Fight Club for Democracy?

Or Not Even the Next Best Thing

Presidential debate! Yeee-haw! What on earth do you think will happen?

Let's face it: lots of things probably won't.

Probably Ginni Thomas and Martha-Ann Alito won't rise up from the studio audience and start singing raucous versions of, respectively, "Love Lifted Me" and "A Mighty Fortress Is Our God," and then climbing over people to get at each other for lack of harmony -- a regular donnybrook ensues, and the Dems aren't even involved yet.

Probably not. If things do take a real-housewives turn it will be more subtle, like Jill Biden can't resist responding to a particularly piggish remark from Trump — she shouts from the wings, "Did you hear that? And if HE wins you know Melania is never going to come near the White House. That's what the talk is. That's what they're saying. Our girl Melania is not team MAGA now. So, in effect: Bachelor Trump. Remember what he was like when he was sort of married?”

Probably it will be a guy-on-guy thing that brings the Biden-Trump debate’s decorum to a historic nadir. And neither candidate will rise to the occasion.

Far from me to dampen your direst anticipations, but I don't foresee actual grab-ass and gouging. I doubt the lads will even go so far as to threaten and bluff and spew threats of one-on-one carnage — certainly not as eloquently as the ringtail-roaring riverboatmen facing off in Life on the Mississippi…

The Corpse-Maker:

            "Whoo-oop! Look at me! I'm the man they call Sudden Death and General Desolation! Bow your neck and spread, for the kingdom of sorrow's a-coming! When I'm cold, I bile the Gulf of Mexico and bathe in it. Contemplate me through leather -- don't use the naked eye."

Versus the Child of Calamity:

            "Hold me down to the earth, for I feel my powers a-working! When I'm thirsty I  reach up and suck a cloud dry like a sponge! I bite a piece out of the moon and hurry the seasons! The massacre of isolated communities is the pastime of my idle moments, the destruction of nationalities the business of my life!"

Sounds too much like climate change and war with Putin. Or too much like work. Biden and Trump might be backing away, muttering threats, as in Life on the Mississippi, about "this warn't going to be the last of this thing, for there was a time a-coming" -- when some earnest third party (Lawrence O'Donnell? Mike Pence?) who has finally heard enough of this shit and is itching for a chance to kick a little ass might jump in, like the "little black-whiskered chap" in, again, the Mark Twain novel:

            "'Come back here, and I'll thrash the two of ye!' An he done it, too. He snatched them, he jerked them this way and that, he booted them around, he knocked them sprawling, faster than they could get up -- "

Audience-pleasing, sure, but before it got that rowdy, Trump would be pleading bonespurs and Biden saying, "Where is he? Point me toward him!"

What will happen, I think, is that Dana Bash will ask Trump a tough question (How do you spell tariffs?) and all the color will drain out of his face and he'll begin to sniffle: "Awww, you promised no bias." And Biden -- well, there again, “Where is he? Lemme at him!"

Or here’s a thought:

Remember Billy Bush? The would-be celebrity-journalist who will forever be linked with mound-of-Venus-grabbing although he wasn’t the one who brought it up — don’t you think Billy Bush has been longing to get back at Trump before a sufficiently large audience? I can see Billy Bush running out and getting into Trump’s face and sobbing, “You ruined my life!”