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Presidential Debate Wrap-up
This is a preview from Thursday morning’s The Daily Shot newsletter. Subscribe here free of charge.
Last night, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton met for what was the third, and mercifully final, presidential debate of this cycle. We knew it was going to be rough when they didn’t even shake hands. (There was pre-debate handshake drama … ugh, we won’t trouble you with it. But it was a thing.)
This debate can roughly be divided into two parts, the first half and the second half. To the credit of the moderator, Chris Wallace, his topics were rock solid. He touched on the Supreme Court, the Second Amendment, and abortion. Wallace did not hesitate to press for answers either. He asked Hillary Clinton directly about voting against a partial birth abortion ban. (No doubt handing Mollie Hemingway a free column.) And Donald Trump, of all people, made a very graphic case against late term abortion.
When Wallace put the screws to Hillary about her open borders Wall Street speech, she claimed it was just about energy. Then she turned the question and attacked Russia, and Trump by extension, for the WikiLeaks stuff. (That’s a dodge she can probably use for the next few weeks.)
The debate’s first half was the dry part. Clinton played her typical holding game with a low-risk, kind of shrill performance. She could’ve been any candidate of any party. Trump was pretty calm himself until Wallace asked about immigration, then he got very excited and started speaking faster.
After the halfway point, things went from a calm lake to a Cat 4 hurricane. That’s about when Clinton decided to go on offense. Her tell-tale sign was bringing up Trump’s loan from his father. There were other pointed barbs designed to get under Trump’s skin — and they worked. The calm Trump left, and the old Trump showed up. The one that smirks and mugs into the camera. The one who leans in and says “WRONG!” in the middle of Clinton’s answers.
When asked about the allegations of sexual impropriety against him, Trump blamed it on Clinton dirty tricks. His answers on Mosul and Aleppo were mostly incoherent. And the real headline of the night was when he was directly asked if he would accept the results of the election. His response was “I will look at it at the time,” with the addendum, “I will keep you in suspense.”
Though it’s hard to determine which candidate won last night’s debate, it didn’t change the trajectory for November 8. And that’s what Donald Trump needed to happen.
But the real winner was Fox News’s Chris Wallace. His command of the questions and issues was tight. His clock control was superb. He pressed when he should have and held both candidates accountable. (At the Ricochet meetup, when the debate concluded, Rob Long literally raised a glass to toast him.)
As the risk of editorializing, can we please, please, PLEASE have Chris Wallace moderate every debate in the future? Like from now until the end of time?
This is a preview from Thursday morning’s The Daily Shot newsletter. Subscribe here free of charge.
Published in General
He did fairly well. The challenge is there is so much material now. Here is what he had to do tonight:
Objective: the 10% who are wavering but might vote for you. Not the base, not the rabid followers and not Hillary’s core.
Must Do:
1. Look like you are calm and rational to be President
2. Look strong
3. Tell them what you will do.
4. Do not lose it no matter what
5. Attack Hillary but do not kill her.
given that, I give him a B+. She gets a C- as she talked too long and never gave a short , declarative answer. She did not add any voters or make anyone feel better about her.
The Wait and see on the election results was a well executed trap on the media. They fell into it. He will get two news cycles where they will go crazy and the voters will not care. The media was primed to do it and it will kill any talk of Hillary winning.
Right said, Fred.
I actually agree – Wallace rattled Hillary a few times tonight. She’s not used to a hostile press.
This was the last unscripted questioning Hillary will ever have.
I don’t think this is correct. While I agree that people don’t really care or believe him (I certainly don’t) the tone of the discussion will be that Trump is crazy and bad. Most people will not pay attention to the details of the discussion they will only hear the tone and it will reinforce their preexisting assumptions about Trump. Which is his problem with that middle 10%. In worse yet the question is if it spooks the crazy left (who love to pretend dictatorship is coming) they might start abandoning Stein and Johnson to back Hillary. In the Rasmusen poll that has Trump up by one the notable difference is that Stein was above her normal 1-2% with something like 6% (if I recall). If Trump scares the far left back to Hillary he is toast. He needed to split them apart.
Debate , Trump B , Hillary C.
Trump swung for the fences w conspiracy stuff and if some of them aren’t overtly proven and publicized then he loses. He was losing anyway and took his shot in his usual rambling garbled fashion.
Hillary has no personality and is a crook but she stood upright and had command of most issues.
No change in trajectory.
I do hear St. Peter likes to wing it. But, I doubt she will BS her way out of that Q&A.
