First debate between Hillary and Trump has just concluded. My views, without reading anyone else's and without taking any actual notes, just off the top of my head.
NOTE - Expanded with deeper analysis about 4 hours later. See below
I think Trump came in as 'nice Trump' and carried this through the first hour. He seemed Presidential enough and he also scored good points as a businessman or in how Government is broken and he is the needed solution.
Hillary came in as 'smiling Hillary' with main intention to bring her negative ratings up. She smiled through it all and cracked jokes and didn't get too deep into the weeds. I think the first hour of the 90 minutes was essentially tied. HIllary was scoring points and showing off her clearly superior grasp of things, but wasn't hitting Trump too hard.
For me, personally, its REALLY annoying to see Trump continuously talking over Hillary or taking more time and running on and on, he must have spoken well over half of the total time. But its also his style and its part of how he got through the primary debates.
Trump started to unravel about at the 60 minute mark and then it went badly downhill. He started to get into the nonsense utter total bullshit lies like a long feud with moderator Lester Holt about Trump being for the Iraq war at the start (he claims he wasn't while he can be heard in a radio interview widely available that he was for it). Then Trump lost his self-control and became ever more silly. Hillary would laugh, throw in some punches, and got the audience to laugh at Trump several times.
I think Hillary caught her attack mode when she said she had been prepping for this debate, and that Trump just called it a bad thing - and the audience loved her for it. Thats roughly when it turned. Trump hated it that the audience was siding with her, and then came Lester Holt's attacks, so in Trump's mind he was suddenly under siege from all sides.
Here is where I think the damage came. The last 30 minutes, and the audience reaction so strong they laughed AT Trump at least four times towards the end, including then the last interchange about women - that was where Hillary won the debate.
Not a crushing defeat. But a clear victory for Hillary. I think this should move Hillary's polling up by something like 5 points by the first 4 or 5 polls out by the end of the week. That should get an approx 2% race now, into an approx 7% race at the end of the week, with 5 more weeks to go.
Will Trump complain about Lester Holt, I think he will ( I did not watch any after-debate TV reviews yet). I think he will say he was ambushed and it was a biased moderator and Trump may signal he'll skip the next debate. That would be supremely dumb of course because now, if Trump suffers from this debate, the only possible way Trump can climb back, is by winning one of the two remaining debates. And judging by how prepared and calm and happy and smiling Hillary was, I think there is no danger of her losing to Trump in a debate.
Watch the talking heads. The losing side blames the referees. I expect the Trumpsters to come out loudly that this was a rigged debate. And listen to the audience. This audience was nicely subdued through the first 60 minutes (I think only 2 interruptions in the first hour) but in the end, they started to howl AT Trump. That is a strong signal that Trump was losing those voters that matter - the undecided voters in the middle.
No knockout punches but several strikes by Hillary landed on Trump. The aftermath however, this debate will give PLENTY of fodder for Hillary's team to hit Trump, and essentially nothing to hit Hillary on.
EXPANDED ANALYSIS
This part written about 4 hours after the top part.
I relived the debate but in a peculiar and interesting way. I still have not read one bit of analysis by others about the debate (I am dying to do that). But I have plenty of thoughts now swirling inside my head, and I want to post those for you.
The above part stays. I won't ammend it. That was my view immediately as the debate ended. Now, my 'second generation' thoughts. I relived the debate but through other people's eyes, contemporaneously. I didn't watch the debate again (I will) but rather, I wanted to see 'how it played' with 'normal people' and how to best do that? Well, Communities Dominate, eh? The best way to know what people think of something, if there is a large enough audience, is of course Twitter.
I didn't want to 'pollute' my own thinking with what pundits, especially partisan pundits think. I wanted to see how random TV viewers felt about the debate, from both sides of course. And so, Twitter would have 10,000s of Tweets during that 90 minutes and it would take me weeks to read them all haha, but the most POPULAR Tweets are shown in the top hashtag summary. It was still several thousand Tweets and took me about 3 hours to read them, but I scrolled back to exactly the start of the debate, and ended immediately as the debate Tweets came to the end, and stopped reading Tweets that would next have become the analysis Tweets.
