354. Clinton Loses Control. Shocking Statements. Wants to 'Plug Trump Between the Eyes.' Surges in Polls.

"Friends, I intended to talk about my program for childcare and early education today — you know, the way I was going to set it up, and keep it going, and handle the costs, with all the details I, as usual, thought voters deserved to know — and then I read what Donald Trump said about me on Friday: that I had started the questioning about Barack Obama's birth.

"So I prepared a statement.  [Begins to read.]  'Once again we see that Donald Trump is unfit for...'  [Moves to the side.]  You know, I'm so mad I can't see to read that.  It's so far from expressing what I really want.  You know what I really want?  I want to fight a duel with that man.  The way men used to do when one slandered another.

"Oh if only our laws and customs allowed it!  I wouldn't be a bit afraid.  I'll bet he's a terrible shot.  You know, the kind of cowboy full of brag until he gets called on it, has to fight, and sprays the walls with lead. Then the real cowboy plugs him in the head.  Right between the eyes.

"You think a woman couldn't do that?  What sex was Annie Oakley?  In my dream that's me.  Pow!  Right between the eyes.  Is that assassination?  No, it's a gunfight, an informal duel.  And I'll be doing the shooting myself; I won't be hinting like a wimp that somebody else do it. 

"I know, I know, a candidate for President of the United States should never, never go public with dreams like that, but let me tell you, at the moment I don't care.  I'm fed up.  I'm sick of getting nagged and nagged about things that have done absolutely no harm to the country while nobody seems to realize what terrible harm could be done by a President who has so little respect for fact or reality.

"If anybody had any doubts about that this birther thing should have removed them.  There was the evidence, the documents, right in front of him.  And he goes years before believing it — no, saying he believes it.  He treats evidence as if it were the oldest trick in the book.

"So what's he going to do when a National Security Advisor lays before him clear evidence, evidence as solid as the evidence for President Obama's birthplace, that a foreign leader — like maybe his friend Vladimir Putin — is taking steps to do us harm?  Take five years to believe it?  And then cover himself by making charges for which there is absolutely no evidence (like the charge that I started the birther thing). 

"Can you see him getting away with that kind of thing at a G20 meeting?  At the UN?  On the world stage?  Do you hear the laughter?  And that would be laughter not just at our President but at our country.

"I think that if anything can be called deplorable it's that stubborn refusal to weigh evidence that birthers show.  I think that if anybody on the political spectrum can be called deplorable it's birthers.  You are deplorable, birthers, and the people who go along with your beliefs are deplorable.

 I think any democracy that doesn't deplore evidence-ignoring people like that is in trouble.  Deploring is what I'm doing. And I challenge Trump to do otherwise.  Stand up, big man, and say I don't deplore birthers.  You're getting a lot of credit for "saying it like it is."  Well how is it here?

"I think most Trump supporters believe what I believe about birthers, and lot of other fringy things.  They just haven't realized it yet.  It's been the kind of election season where you don't have time to think.  And he says his wild things so confidently, in such a big manly way, with such an emphatic repeat.  But they, those basically sensible supporters, will get around to realizing it, and the debates are the time for it.  I will try to make my kind of sense, and he will try to make his. 

Mine is kind of boring, I know.  But so was Eisenhower's.  Though the nation was already into the greatest, longest surge of prosperity the world had ever seen there were big voices saying things were terrible.  Eisenhower called them "prophets of gloom and doom."  He noted their presence and then went on explaining, with costs and benefits, his projects — like the Interstate Highway System.  Aren't we glad the nation listened to him and held its course?

I can't believe that Eisenhower's kind of good sense — in the nation, in the Republican Party — has disappeared.  I think it's just been under a spell for a while.

Some politicians — and that's what I am, a politician — can  break a spell with a big speech.  A flash.  A counter-spell.  I'm apparently not capable of that.  But I am capable of plugging away with facts and figures, so that's what I'll keep doing — knowing I'll be there for you when the spell breaks.