"If I’m Donald Trump, I’m trying to look presidential. I’m trying to neutralize the effect of the open mic gaffe and the general assumption that he’s a sexist and misogynist," Rall told Loud & Clear host Brian Becker ahead of Wednesday night’s debate, describing the strategies for both presidential hopefuls going into the face-off.
While Trump’s extreme unlikeability has led to predictions of a Clinton victory, Rall pointed out that Clinton suffers from an enthusiasm problem that may keep voters from going to the polls.
"If my money had to placed today, I would put it on her. But that said, yes, it’s not all over. He can definitely still win. There’s a massive enthusiasm gap," Rall explained.
"Not to be overlooked is the third party factor. Many of Hillary Clinton’s would-be voters are going to migrate to Dr. Jill Stein and to Gary Johnson," he added. "And then, also, there’s going to be a lot of apathetic people."
"The issues that American citizens care about, as usual, is the economy," Rall said. "The economy has recovered for Wall Street, quite nicely…and it has not benefitted the vast majority of people, even in the upper middle class, much less the middle class and working class and the poor.
"The economy is not really being addressed in an intelligent way. The problems with Obamacare are being addressed intelligently," he added. "These are major bread and butter issues that are not getting addressed."
Foreign policy discussion was also expected to fall short.
"We’re expanding a war in Yemen. We’re involved in a proxy war via Saudi Arabia in Yemen. We are still in deep in Syria, and why? What for? This is not something that worked out well with Iraq," he said.
"Most Americans are either just not paying attention to these interventions because they’re tired of the Forever War…or they just aren’t particularly interested in it."
While a number of issues raised by the WikiLeaks release of emails from Clinton’s campaign chair John Podesta will ideally be addressed, they have largely been overlooked in light of Trump’s sexual assault allegations.
"Under any objective standard, Hillary Clinton is the Democratic nominee, but she’s not really a Democrat. So, that does need to be talked about," Rall said. "It would be weird coming from Donald Trump, but who knows, maybe that will become part of his whole ‘throw everything at the wall and see if it sticks’ strategy tonight."