But this way, I was able to see how the audience reacted to essentially every relevant thing said (or done) by the two on stage. A fascinating way to relive that debate by the way, very VERY enlightening. And you catch things that you missed, of course, such as I didn't notice that Trump was consuming water like Marco Rubio at the Sahara desert. He drank by some count 8 glasses of water in the 90 minutes. I totally missed that. And Trump's runny nose. Plenty of jokes about a cocaine habit in those Tweets. But also, I noticed that some things I felt were important didn't get significant mentions. One of the biggest issues to me, was the stunning admission by Trump to agree to terrorist no-fly list exclusions to gun purchases. That to me seemed like a huge issue, one that Democrats run on, and the NRA hates, and most Republicans are currently totally against. But Trump conceded that in the debate (I do expect Trump Campaign to now walk that one back, I can't imagine Republicans liking to fight the NRA on gun control in this year's election, they desperately need the NRA money). The no-fly list issue was only mentioned in about 3 tweets while most major topics got something like 20 or 30 tweets per item. I was surprised.
TRUMP LOST DEBATE / HILLARY WON ELECTION
So I am now (after reading those Tweets) ready to call this election. Its won by Hillary. Trump lost this debate. The election was decided today. But Trump did not lose the ELECTION today, he only lost the debate. The election was WON by Hillary. She added just the right touches to today's misery to Trump, that seals the election for her. I will explain below. But lets take this in steps.
So Trump had a disaster. It was an ok debate for the first hour or so started well for Trump, then he faded with time (as he tended to do with primary debates as well, haha, his stamina is bad) and Hillary grew stronger once the topic moved away from Trump's strongest area, the economy, to the race issues. But even if it ended at the 75 minute stage, Trump could escape with just a very bad debate. That last section, Trump having a tantrum and insisting he has the right temperament to be President, and being laughed at by the audience, that sealed this debate. He truly collapsed in the end. (I think it says a lot when Rudy Giuliani's Tweets were retweeted towards the end of the debate, several times he said 'Trump will do better next time' or 'Trump will prepare better for next time' etc. Prepare better? Even Giuliani admits Trump didn't prepare properly for the most important political moment in this election haha, and Giuliani is one of the team that was there helping with debate prep. hahahahahaha Trump is such a loser)
I believe this debate will go down as the one with the worst performance by a major candidate in any Presidential debate of the TV era (up to now, but we have 2 more Trump-Hillary debates possibly in the cards haha). He very likely yes, set the record for worst debate performance. And this day cost him the election. The race was nearly tied, he would have been better off boycotting the debate, and taking the penalty of doing that, than coming into this verbal massacre that happened.
I also am now convinced that the polling will tilt at least modestly in Hillary's favor and there is no more bounce left for Trump to come back to a race nearly tied. Not after this debacle. Trump would need to both have an magnificent debate and Hillary would have to collapse, and we saw her, she ain't folding. So even if Trump came and had 2 'good' debates on a Trumpian scale - thats nowhere near enough to DEFEAT Hillary, and a tie for Trump would not be anywhere near enough to climb back from the hole he is now in. So, historians will probably write, that Trump's election died on 26 September in the last 10 minutes of a 90 minute televised debate. And they'll be nearly correct. He did fail that debate. But the election wasn't sealed by Trump's stumble. That could plausibly have been a problem that maybe could be cured. No, the real reason the election was decided, is that Hillary skewered Trump in this debate, strategically, with two key demographics who are now locked Hillary supporters and Trump cannot get them back in the six weeks that remain.
Its a bit like in the tech world there is that myth that Apple's iPhone destroyed Nokia. We in mobile, especially readers of this blog now the reality. So this is one of those things. There was something that happened on the surface - we all saw it - but something ELSE also happened, and we need to understand THAT as well. So lets go to the beginning.
I said to expect Trump to come in trying to be nice Trump, as he was. Hillary to play nice early on, and then put on the pressure later, as she did. For Trump its was particularly unfortunate that the sequence of the topics had his strongest suit first (business/economy/jobs) and that is where Trump wasted his energy of his concentration and focus to remain Presidential. From the middle section, race relations, things went bad for Trump. And as I warned, Trump had picked up tendencies to go to familiar 'Deplorable' topics in appealing to his live audiences which are white male racist audiences. So to Trump, the topic of racism is - we need more cops, and we need them to be allowed to frisk-and-search. From this point on, Trump was minced meat. But Trump is tone-deaf on race matters. He really doesn't see this only makes him seem WORSE in the televised debate. And also as I warned, Trump may feel like the moderator is against him, and as the debate wore on, Trump got ever more entangled with Lester Holt, always to his own detriment. Really, a white man is going to lecture a black man about race issues? What is wrong with Trump? And by constantly interrupting Holt and feuding with him, Trump maybe got even more of Holt's fact-checking towards the end, than he might have gotten, had he played nice. Boneheaded and clearly undisciplined debating by Trump.