I agree that Chris Wallace did a great job. I was very surprised when he asked Hillary about the Clinton Foundation.
I didn’t have the stomach to listen. But if memory serves, Wallace was a big part of the circus atmosphere created with Kelly and Baier in the Republican Primary Debate.
Glad to hear he sobered up (figuratively).
Including telling the world our Nuclear response times… Which I am pretty sure was Classified.
“The IBD/TIPP Tracking Poll, over the past three election cycles, has been the most accurate poll out there. It’s no accident. Polling is both a science and an art, and our pollster, Ramsey, N.J.-based TechnoMetrica, excels at both. The 2012 election is a case in point. With less than two weeks to go, a number of polls showed a significant lead for Republican challenger Mitt Romney. Gallup, for instance, had Romney up by six points with just a week to go. Meanwhile, other polls showed an “enthusiasm gap”, with GOP supporters far more motivated to vote than Democrats. It looked like it could be a blowout — for the Republicans. But our own 2012 polling showed something different, with incumbent Barack Obama having the edge.
How did we stack up in the end? By our calculations, based on final results of 11 national polls that have been active over the past three presidential elections, IBD/TIPP was among the most accurate polls in 2012. Indeed, polling analyst Nate Silver of the New York Times’ blog FiveThirtyEight, who ranked 23 presidential polling organizations in 2012 using a different method than the one we used, described IBD/TIPP as “the most accurate” tracking poll for the year.”
Beware of self promotion. I’d rather see this analysis of their results from a neutral party.
Not stunning analysis on my part, but I think it is clear that many of the undecideds don’t want to vote for Hillary (playing the incumbent this election), but Trump is making it hard for them to vote for him. I wonder how many will simply sit out.
Imagine being the sort of voter who listens but doesn’t really understand. You don’t follow the news much. You don’t know the issues. You only know about her emails dimly, if at all. You don’t know what TPP or NAFTA are. You don’t know where Mosul is. You are just now tuning it to the whole process. What would you take away from the debate?
Virtually all of the answers from both candidates were convoluted and hard to follow without already knowing a lot, or at least a little, about the issues. So it’s tone that would create the biggest impression. Whose tone would you have been more impressed with? Which one would you have seen as being more presidential?
Second: The biggest divide between them that the ordinary voter would understand was on abortion. Which one gave the answer that more undecided, independent, and/or middle-of-the-road voters want to hear?
My girlfriend is one of those people. With her, it’s not that she doesn’t understand, but just that she doesn’t want to. Out of her love for me (which I think is a terrible line of thinking, but I won’t complain either) she has watched the debates with me without complaint. She doesn’t like either one of them, & sees them both as a perfect picture of what is wrong with this country. The consistent takeaway that she has had throughout all of the debates is that Hillary seems the one more prepared & better suited to be president. She doesn’t agree with her politics or opinions on basically anything, but she sees her as the more presidential of the two, and the one that would have a better grasp on how things work as president. Again, she knows about the scandals & all the other shady Clinton behavior, so she’s not saying that Hillary IS the best choice, just merely stating from watching these debates that she is the one with the right temperament & based on tone, the one that is more prepared to take the highest office in the land.
I was puttering and so not paying the strictest attention, but wasn’t there an incredible missed opportunity last night? Wallace asked about the grope reports and, added in fairness, a question about Hillary’s response to her husband’s lechery. But the responses were all about Donald, his defense and her recounting of the accusations. The chance to inform the youngsters about that behavior pattern was swept under the rug. Or did I miss something?
These debates laid bare the truth that Hillary is a fraud who can barely hold her own against an ignorant reality TV star who has only been in the politics business for 15min. She has grasped and clawed her way to power. She is no trailblazing stateswoman, but rather the most purely Machiavellian character of our era.
Don’t you think it looked like Hillary was reading from her podium? Why was she looking down all the time?
It’s not. What she said was widely known.
Actually, it looked to me like Trump is the one looking down often. But he was taking notes.
Hillary’s biggest problem is that polling will make it look like the election is in the bag for her. So that could mean a lot of Democrats who dislike her, may stay home or vote third party believing she will easily take it, like Gore was supposed to do
If the election were closer those people would have a reason to come out, but that may not be the case. Trump’s base is motivated. He is also soft on the polls by two points.
If the polling numbers hold at current, I expect a very low turnout election, and that likely gives edge to Trump.
Yes it is classified. – but is generally isn’t confirmed by those in the know… which is why this is so bad…
I didn’t hear her say anything last night that wasn’t public knowledge.