Toasting and Roasting Hillary Clinton

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/27/opinion/campaign-stops/toasting-and-roasting-hillary-clinton.html

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Washington — Scott Evertz thought it would be appropriate to watch the first presidential debate at a Teddy Roosevelt-themed bar.

Mr. Evertz, who served as the director of the White House office on national AIDS policy during President George W. Bush’s administration, has voted for the Republican presidential nominee every four years since 1980. But not this year. Mr. Evertz is planning to vote for Hillary Clinton in November. He thinks Donald J. Trump, is “dangerous,” “reckless,” and a liar.

“The party of Teddy Roosevelt is gone,” he said, nursing his first Scotch of the night.

The bar was hosting a debate watch party, complete with all of Washington’s sterile charm. The special menu for the debate included two $11 cocktails: one called Hillary’s Inbox (an electric blue concoction) and another named Trump Tower (a twist on a Negroni).

Mr. Evertz is a member of Together For America, a group of independent and Republican Clinton supporters. I had emailed him earlier in the day on Monday about the Trump’s campaign’s newly formed Bush Alumni Coalition, including former prominent members of the Bush administration such as Donald Rumsfeld, Tommy Thompson, Ari Fleischer and John Ashcroft. Noticeably absent from the list were any of the members of the Bush clan themselves.

“Blech!” Mr. Evertz wrote in response, adding an emoji of a face sticking its tongue out.

At the bar later that night, Mr. Evertz was joined by Matthew Lipina, a 22-year-old Republican and a recent graduate of Marquette University in Milwaukee. He said he was supposed to receive his absentee ballot from Wisconsin in the mail on Tuesday, and didn’t know what he would do with it.

“Do I vote for what I’ve been voting for, or do I vote for what I believe in?” he said. Perhaps the debate would lend some clarity.

The audio being piped throughout the bar was out of sync with the flat-screen televisions, meaning that it looked like Mr. Trump’s words were coming out of Mrs. Clinton’s mouth, or vice versa. Had Jill Stein been at the bar, she would have used it as a tortured metaphor about our broken two-party system.

Mr. Trump began the debate the same way he began his presidential run, by saying that American jobs are “fleeing” to countries like Mexico.

“Mexico! Drink!” said a young man sitting at a nearby table, holding his drink aloft.

In this crowd, even Mrs. Clinton’s lamest zingers went over like gangbusters. “I call it ‘Trumped up’ trickle-down economics,” she said, and the crowd went wild.

Later in the debate, Mrs. Clinton criticized Mr. Trump for talking about profiting off the 2008 housing crisis. “That’s called business, by the way,” Mr. Trump interrupted. The debate watchers in the bar groaned.

“That’s amazing,” Mr. Evertz said, shaking his head in disbelief. “That speaks to who he is. My interests are most important, but you want to be president?”

After the debate ended and the bar cleared out, Mr. Evertz and Mr. Lipina chatted, nursing the rest of their drinks.

Mr. Evertz said the debate solidified his support for Mrs. Clinton. Mr. Lipina still felt torn.

“Who do I believe in? Gary Johnson,” he said. “Who do I hope will win? Donald Trump.”

He said that while his own political philosophy aligns more with Mr. Johnson, the Libertarian Party candidate, he wants anyone but Mrs. Clinton to win because he finds her untrustworthy.

“Business and a strong economy is the bedrock of America, and at the end of the day, I cannot argue with a man who is a billionaire and who has built a multinational business with nothing but a loan from his father,” Mr. Lipina said. (While he claims to be worth $4.5 billion, it’s extremely unclear how much Mr. Trump is actually worth, and his father may have lent him $14 million, according to one recent report.)

The two Republicans, old and young, agreed not to stage their own mini-debate at the bar, but instead bonded over their mutual love of Mr. Johnson and scorn for entitled millennials. Soon after, they departed into the night to start tending to their debate hangovers; just three more nights like this to go.