HILLARY SHARP AS A RAZOR
Now, Hillary's incredibly smart strategy. She came in wanting to do three things. First and foremost, to lessen her negatives. Smile, be happy, be calm, don't yell. Enjoy and be competent. Second, to lock the black vote. And third, to lock the female vote. Thats it. She could have gone many other directions but by focusing only on these three she was able to accomplish them perfectly. Of course because she is overqualified and overprepared, Hillary didn't need to worry about handling ANY question or topic. There was an interesting Tweet by some count, that at one point towards the end of the debate, Trump had evaded 7 questions of not answering the question but Hillary had evaded none. She answered everything she was asked, while Trump often went into his word salad wilderness and never bothered to answer. But as I wrote in my Debate Preview, the pro answers the question, then pivots to the talking point, hits the opponent, makes a joke and smiles. She did that PERFECTLY for every question. Not every one of her answers is 'perfect' ie emails etc, but in every case she used the TECHNIQUE perfectly. Trump never obviously did because Trump hadn't prepared.
On the negatives, Hillary is the second most disliked politician ever to run for President by a major party back as far as the question has been polled, Trump is obviously the worst. Because Hillary was able to remain totally calm, smile, laugh, joke, and continuously on every single question show total control of the subject matter, she will do her favorability some gains. It then helps that she stood next to a child having a tantrum. So those lingering images of an angry hostile secretive lecturing Hillary Clinton start to recede from memory. I'm certain her positives will improve. And that helps her climb more above 50% in polling as the polls start to come in, and she's been stuck on about that 50% polling ceiling (where Trump has been on 40% nationally as his ceiling, just slightly above it).
You can be certain she was not as happy as she looked. It is frustrating and angering to have your opponent constantly interrupt you and to talk over you, and steal your time, and talk more and more, and always try to get the last word. But Hillary played this card smoothly and well. Her favorables will improve. And it helps that Trump had his tantrum at the end, that only highlights the contrast to Hillary ie helps her even more. Good gamble, she could not know he would collapse in the end but knew that was possible. If Trump had kept his cool all the way, some may have been critical of Hillary that she let him walk all over him.
Now the BLACK vote. Gosh that was a beauty to behold. Hillary went into that topic again, and again, and again, and again. She hugged the black vote as hard as she hugged Obama at her nomination Convention. Trump not renting to blacks in his youth. Crime statistics. Blacks vs whites. Systematic bias, yes, not just with cops, but ALL people (scored big time with any minorities). But then frisk-and-search. Going with that, arguing its not constitutional (true) but also - that it doesn't work. And when Trump tried to interject, here Hillary stood firm, no Donald you're wrong. She HAD the Black vote. She bought it, had it signed, sealed and delivered. So what did she do on Birtherism - she went even further. I betcha there were black voters at their TVs who were cheering and clapping and standing when she went all in for the President and skewered Trump on it. She didn't need to. She already had that voter segment. But Hillary came with a mission. She has 3 jobs to do, she will do it like nobody has done before, and boy did she deliver. Hillary will get 90% of the black vote and Trump will get less than 3%. It was a recurring theme that Hillary would not let go, and every time she went to the Black issue, she finished that topic. Trump would touch on topics, ramble on without finishing a sentence, etc. No. Hillary finished each point. If there ever was a white woman who has stood with blacks and who knows their plight and is willing to carry on with their fight going forward - its this woman. And this is not unfamiliar territory for her, any black activists will tell their black friends, yeah, the Clintons have always been on their side. When blacks talk about this election on Tuesday, it will cement that vote. She just locked Obama's black vote into her coalition that will not now budge. Trump will get less black votes against a white woman than Romney got against a BLACK MAN. Very VERY smart strategy and systematic, designed play. She went there time and again. Black voters, Trump is your enemy and I am your friend. That was signed, sealed, delivered and postage prepaid.
