with regard to criminal justice reform.  This is one area where libertarians should truly try to form alliances with others in destroying the political war on drugs.

My overall assessment from the debate is that Trump won.  I have no idea if it will be enough.  The polls say that Biden is way ahead in the race, and many people have already voted.  But we know how the polls went in 2016.

The rallies for Trump have been enormous.  He has a huge base of enthusiastic fans.  There are a lot of people voting “for” Trump.  There is barely anyone voting “for” Biden.  But half the country hates Trump, so they will vote against him in the form of marking the ballot in favor of Biden.

We are not going to know the results on Election Day. There is a decent chance we still won’t know the outcome the day after.  2020 has already been a wild ride.  I don’t expect the election to be any different.