A reader writes concerning last night’s debate:
Most of the news I heard this morning declared The Don the winner, but then I hear that that clinton woman was saying she is the winner. Whatever, we’re the losers–or may be.
Which serves to lead in to a phenomenon I’ve noticed over the years of folks with opinions, be it blogs or other – the stubborn practice of staring at every event through the same prism. Here’s liberal Steve Benen of MaddowBlog:
Shortly before the first presidential debate of 2016 got underway, former House Speaker Newt Gingrich, a prominent Donald Trump ally, insisted that the Republican candidate would “pass the test of being adequately competent” during the showdown with Hillary Clinton. The message drew swift mockery for setting the bar for Trump success at such a woefully low level.
But by the time the dust settled on the debate, Gingrich’s prediction looked even worse – because Trump didn’t come close to demonstrating “adequate competence.”
After the event, Trump told reporters that debate organizers gave him “a defective mic.” He quickly added, “I wonder, was that on purpose? Was that on purpose?” Of course, there was no conspiracy involving Trump’s microphone, though all things considered, the GOP nominee might have been better off if his mic hadn’t worked and the audience didn’t hear what he had to say.
When Trump needed to be honest, he lied. When he needed to be poised, he came unglued. When he needed to appear knowledgeable, he rambled incoherently. When he needed to prove that he’d prepared for the debate, he made clear he hadn’t done his homework.
When Trump needed to change the trajectory of the presidential race, he offered fresh proof that he’s just not ready for prime time.
Dustin Siggins is perhaps a little more honest on The Resurgent, a conservative site:
Donald Trump lost last night. Hillary Clinton looked elegant — others have said “smug,” but who can blame her, given how badly Trump did? — and brevity was her friend. Trump couldn’t talk enough, and he definitely couldn’t talk enough about his businesses, his financial deals, or anything else that focused on him. He was defensive, he interrupted Clinton and Holt, and even his one-liners about Clinton’s record were lost in his ramblings.
As the old saying goes, “if you’re explaining, you’re losing,” and Trump spent a lot of last night explaining. And explaining badly, as Clinton played him like a fiddle for the last hour of the debate.
Then again, it’s easy to put Trump on the defensive when the moderator’s helping you out. This is one of the big talking points out of the Trump campaign post-debate, and it’s a valid one.
So we play blame the moderator. But he still thinks Clinton’s history is as bad as Trump’s. Bill Kristol, a conservative with a marked distaste of Trump, is very predictable in a Tweet:
Sophisticated types who’ve signed on w/ Trump are today grappling w/ the horrifying realization they’ve fallen in behind a con man & loser.
John Hinderaker of Powerline, a conservative blog, who was quite enthusiastic about Sarah Palin, saw the debate this way:
5) There will be lots of discussion about who “won” the debate, and it is easy to say that the winner–the better performer–was Mrs. Clinton. But asking who won the debate is the wrong question. The question is, did watching the debate make undecided voters more likely to vote for Clinton or Trump? My guess is that in that sense, the event was pretty much a draw, and we won’t see much movement in the polls over the next few days.
6) This is why I don’t think the evening was a bad one for Trump: most undecided voters will have seen Hillary as the embodiment of the political class. Smug, smirking, always ready with a torrent of words that can’t quite obscure the fact that to the extent she herself has wielded power, she has been a failure. Hillary Clinton is a walking exemplar of the political class that got us where we are now. A viewer who thinks America is doing great, our politicians are terrific, things have been going well in recent years and we need more of the same will be motivated to vote for Hillary.
Rod Dreher of The American Conservative is more honest, although it sounds like he wishes Trump had done better:
That’s it. Trump blew this thing, in my view. Hillary caught her stride about a half-hour in, and showed herself to be presidential. He came off as extremely unprepared. I cannot believe Trump helped himself tonight, though for all I know, the voters loved him. Hillary didn’t have a big win, but she did win, and I believe that she stopped the bleeding for her campaign.
I know that everybody has a different standard for Trump, but if Trump ends up judged the winner of this debate in the polls, I don’t know what to say anymore. There is no way Donald Trump is ready to be President of the United States. No way. And I don’t believe many undecided voters changed their mind to vote for Trump based on his performance tonight. …
Yes, Lord, yes, it is. With a stake through its heart and a garlic necklace. Ain’t nothin’ left for us religious conservatives but the Benedict Option.
Rod sounds bereft. Was it so important that this man, whose relationship with verity is so distant, should win?