BULLY? I'LL SHOW YOU HOW TO DEMOLISH A BULLY
Then the WOMEN vote. Oh my gosh this was brilliant and I did not understand it: I am a man. This is why Twitter is so good. But gosh, only a few of the Tweets and I 'got it'. Oh my gosh, that is brilliant.
So, when I watched the debate, and Trump interrupted Hillary for the first or second time, she stepped off, and didn't take the bait, let him interrupt, and there was just a hint of a smile. And I remember thinking, oh, she didn't deploy her 'attack' to stop the interruption. I was surprised. As I told you in my Preview, the one strategy I was most interested in, was how would she deal with Trump's interruptions (assuming they came). And even late in the debate, as Hillary repeatedly would not respond to Trump's continuing and increasing interruptions, she just let him interrupt her. Annoying the hell out of ME at home, yelling at my PC screen and begging for Lester Holt the dolt to do something and stop the orange buffoon from constantly interrupting. But Hillary let him do it. Someone was counting on Twitter at one point they had Trump at 45 interruptions!
But as we noticed, Hillary never deployed any method to stop him. Instead she took the passive role, let him do his worst. And let it show. And gosh, the moment I read the second or third Tweet by a woman, right at the start of the debate, about Trump interruptions - I GOT IT.. YES, that makes so much sense. Hillary lets Trump hang himself. Trump just destroyed his female vote. This tactic SPECIFICALLY annoys WOMEN. Most women know men like Trump who bully them and yell over them and tell them to shut up, and tell them what to think or what to do. And they HATE it. Now they saw the clearly more competent woman being bullied by a bigoted sexist man who is feeling inferior and is taking it out on the woman. She got ever caring woman's vote with that tactic. BRILLIANT.
I betcha, if Trump shows up to another debate, he will not interrupt Hillary or the moderator even once. Its the WORST thing he did. He just proved time and again, that he is the type of person WOMEN hate. And yeah, me as a man, I don't 'experience' that. I can't relate directly. I've seen it happen countless times and I've seen female colleagues cry because a boss has bullied them etc, but as a man, that doesn't happen to us, that way. So its a very peculiar issue to women, that Trump explicitly still shows. An old-fashioned rude sexist man's behavior, typically a man in position of power like a boss at work. This will be what ALL women will be talking about on Tuesday when they review the debate. And they will all say, Hillary was a saint to take it and not go punch Trump in the nose.
So first, BRAVO. Excellent strategy choice. Bravo also, Hillary Clinton, for holding your emotions and smiling through that all. But the coup-de-grace, the kill, was that ending. She had the women on her side. He was already repelling the female vote. But Hillary had written her ending speech to be a masterpiece to skewer Trump - with WOMEN. That is where the ugly fat pigs and other comments came in - that Trump tried to claim he had not said.
Remember, half of the people who watched this debate, had not watched earlier debates or watched the Conventions. Half of the audience received essentially a 'first impression' in this debate. Even though they all knew 'who' Donald Trump was or 'who' Hillary Clinton was, that half of America didn't know that Trump had bankrupted his companies four times or didn't rent to blacks or hadn't paid any taxes. They didn't know that Hillary had negotiated treaties to increase exports to China or stop the nuclear weapon development in Iran. This was the chance to have a first impression with half of the US voters. Trump failed. Hillary succeeded. But Hillary knew what she wanted to accomplish. She wanted to lock two constituencies. She wanted to win the blacks, by argument. She wanted to win the women, by sympathy. And that is where that ending was magnificent. When she pounded Trump right at the end.
Again, I am certain there were many women who had been hurt by Trump's words before. And they had hoped someone would stand up to them. When Megyn Kelly read Trumps' words at him in that debate, why didn't Jeb Bush or Mike Huckabee or Chris Christie or Marco Rubio stand up to women, and do what Hillary did now. Why was Trump allowed to stand as that symbol of sexism for more than a year. And when Hillary took her gloves off and hit him, and hit him, and hit him, and hit him and POUND HIM and BLUDGEON HIM - ending with that girl he mocked, who was a Miss Universe contestant who just now got her US Citizenship and will vote against Trump.. THAT had WOMEN on their feet and cheering. They had their champion. But wily wily Hillary, she waited till the LAST speech of the debate, because this had to remain in the minds of the women. They had been brewing and stewing in their anger all through the debate, why is that sexist pig interrupting Hillary all the time. Hillary, do something. Don't just take it, hit back! Now, at the end, when Trump was already having his breakdown, NOW she pounced and beat him into pulp. And she sealed the female vote. Superwoman. Wonderwoman. Batwoman. Jane Bond 007.
