Thank Goodness

Thank goodness the third presidential debate is over.

Thank goodness there are only 19 days left before election day.

Thank goodness Hillary Rodham Clinton has a strong lead in the polls.

Goodness is an issue in this campaign.

dt talked about "her very sleazy campaign."  Excuse me?  He brought unprecedented sleaze into it.

Hillary stood there in white, answering a question, as dt muttered "such a nasty woman."

"The operative word there is woman," Lawrence O'Donnell noted during post-debate commentary.

Gender is an issue in this campaign, one dt uses constantly.

The whole thing is unbearable, except that it's a thriller.

"It's like a train wreck--you can't not watch it," said Bob Goldman in my writing class on Wednesday afternoon.

dt claimed "She shouldn't be allowed to run."

To everyone but him, this was a reminder that 100 years ago she wouldn't have been allowed to run.  Women weren't even allowed to vote--but now a woman is ahead of him in the race for the presidency.

She's running and he's falling behind, so he wishes she were not "allowed" to run.  Put her in jail, in the kitchen, in the bedroom, but get her out of this marathon to become president of the US.

Speaking to Chris Wallace, the polite and courageous moderator of the debate, dt said, "The media is so dishonest and so corrupt...."  He didn't add "except you" or anything--he just blasted the poison in the moderator's face.

Hillary defended women's rights, gay rights, Roe v. Wade, immigration reform, background checks on people buying guns.  He criticized her "30 years" of being a politician.

"I'm happy to compare my 30 years of experience with his," she answered, cataloging her achievements and the trifling activities he was involved in simultaneously at each point: discriminating in real estate, borrowing $14 million from his dad, starring in a tv show.

Question 5 from Chris Wallace was about the nine women who have confirmed the groping and assault dt boasted of.

"I didn't know any of these women," the candidate claimed, yet he made business contracts with Jill Harth and her husband.  Natasha Stoynoff interviewed him for People magazine.

He claimed that HRC's campaign "got them to step forward" or that they did it for fame--unaware that women have been trying to avoid this kind of infamy for centuries.  

The audience at the University of Nevada laughed when he once again claimed, "No one respects women more than I do."

Thank goodness--thank God--the national ordeal is almost over.

I'm not one who believes God governs the outcome of elections, but I do believe with James Russell Lowell that God stands "behind the dim unknown":

"within the shadow, keeping watch over H[er] own."

http://www.hymntime.com/tch/htm/o/n/c/oncetoev.htm

May She protect Hillary Rodham Clinton and not allow her to be shot by some maniac.

May election day proceed without violence.

May we get through the next four years without violence and without the sleaze and gender bashing of this election.