I watched the debate last night and thought it was pretty much a tie. Maybe I had such low expectations of Donald Trump that all he had to do was not to say something really stupid that he would have to explain and walk-back the next day in order for me to think he did OK. I guess I graded on a curve. I think Trump came across less bombastic and less obnoxious than I expected. Hillary came across as the unlikable slick contemptuous crooked political insider that I expected.
From the content of the policy positions they articulated in the debate, a reason I would not vote for Hillary is that I do not want a $15 minimum wage, so called equal pay-for-equal-work, government mandated profit sharing or the new government entitlement of paid maternity leave. I would not vote for Donald Trump because, he was unclear and inarticulate in explaining his position on first-strike, his support for NATO, and his criticism of NAFTA.
Hillary lost a point in calling Trump a racist. Trump scored a point in advocating law and order in response to the recent racial riots across the country. However, he lost a half point by advocating stop and frisk as a national policy. Trump could have scored a point by making Hillary defend Benghazi, the pay-for-play scandal, the Clinton Foundation, and other Clinton scandals. He missed an opportunity. To be fair however, it would have been difficult the raise those questions. The moderator should have asked Hillary about those things. The moderator asked Trump about his taxes and several other thinks that put Trump on the defensive and never asked any hard questions of Clinton. With a fair moderator, I think Trump could have clearly won the debate.
It seems I am in the minority in thinking the debate was essentially a tie. The mainstream media seems to think Hillary won. I think most of the media are in Hillary's pocket anyway however, and are predisposed to spin their analysis in Hillary's favor. I gave up expecting any objectivity from the mainstream press a long time ago, so I am not surprised.
Here are what others are saying about the debate.
From AEI:
As of the afternoon on Monday, multiple polls showed Clinton and Trump neck in neck. Bloomberg reported a 46-46 tie between the two main party candidates, whereas adding in Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson gave Trump a two percentage point lead. Meanwhile, Quinnipiac showed Clinton up one in both such contests, Monmouth and NBC/SM gave Clinton the edge, and the LA Times/USC poll gave it to Trump.
Members of AEI’s Political Corner — Karlyn Bowman, Timothy P. Carney, Norman J. Ornstein, and Ramesh Ponnuru — quickly dissected the debate for us. Their main take-aways are below:
Karlyn Bowman
National Review: The Goldberg File, by Jonah Goldberg
I thought Trump lost the debate, but not overwhelmingly. He was clearly the winner of the first 30 minutes or so, and if he’d stayed that guy for the full 90 it would have been a hugely consequential rout. But then, Hillary implemented “Bait Trump Protocol Alpha-1,” when she brought up how he got his start with a $14 million loan from his father. (She got the details wrong, but it doesn’t matter. When you’re baiting fish or Trumpzilla, the lure doesn’t have to be real, it just has to be shiny. In fact, getting the bait just slightly wrong makes it even more irresistible, because we all have a natural instinct to correct falsehoods aimed at us, and Trump more than most.)
So Trump bit the shiny thing, and for the rest of the night, plodding, dull Hillary Clinton led Trump around the stage like a matador with a red cape. And, four days later, Trump is still charging around like an enraged bull. At first I thought Clinton’s use of Alicia Machado was odd. There are so many Trump victims out there, why use one with such a weird past? But that’s what was so brilliant about it. If Machado were a nun, it’d be harder for Trump to attack. But Trump thinks he can win this one on the merits and so he won’t let go of it. He didn’t learn the lesson of his feud with the Khan family: The only way to win such fights is to not engage in them at all. The debate wasn’t a disaster but how he handled the post-debate spin was, and continues to be.
WashingtonPost: Clinton shifts the election in her direction
From the content of the policy positions they articulated in the debate, a reason I would not vote for Hillary is that I do not want a $15 minimum wage, so called equal pay-for-equal-work, government mandated profit sharing or the new government entitlement of paid maternity leave. I would not vote for Donald Trump because, he was unclear and inarticulate in explaining his position on first-strike, his support for NATO, and his criticism of NAFTA.
Hillary lost a point in calling Trump a racist. Trump scored a point in advocating law and order in response to the recent racial riots across the country. However, he lost a half point by advocating stop and frisk as a national policy. Trump could have scored a point by making Hillary defend Benghazi, the pay-for-play scandal, the Clinton Foundation, and other Clinton scandals. He missed an opportunity. To be fair however, it would have been difficult the raise those questions. The moderator should have asked Hillary about those things. The moderator asked Trump about his taxes and several other thinks that put Trump on the defensive and never asked any hard questions of Clinton. With a fair moderator, I think Trump could have clearly won the debate.
It seems I am in the minority in thinking the debate was essentially a tie. The mainstream media seems to think Hillary won. I think most of the media are in Hillary's pocket anyway however, and are predisposed to spin their analysis in Hillary's favor. I gave up expecting any objectivity from the mainstream press a long time ago, so I am not surprised.