So that is how the election was WON. Trump fell. He didn't have the preparedness and didn't have the stamina to keep his cool for 90 minutes. He started to unravel around the 60 minute mark and totally lost it in the last 10 minutes. This probably will be judged as the worst debate performance ever, and Trump will now certainly lose this election. With that, many will be pointing back to his breakdown and tantrum as what caused his loss. I say it was not that, although those CONTRIBUTED to his loss. Trump didn't lose the election today, Hillary won it. She won it by strategy and BRILLIANT, patient, methodical and disciplined execution of a plan, that raised her positives while locking two voter segments. If Trump can't get more than 5% of the black vote, and has a gender gap of 15% or more - as he will have after this debate - that means he cannot win in November. Hillary won this debate but probably many analysts will say, Trump lost it.
As a former pro debate coach, I say: Bravo! Masterclass, Madam Secretary. I look forward to the day this blog can start to call you Madam President, Hillary Clinton. My best regards to your debate prep team and Campaign. Brilliant job. But in debate, it is up to the work ethic of the debater, so most of this does belong to Mrs Clinton herself. Bravo!
ADDENDUM - I added now a full blow-by-blow analysis based on a second viewing of the debate, if you want to see how the nuance of the debate happened. Its here
My prediction: Clinton will pick up 2 points and will have a 4 points lead at the end of the week.
Posted by: cornelius | September 27, 2016 at 06:06 AM
Indeed Drudge & Breibart & co attack more the moderator than Hillary. That says it very clearly that Trump didn't do well in the debate.
I am really curious about some real poles in 2-3 days from now to see the effect of this debate.
Posted by: Paul | September 27, 2016 at 06:50 AM
This Was the Trump Hillary Wanted America to See—But Did It Work?
The GOP candidate has defied the ordinary rules all along and still come out on top. He might have in Monday’s debate as well.
http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/2016-presidential-debate-trump-clinton-214293
Hopefully the don teflon effect is gone!
Posted by: Paul | September 27, 2016 at 06:51 AM
@Paul:
"Hopefully the don teflon effect is gone!"
I hope so, too. But let's not forget, that the people that may be turned are not the typical Trump followers. There's probably many who have never seen him act like crazy so a bad performance in the debates may cast some doubt here. I know that a lot of people consider his crazy mode an act and do not take it seriously. What if those suddenly realize that it's not an act but his usual state of mind? I think this is the only way he can be attacked - show that he really is the goon he's constantly putting on display. This debate was the first moment where this becomes a possibility.
Of course this needs to be exploited now with some targeted ads and whatever else works.
Posted by: Tester | September 27, 2016 at 07:35 AM
@trumpwin
hahaha...
Posted by: Paul | September 27, 2016 at 08:34 AM
Troll is as troll can.
Par for course for Trump supporters. Stupid as ever.
Posted by: Tester | September 27, 2016 at 09:23 AM
Hi Everybody
NOTE - I just added MUCH more to the blog. A whole analysis section to the bottom, easily marked, so pls go first read that addendum, then lets talk (and ignore the trolls, I delete them)
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | September 27, 2016 at 09:57 AM
Hi Everybody
Early polls coming out. Please ignore online polls, Twitter polls, Facebook polls, because those obviously are based on fans and Trump has his fan base online far larger due to Apprentice etc. But the first two proper polls are out. CNN came out first, they found 62% for Hillary, 27% for Trump (more than 2 to 1, that is crushing victory). PPP has also a poll out which is less dominant but still strong result, 51% for Hillary, 40% for Trump. The PPP poll has some demographics and the two groups I mentioned, women and minorities came strongly for Hillary. Women thought she won 54/36 an 18 point margin. Thats pretty decisive. And minority vote was brutal at 77/13 (includes blacks and Hispanics).
Note at this type of instant polling levels, when people then mull things over and talk with their friends, the dominant positions tend to strengthen. There is no way to spin this as a Trump victory and many who were lukewarm near the middle will then fall into the winner side, ie the Hillary victory opinion will now solidify from these early opinions.
