Things Hillary Clinton Could Do During The Debate To Lose My Vote To Donald Trump: A Very Important List

I will not be watching the debate tonight.

I mean, really, what’s the point? I’m already an informed citizen. I know the candidates well.

I know one is a highly-qualified, globally well-respected figure, and I know the other is a greasy orange rectal discharge that came to life when struck by lightning one Halloween night.

One is complicated and flawed; the other is a demonic carnival barker.

One is a politician. The other, a plague unto man.

The debate’s gonna stress me out. Here’s how it’ll play out: I’ll put the tiny human to bed and then sit down for a warm, comforting, relaxing sleepy-time presidential debate, which will pull me tighter than a hangman’s rope. Christ, I’m already battling a bout of insomnia. Watching the debate just before crashing out, I might as well hoover up a bindle of cocaine and settle in for the NEVERSLEEP NIGHTMARE RIDE.

I know what happens at the debate. I know. We all know.

I’m going to watch Hillary being nuanced and clinical, and I’m going to watch Trump bloviating and blowing oily chunks of word-vomit into everybody’s mouths, and I know the Political Commentary Corps will ding her for being imperfect and celebrate him for not calling the moderator a racist epithet. (“It’s very presidential how he did not use bigoted language tonight. Though he did stomp on a bag of kittens, but sometimes being a president requires tough decisions. Did you see him on Fallon? So chummy! Hillary, on the other hand, did not successfully convince us that she is not dying from a secret monkey-flu. And would it kill her to smile once in a while? Even though when she smiles, we then say we wish she wouldn’t smile, and we use hilarious memes to mock her. Women are so silly, thinking everybody is always sexist.”)

The other day I suggested that Trump was an antibiotics-resistant strain of gonorrhea, and though that was a joke, the more I think about it, the more I consider the metaphor apt. We are used to politicians fitting a certain mold, and Trump doesn’t. In a given day, The Donald does ten things that would’ve handily disqualified more qualified candidates. Think Howard Dean’s YEEEYAAAY scream, for instance. Trump, though, threatens nuclear war before breakfast. He’s going to court for like, 357 different things, one of them being child rape. And yet, he persists. Because we weren’t ready. We built up antibodies for politicians. We have no antibodies for this oily fuckmonster. We don’t know how to defeat a reality TV star. His antics got right past our defenses and now he’s inside the system, like a septic infection.

So, I know who I’m voting for.

Just the same, I have to be willing to admit I’ll change my vote if Clinton really does fall down in some areas, and I thought it useful here to highlight what those things might be, just in case she’s reading this. HRC, you do any of these things, you have lost my vote:

1. Rip off your face and reveal the pale grinning 1980s-smarmy rich-kid movie villain rictus of Donald Trump, Jr. “And I would’ve gotten away with it if it wasn’t for you meddlesome fact-checkers!” Ha ha ha, just kidding, nobody’s going to fact check this debate.

2. Kill one of my pets or children on stage.

3. …

3. uhhh

3. whhh

3. *clears throat*

Okay, that’s literally it. There is no number three.

I tried thinking of other things like, “What if she set fire to the moderator,” or, “What if she answered every question with a line from a Vanilla Ice song,” or “What if she left a one-star review of one of my books,” and y’know, nope, sorry, still gonna vote for her. Because Trump is the worst candidate in my memory, and likely the memory of all American history. The guy is a Grade-A Narcissist who will chop this country up and sell the spare parts to Russia. Hillary — who I like, who I respect, who I do not consider the lesser evil — could literally be a new model of Terminator Robot sent to Earth to destroy us and I’d still be like, “Well, at least our deaths will be quick and clean, and maybe we can change her like we did the Cyberdyne Systems Series 800 Resistance Infiltrator, and she can say things like, HASTA LA VISTA, DONALD and we’d all have a good laugh and a good cry as lava consumes her metal exoskeleton.”)

And of course I’m not going to switch my vote to a third-party candidate because I’d have better luck trying to defecate a living, breathing unicorn. As much as I wish we had a viable third-party system, we don’t, and the possibility of electing a third-party candidate — without electoral reform! — is a hair’s breadth from zero. (Never mind the fact that these two third-party candidates are a pair of chuckleheads anyway. Neither is qualified to lead a country line dance much less the actual country.)

So, my vote is set.

Pretty much no matter what.

Enjoy the debates. I’m gonna watch cartoons and eat a bowl of cereal.

Hillary, please don’t kill my pets, please and thank you.