Here are what others are saying about the debate.
From AEI:
As of the afternoon on Monday, multiple polls showed Clinton and Trump neck in neck. Bloomberg reported a 46-46 tie between the two main party candidates, whereas adding in Green Party candidate Jill Stein and Libertarian Gary Johnson gave Trump a two percentage point lead. Meanwhile, Quinnipiac showed Clinton up one in both such contests, Monmouth and NBC/SM gave Clinton the edge, and the LA Times/USC poll gave it to Trump.
Members of AEI’s Political Corner — Karlyn Bowman, Timothy P. Carney, Norman J. Ornstein, and Ramesh Ponnuru — quickly dissected the debate for us. Their main take-aways are below:
Karlyn Bowman
Hillary had a strong opening and she held
on to her lead throughout the debate because she addressed the
questions directly, and was more organized in her responses and better
prepared than Donald Trump. She seemed cool, calm, and collected
throughout. He was none of those things, although he improved as the
evening wore on.
Even when he made compelling arguments —
and he made quite a few — he didn’t necessarily win the point because of
a generally undisciplined, scattershot approach and frequently
repetitive answers to the questions and too much focus on his
businesses. Toward the end she seemed to be a little too
self-satisfied. He could still win this election, but he didn’t win
the first debate.
Timothy P. Carney
The biggest factor in the first debate was what never got addressed:
Hillary Clinton has been the co-head of a
foundation whose donors simultaneously gained access to her State
Department. Donald Trump used his foundation’s funds to pay fines
incurred by his businesses.
The Clinton Foundation and the Trump Foundation were never mentioned in tonight’s debate.
Hillary Clinton has consistently stood
behind her unauthorized invasion of Libya which paved the way for ISIS’s
growth and expansion. Libya was mentioned, but neither Donald Trump nor
moderator Lester Holt asked Hillary Clinton to defend her position.
Immigration was the center of Trump’s
campaign, but it never came up. They had a lengthy discussion of
national security, but neither Trump nor Holt brought up border
security.
While cable commentators have declared
Hillary the winner of the debate, the pertinence of the whole evening is
dubious, considering how some of the most salient issues were never
addressed.
Norman J. Ornstein
Each candidate had fundamental goals this
evening. Trump’s was to look even modestly like a president, in
carriage and temperament, along with showing a modicum of basic
knowledge of policy. Clinton’s was to show a calm and reassuring
demeanor, with some warmth and emotion, while also showing the
competence to be president. The bottom line to me: Trump failed
miserably on all fronts, Clinton exceeded expectations. To be blunt, I
have never seen a more lopsided debate. After the first fifteen minutes
or so, where Trump was focused on a strength and trade, he made Admiral
Stockdale look like a champion debater. He was angry, rambling, fidgety,
and often simply incoherent. On fundamental policy knowledge, he did
not even know what first use is.
He won’t lose support from his core, but I
think this will help her move some on-the-fence voters in her
direction, and I suspect will make it even easier for her to solidify
support from educated white women and from African-Americans. If so,
even if the gains are at the margins, that will be all she needs.
Ramesh Ponnuru
If Clinton were aiming to disqualify
Trump, she failed. She got under his skin a few times, but he never blew
up. He kept repeating the same points, but it came across as message
discipline rather than ignorance.
But maybe that’s the wrong way to look at
it. Even the polls that show him slightly ahead—and most of them still
don’t—show that Americans think she is qualified for the job and he
isn’t. It is a testament to her other weaknesses that this set of
perceptions has not been enough to put her ahead. But it is Trump’s most
serious vulnerability, and I don’t think he did much to address it
tonight.
National Review: The Goldberg File, by Jonah Goldberg
I thought Trump lost the debate, but not overwhelmingly. He was clearly the winner of the first 30 minutes or so, and if he’d stayed that guy for the full 90 it would have been a hugely consequential rout. But then, Hillary implemented “Bait Trump Protocol Alpha-1,” when she brought up how he got his start with a $14 million loan from his father. (She got the details wrong, but it doesn’t matter. When you’re baiting fish or Trumpzilla, the lure doesn’t have to be real, it just has to be shiny. In fact, getting the bait just slightly wrong makes it even more irresistible, because we all have a natural instinct to correct falsehoods aimed at us, and Trump more than most.)
So Trump bit the shiny thing, and for the rest of the night, plodding, dull Hillary Clinton led Trump around the stage like a matador with a red cape. And, four days later, Trump is still charging around like an enraged bull. At first I thought Clinton’s use of Alicia Machado was odd. There are so many Trump victims out there, why use one with such a weird past? But that’s what was so brilliant about it. If Machado were a nun, it’d be harder for Trump to attack. But Trump thinks he can win this one on the merits and so he won’t let go of it. He didn’t learn the lesson of his feud with the Khan family: The only way to win such fights is to not engage in them at all. The debate wasn’t a disaster but how he handled the post-debate spin was, and continues to be.