Now, before today only about 6% of the voters were undecided. Only about 20% of voters said they might change their minds (but this debate will reach more than those 20%, Trump was that bad). So yeah, for about a 5 point swing, I expect 1 point comes stolen from Trump, 2 points from a Johnson who has peaked, half a point maybe from Stein and 1.5 points from undecideds to get Hillary in national 4-way polls out around Friday-Saturday at about +7%. And now her team should not 'let' Trump get back into the game anymore, just pound him with ever harder-hitting ads and bring in the big guns now into October (President Obama has said he'll do 2 days of campaigning per week all through October, an unprecedented level of campaigning by a sitting President in the modern era) and so forth.
This debate will have items cut into ads rather quickly, especially those parts where Trump insists he hasn't said something and then with evidence of him saying (or Tweeting) that thing...
Oh, and really bad form by the Trump team - they are now deleting his old Tweets haha... too late !!!
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | September 27, 2016 at 11:09 AM
Bad, worse, Trump:
Donald Trump Claims He Lost The Debate Because His Mic Was Defective
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/09/27/donald-trump-claims-lost-debate-mic.html
"Everyone could hear exactly what Trump was saying, which is the reason why he lost the debate. The excuses have already begun. There are rumblings in Trump world that Donald should skip the final two presidential debates."
Posted by: Winter | September 27, 2016 at 12:48 PM
This is the best evidence yet of how badly Trump lost it:
"Megyn Kelly pointed out that Clinton sliced and diced Trump."
Fox News Is Suicidal After Hillary Clinton Trounced Trump At Presidential Debate
http://www.politicususa.com/2016/09/26/fox-news-suicidal-hillary-clinton-trounced-trump-presidential-debate.html
Posted by: Winter | September 27, 2016 at 12:51 PM
@Tomi
"And gosh, the moment I read the second or third Tweet by a woman, right at the start of the debate, about Trump interruptions - I GOT IT.. YES, that makes so much sense. Hillary lets Trump hang himself."
I think you are the only one to point this one out. I do think it is a brilliant strategy you can design when you know your voters and you know your statistics and you know your facts. This is what a well honed specialist data team can buy you. And probably no one notices what is happening.
Posted by: Winter | September 27, 2016 at 01:58 PM
Tomi:
What did you think of Lester Holt's performance? It doesn't look like Trump's team liked him.
I kept watching for your evaluation of Matt Lauer's performance, but never saw it.
Thanks
Posted by: twinsdad9901 | September 27, 2016 at 03:27 PM
538 has a very interesting article. They compare past debate victories and the bounces they produced.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/clinton-won-the-debate-which-means-shes-likely-to-gain-in-the-polls/
In 1992 Bill Clinton won the debate against George H.W. Bush by more than 35 points and gained 4.1 points after the debate in opinion polls.
In 2012 Romney won the debate by 42 points and gained 4.4 points on Obama after the debate in opinion polls.
So history says that Clinton should get 4 points in opinion polls after winning the debate by 35 points. I still think this will not be the case. The problem with Tomi's approach is that he relies too much on math. In politics math is not an exact science. For Trump 2 + 2 = 5 while for Clinton 2 + 2 = 3
I hope Tomi is wrong and Clinton will gain not 5 but 50 points in the polls. But the dynamics of the race so far led me to believe that Clinton's bounce will be around 2 points.
Posted by: cornelius | September 27, 2016 at 03:54 PM
Hi Winter, twins, cornelius
Winter - I really appreciate that (only one..). Really. Thanks!
twins - on Matt Lauer, didn't do a proper eval of that session as it wasn't a debate. It was consecutive interviews/town halls. But gosh Lauer was rubbish and incredibly biased. He was constantly interrupting Hillary and did that stupid series of questions on emails that killed a third of her time, then on Trump he was all cozy-up and letting Trump ramble on and ignore his questions or limits.
Lester Holt did a passable job in a very tough situation. Few have had Trump in control as moderators, when he's been feisty like he was now. I think Wolf Blitzer did the best when Trump was in this type of mood earlier and even that went into chaos at times. Holt's worst fault was time-keeping. Trump would just steal time and he always gave it, and 20 seconds turned into another minute for Trump etc. Now, from Hillary's point of view, the way Trump was rambling, it honestly DID make sense for her, at times just to kine of step aside, not complain, and let Trump hang himself. But as a moderator, that was his big fault, not taking control of the time and letting Trump do whatever he pleased.
