I disabled the conf files, but still see the problem. Removing synaptics and installing libinput: sudo apt remove xserver-xorg-input-synaptics sudo apt install xserver-xorg-input-libinputmakes the problem worse - right clicks pop up more often, left clicks do not work at all. Fn F8 also no longer enables/disables the touchpad (I'm guessing you can do this using xinput, but have not found out how to do that yet).
I was hoping that re-installing synaptics may clear it up, but again no luck.