WashingtonPost: Clinton shifts the election in her direction
Donald Trump scowled and fumed and fussed and interrupted. On
Monday night, he was forced to defend business practices that involved
not paying workers and contractors, a tax plan that offers most of its
benefits to the wealthy, the fact that he did not pay any federal
taxes in some years (which he called “smart”) and the debt incurred by
his businesses.
Paul Ryan, Speaker of the House
Rod-- After last night, one thing remains clear: Hillary is not fit to be your Commander in Chief.
In his leadoff answer, Mr. Trump warned that Ford was planning to
slash thousands of American jobs to relocate small-car production to
Mexico – a claim the company’s chief executive has denied. Mr. Trump
insisted that he had not called global warming a hoax perpetrated by
China, though he has said precisely that on Twitter. And Mr. Trump
repeated numerous times that he was against the war in Iraq from the
start, which is plainly contrary to the facts.
National Review, Morning Jolt with Jim Geragjty
It’s been enough of a topsy-turvy year where it’s quite possible Trump enjoys a surge; particularly for the first half-hour, he came across as a figure you could picture in the Oval Office. But there seems to be pretty broad consensus that she got a lot of attacks in, mentioned a lot of the unsavory or controversial parts of Trump’s record, and made him spend a lot of time on the defensive. He never got around to mentioning some of her weakest spots — the Clinton Foundation, allegations of favor-trading, Benghazi, her support for arming the rebels in Syria. He barely mentioned Libya. The word “e-mail” came up four times in ninety minutes. This morning he’s blaming the microphone. Last night on CNN, Corey Lewandowski blamed Lester Holt. But the person who has more control over Donald Trump’s debate performance than anyone else is . . . Donald Trump. No one else can go up there and make his argument for him.
DetroitFree-Press: Clinton-Trump debate: The lies, and the candidates whotell themNational Review, Morning Jolt with Jim Geragjty
It’s been enough of a topsy-turvy year where it’s quite possible Trump enjoys a surge; particularly for the first half-hour, he came across as a figure you could picture in the Oval Office. But there seems to be pretty broad consensus that she got a lot of attacks in, mentioned a lot of the unsavory or controversial parts of Trump’s record, and made him spend a lot of time on the defensive. He never got around to mentioning some of her weakest spots — the Clinton Foundation, allegations of favor-trading, Benghazi, her support for arming the rebels in Syria. He barely mentioned Libya. The word “e-mail” came up four times in ninety minutes. This morning he’s blaming the microphone. Last night on CNN, Corey Lewandowski blamed Lester Holt. But the person who has more control over Donald Trump’s debate performance than anyone else is . . . Donald Trump. No one else can go up there and make his argument for him.
Forget about how ill-prepared Trump was compared to Clinton, or how
boorish he seemed, interrupting her and moderator Lester Holt over and
over. Trump’s performance was so bad that he even continued it after
the debate, when he lied about a lie he uttered in the back-and-forth:
he denied that he’d said it made him“smart”that his tax returns would show he has often paid no federal
taxes.
Tim Skow as posted to Facebook
Hillary ... did well enough... May have even won the debate "BATTLE"... BUT.... she LOST the Election ''WAR''.... Trump wasn't overwhelming... But VOTERS know Hillary...and simply DON'T want to elect her. ..They're looking to see if Trump is a man they can live with, even vote for? Hillary did fine, BUT LOST! VOTERS found Trump as viable compared to Hillary. So she LOST!
No more .. NO LESS
Tim Skow as posted to Facebook
Hillary ... did well enough... May have even won the debate "BATTLE"... BUT.... she LOST the Election ''WAR''.... Trump wasn't overwhelming... But VOTERS know Hillary...and simply DON'T want to elect her. ..They're looking to see if Trump is a man they can live with, even vote for? Hillary did fine, BUT LOST! VOTERS found Trump as viable compared to Hillary. So she LOST!
No more .. NO LESS
Time: Diligent Hillary Clinton Upstages Donald Trump at Crucial Moment
Perhaps you can’t wing your way to the White House. At the first
debate between Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, authenticity proved
to be no substitution for preparation. Strong words faded in the face
of solid experience. And, in a campaign that has seen norms shattered,
there was something comforting about at least one candidate behaving
in expected ways — and speaking in coherent, complete sentences. The
meeting came at a crucial moment, with six weeks before Election Day.
The night’s potential impact had the senior advisers to both campaigns
losing sleep in recent days. Only Clinton’s should feel comfortable as
they crawl under the covers.