As to the fact-checking, that was a pleasant surprise. I didn't expect him to do it that much (if a tall) and certainly not as forcefully where he several times came back at Trump twice or three times, to drive the point that Trump was factually incorrect (Iraq War issue I think he went 3 times).
The questions themselves I think were very fair and reasonably balanced and quite relevant. I was surprised he took the racial issue in, but that was fresh from the news and it played to Hillary's strengths.
I'd say ok grade but not great. Note the next debate has two moderators and its a town hall setting so questions will come from live audience (but pre-screened questions by the moderators).
I do expect that part of GOP's solution in 2017 to prevent future Trumps is to institute a microphone rule where in GOP debates the mikes are turned off at 15 second past the end of time, so nobody can talk over each other, only when their time comes, and that brings them the required discipline also to learn to stick to 2 minute replies and 1 minute rebuttals. But prevent anyone from 'winning' by this type of childish behavior. Just turn off the mike when the time is done. Can't disrupt anyone, the debate will be far more sane and the audience gets a far better underestanding of what is being said. LEARN to handle the time when you have it, if you want to attack someone. You will need it in the final debates like now, haha, how Hillary did it.
Now as to which team complains about the referees - they are the team that lost haha. Almost as a rule, only the losing side bitches about the moderators in debates.
cornelius - 538 are good, you know that. And you are also good. And your guess is at least as good as mine, we will soon see. What makes your guess also even more likely is that its a 4-way race, so the dynamics are more 'flat' because more candidate, the peaks are lower and thus kind of less points to spread if you go just between 2 of the 4.
I like your math that Trump gets 2+2=5 and Hillary gets 2+2=3. VERY apt. Now, that said, the recent rather pronounced and dramatic shifts in the media from not calling Trump out on lies, to apparently very LOUDLY drawing attention to them - it could be an end to Trump's easy ride and he could have a rough time with the coverage. HE could suffer that 2+2=3 syndrome, while I can't see Hillary really ever getting past 2+2=4 haha.
We'll see soon. Another way to look at it (I like to cheat) is that we kinda know, that a few of the polls were not very good samples, and a few seemed to be far closer to the mark. So its possible the real race today is like the 5% 6% and 4% polls we saw, than the one -5% and one -2% poll plus a few in the middle. With that, the 'reality' on Sunday may have been a race say near 4%. If it THEN gets a 2% bounce like you expect, we're still at 6% haha, almost the 7% I was expecting... And I'd be happy to take that :-)
BUT one other angle. We've never seen a debate this bad at this stage. Gov Rick Perry's Oops debate is the single worst gaffe that ended a political run, but the rest of that DEBATE was not as bad, as a whole debate, as Trump was now. And at the final, Presidential level, not primary race, nobody has stumbled as badly as Trump did. He could fall MORE than that 5% I thought. The Johnson voters were mostly a protest vote (but some are true Libertarians). Stein is partly a protest vote and a strongly anti-Hillary vote, because primarily of the Bernie run. Bernie has been pushing his own peeps to join Hillary. This debate helps them a lot. Johnson has been preaching an anti-Trump message but Johnson is now imploding. They won't want to go 'back' to Trump but Hillary gave a lot of nice openings for moderate Republicans to come to her.
And part of Trump's 'fall in line' loyal Republican vote was there simply because they always vote Republican. SOME of those voters will be devastated and disgusted by what they saw. They'll go have a think, and if their local reliable conservative newspaper also endorses Hillary and a few conservative pundits say that Trump is a moron.. some of those, from the fringes of Trump's support, they will peel off and come to Hillary. She didn't seem like the evil communist monster that some had been painting her out to be.
It could be more. We don't know. You're right, it could be less than 5%. But gosh, she HAS to get some bounce out of that. But we'll see soon :-)
(BTW I have been trolling Trumpsters on Twitter on their hashtag #TrumpWon so much that my fingers now ache from the typing haha)
Tomi Ahonen :-)
Posted by: Tomi T Ahonen | September 27, 2016 at 04:52 PM
Tomi:
I thought she had him rattled within the first 30 minutes. She went through almost everything you and others here said would annoy the Donald, beginning with calling him "Donald" repeatedly and using his words against him.
