There is a silver lining to this. We may have found the one possible thing that could bypass the bullshit "Trump beat expectations" narrative for the first debate. Yesterday it seemed like a decent bet that as long as Trump didn't soil himself on stage the media was going to announce that he beat expectations and Clinton had failed to put him away. Now it looks like as long as Clinton is literally able to stand upright for most of the debate she is beating expectations and Trump had failed to overcome her.
The only thing I'm not sure about is what if Clinton passes out during the debate and Trump soils himself. I have no clue how the media would judge things then.
Was the 2000 election this bad, or am I just nostalgic? I vaugely remember it being a political travesty where Bush was a clearly flawed candidate and things went terribly wrong, but now I look back and I wonder what happened to those glory days when both parties had competent candidates.
Well they treated Gore as a pathological liar although not quite to the same extent as they treat Clinton. They didn't treat Bush like the regressive liar that he was although Bush was nowhere near as dishonest as Trump (although much more regressive then Trump). But that's a bit like saying a bucket of water isn't as wet as the ocean.
It's bad to say, but the democratic party might be better off if Hillary dies. Not counting the sympathy vote, the mere fact that they can guiltlessly replace her with Bernie or Biden (or both) would lock the election down.
If Clinton were to die or withdraw for health reasons her replacement would be chosen by the democratic national committee. That is basically the superdelegates. They would be extremely unlikely to chose Joe Biden. They would be extremely, extremely unlikely to chose Bernie Sanders, the man who just spent a year ratfucking them. Tim Kaine would be a logical choice for continuity reasons.