NBCNews: Analysis: Hillary Clinton's Studies for Debate With Donald TrumpPay Off
Democratic
nominee for president Hillary Clinton edged her GOP rival Donald Trump
in Monday's presidential held at Hofstra University before a television
audience estimated at 100 million viewers, according to a
Breitbart/Gravis "flash poll" conducted minutes after the debate ended.
Pat Caddell, the Democratic pollster and Fox News Insider,
told Breitbart News that poll respondents said Clinton performed better
at the debate; 48 percent said Clinton did a better job, compared to 43
percent, who said Trump did the better job.
"However,
95 percent of the people we contacted told us they were not going to
change their vote based on the debate," Caddell said.
NBCNews: Analysis: Hillary Clinton's Studies for Debate With Donald TrumpPay Off
Clinton gained the upper hand early as Trump grew defensive over
personal attacks, dissembled or contradicted himself on key issues,
and reopened old wounds on gender and race along the way. He sniffed
and huffed his way through the debate, calling Clinton's treatment of
him "not nice" and insisting of her attacks, "I don't deserve that."
Other times he was hostile, speaking over Clinton in an attempt to
dominate her the way he overpowered his male rivals in the Republican
primary. But the aggression that made him the big man on the primary
debate stage made him seem small in the more sober general election
format. And instead of trying to match Trump's force head-on, Clinton
incited, dodged, and countered from the flank with the flair of a
matador.
Dear MoveOn member,
In tonight's debate,
Donald Trump alternately bullied, boasted, rambled, and lied. He cheered
for failed and racist policies, from lowering taxes on the very rich to
stop-and-frisk policing. Conventional wisdom among mainstream media is
that the debate presented a stark contrast, and that Clinton won
handily.1
Republican Donald Trump’s performance in the first presidential
debate on Monday night was likely to bolster his supporters, but
risked turning others off, interviews with undecided voters and
experts in both parties said. “I feel that the way he talks to other
people, the way that he addresses other people, can be extremely rude
and extremely disrespectful, and I don’t think that’s the temperament
we should be looking for in a president,” said Garrett Thacker, 30
years old, of Galloway, Ohio, who has voted for presidential
candidates in both parties.
From Donald Trump:
Rodney,
You were the real winner tonight.
Without you, I never would’ve had the chance to get on that stage and fight for America. We won tonight’s debate -- and I am confident we will win it all on November 8.
From Hillary Clinton
A few minutes ago I walked off stage after taking on Donald Trump.
I hope I showed that I will never stop fighting for you or the people you love. But I need you with me. Your contribution right now is about much more than money -- it shows that no matter how hard this race gets, you'll still be there for me. Chip in $3 or more tonight and show that you're standing by my side.
From Donald Trump:
Rodney,
You were the real winner tonight.
Without you, I never would’ve had the chance to get on that stage and fight for America. We won tonight’s debate -- and I am confident we will win it all on November 8.
From Hillary Clinton
To Rodwilliams47@yahoo.com
I hope I showed that I will never stop fighting for you or the people you love. But I need you with me. Your contribution right now is about much more than money -- it shows that no matter how hard this race gets, you'll still be there for me. Chip in $3 or more tonight and show that you're standing by my side.
WashingtonPost: The Daily 202: Why even Republicans think Clinton won the firstdebate
The consensus that Donald Trump badly lost the first debate gelled overnight. Liberals predictably panned the GOP nominee’s performance on Long Island, but some of the harshest reviews are coming from conservative thought leaders who had been starting to come around.
The consensus that Donald Trump badly lost the first debate gelled overnight. Liberals predictably panned the GOP nominee’s performance on Long Island, but some of the harshest reviews are coming from conservative thought leaders who had been starting to come around.
Hillary Clinton was deemed the winner of Monday night's debate by
62% of voters who tuned in to watch, while just 27% said they thought
Donald Trump had the better night, according to a CNN/ORC Poll of
voters who watched the debate.
We already knew that Trump is remarkably incurious about policy,
boasting about how he does not listen to experts or read much. We
already knew where that led him, to ideas such as igniting a trade
war, reinstituting torture — worse than waterboarding — and killing
the innocent children of suspected terrorists. We also already knew
about his temperament — that Trump had engaged in racist attacks on a
federal judge and dangerous stereotyping of American Muslims,
including a gold star family. We already knew he regularly demeans
people based on their appearance or physical disabilities.
We also already knew that Trump is the most dishonest and least
transparent presidential nominee in recent memory, refusing to release
his tax returns even though every presidential nominee for 40 years
has done so and betting that a visit to Dr. Oz relieved him of
responsibility for releasing more information on his health. We
already knew that he was an uncommon liar. The Post has only been the
latest outlet to attempt to record the full panoply of deceptions
Trump tells on a daily basis, such as hisrecent claims that Clinton has “been silent about Islamic
terrorism for many years,” and that he “never” proposed targeting
Muslims.
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