Btw:
Last night, Donald Trump lied 16 times to the American people on the presidential debate stage.
http://trumplies.com/fact-checking-donald-trump-in-the-first-presidential-debate/
Posted by: grouch | September 27, 2016 at 05:21 PM
During the debate, I kept in contact with my mid-30s son whose interest in news begins and ends with sports. Texts I got from him during the first half hour of the debate:
"He stumbled and said the exact opposite of what he meant about tax cuts."
"Quit letting him have 5 minutes during his 2 minute slot."
"He's the wallace character off coweta county." [Referencing John Wallace claiming people would believe anything he told them on the witness stand, from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder_in_Coweta_County ]
Posted by: grouch | September 27, 2016 at 05:30 PM
(I'm still catching up).
Donald kept taking Hillary's comments and adopting them as his own -- the no-fly list, infrastructure, nukes (when previously he said 'terror' was number one world problem). My impression was he's got nothin'.
Posted by: grouch | September 27, 2016 at 05:37 PM
My apology if someone has already posted this; I'm still not caught up.
The first Trump-Clinton presidential debate transcript, annotated
By Aaron Blake and Team Fix
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/09/26/the-first-trump-clinton-presidential-debate-transcript-annotated/
Posted by: grouch | September 27, 2016 at 05:46 PM
Ok, I know Tomi likes facts and figures to back up any claims made, and I asserted above that Hillary had Donald rattled within the first 30 minutes. So, referencing the transcript linked previously and making use of [ ]...
[Hillary's first words into the mic:]
CLINTON: How are you, Donald?
---
[Winter, Paul or somebody on here pointed out a long time ago that he hates being called Donald by lesser beings. So, near the very end of her opening statements:]
CLINTON: [...] Donald, it's good to be with you. [...]
---
[And in her response to Donald's answer to the first question of the debate:]
CLINTON: [...] And the kind of plan that Donald has put forth would be trickle-down economics all over again. [...]
I call it trumped-up trickle-down, because that's exactly what it would be. [...]
---
[Another thing Tomi and several others have pointed out that annoys the Donald is to question his wealth and his fantasy of his humble beginnings with a "small loan" from his father. So, also in that first response to Donald:]
CLINTON: [...] You know, Donald was very fortunate in his life, and that's all to his benefit. He started his business with $14 million, borrowed from his father, and he really believes that the more you help wealthy people, the better off we'll be and that everything will work out from there. [...]
---
[Think she was already getting under his skin? See how he responds:]
TRUMP: Well, for one thing -- and before we start on that -- my father gave me a very small loan in 1975, and I built it into a company that's worth many, many billions of dollars, with some of the greatest assets in the world, and I say that only because that's the kind of thinking that our country needs.
---
[Then Lester comes in with another annoyance y'all told me about -- the Dumpster hates to be interrupted:]
TRUMP: [...]And why hasn't she made the agreements better? The NAFTA agreement is defective. Just because of the tax and many other reasons, but just because of the fact...
HOLT: Let me interrupt just a moment, but...
[The question was how do you bring back manufacturing jobs, not about NAFTA.]
---
[Then back to Hillary poking the beast with a stick:]
CLINTON: [...] In fact, Donald was one of the people who rooted for the housing crisis. He said, back in 2006, "Gee, I hope it does collapse, because then I can go in and buy some and make some money." Well, it did collapse.
TRUMP: That's called business, by the way.
CLINTON: Nine million people -- nine million people lost their jobs. Five million people lost their homes. And $13 trillion in family wealth was wiped out.
---
[And more of his own words against him, in that same response:]
CLINTON: [...] Donald thinks that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese. I think it's real.
TRUMP: I did not. I did not. I do not say that.
CLINTON: I think science is real.
TRUMP: I do not say that.
CLINTON: And I think it's important that we grip this and deal with it, both at home and abroad.
---
[Donald was set up very quickly. He was pissed off. I believe this early poking and prodding was exactly why he got worse throughout the debate.]
Posted by: grouch | September 27, 2016 at 06:16 PM
A man as easily played as was shown in the debate here will beplayed even worse when in the Oval Office.
Posted by: Winter | September 27, 2016 at 06:58 PM