So do I trust Hinderaker or Benen to be more accurate in their assessment? If I may indulge in an odd analogy, I wonder if neither of these guys would make for a good fencing referee. I’ve refereed a little, although I’ve never taken the test or stood for a director’s rating, but I do try to use a methodical, knowledgeable procedure. My approach is to remember that when you’re observing the world in general, your brain isn’t seeing or hearing or tasting everything you think it is – it takes bits and pieces, pattern matches it with stored experiences, and presents you with a good pattern that incorporates some of those bits – you can consider that to be a prism. (This is why sometimes something that is completely outside of your experience will be incomprehensible and require careful study to bring it into your experiential domain, as it were.) But often important details are lost, mutated, lose their chronological ordering, etc.
As a referee, I strive to remove that pattern matching. I try to see everything of importance during a given touch, within the last couple of tempos, without interpretation, until the scoring machine signals that something has happened (unless I see something that calls for a halt, of course). Then I try to replay, in my mind, what really happened – not what my brain wants to guess happened, but what I think I saw, without the prism (or filters, as I usually call them) and how it all fits together. Once that’s done, I apply a confidence level to the assessment, and assign the touch if the confidence level is as high as the “bar” I use, which is usually around, oh, 90-95%.
So are any of these pundits really seeing the true debate, or just what their prism shows them? I’m not sure. As I watched the debate, I was very aware of a struggle between the part of me who wanted to simply judge the debate, and the part of me who finds Trump detestable and untrustworthy. Part of the problem is the immense set of unknowns – how many lies did Trump tell? Is Clinton really crooked, or is that just poison from the GOP? Would immediate fact checking add or subtract from the debate1?
Another (semi-retired) blogger who did a live-blog on the event was Andrew Sullivan of The Dish, who I’ve mentioned before. I have more respect for Andrew than most because of his expertise (Ph.D. PoliSci – he knows the difference between conservative and fever-swamp fringe, and as a conservative, he loathes the GOP), and because of his mistakes. Why do they matter? Because, back in the day, he didn’t hesitate to acknowledge them, to explore why he made them, to retract positions when it became clear he’d badly screwed up. And he grew because of them. How about these other bloggers? Well, I don’t know. I haven’t read them for long enough. But I know that at least some qualify for the term zealot, so I wonder. But Andrew has displayed some important honorable human qualities which makes him worth keeping an eye on. And what did he say, keeping in mind his loathing for Trump?
10:39 p.m. What can one say? I was afraid that Trump’s charisma and stage presence and salesmanship might outshine Hillary Clinton’s usually tepid and wonkish instincts. I feared that the facts wouldn’t matter; that a debate would not take place. And it is to Clinton’s great credit that she prepared, and he didn’t, and that she let him hang himself.
His utter lack of preparation; his doubling down on transparent lies; his foreign-policy recklessness; his racial animosity; his clear discomfort with the kind of exchange of views that is integral to liberal democracy; his instinctual belligerence — all these suggest someone who has long lived in a deferential bubble that has become filled with his own reality.
Clinton was not great at times; her language was occasionally stilted; she missed some obvious moments to go in for the kill; but she was solid and reassuring and composed. I started tonight believing she needed a game-changer to alter the trajectory of this race. I may, of course, be wrong, trapped in my own confirmation bias and bubble — but I thought she did just that.
I’ve been a nervous wreck these past two weeks; my nerves are calmed now.
In the end, polls may tell the most accurate story. Here’s Benen again with some overnight news:
And though it’ll be a while until we have polling data that shows what effect, if any, last night had on the overall race, overnight surveys suggest the public and the pundits are on the same page about the first Clinton/Trump showdown.
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. […]
Voters who watched said Clinton expressed her views more clearly than Trump and had a better understanding of the issues by a margin of more than 2-to-1. Clinton also was seen as having done a better job addressing concerns voters might have about her potential presidency by a 57% to 35% margin, and as the stronger leader by a 56% to 39% margin.
Also overnight, Public Policy Polling released the results of its own post-debate survey, sponsored by VoteVets Action Fund, which found less lopsided results, but which nevertheless pointed to a Clinton victory, 51% to 40%.
The same poll found most respondents believe Clinton has the temperament to be president and is prepared for the job. A majority said the opposite about Trump.
Republican pollster Frank Luntz hosted a focus group last night and found, by a 16-to-6 margin, participants saw Clinton as the debate’s winner. CNN, meanwhile, organized a focus group of its own in Florida with a group of undecided voters. Of the 20 participants, 18 said Clinton prevailed.
1If you want to know how many lies were told by the candidates during the debate, here’s a transcript and list from NPR. A screenshot to whet your whistle:
