2016 Presidential Debate #1

 It's over, it's finally over, it was only a bit over an hour and a half, but felt like three or four.

It was a solid win for Hillary Clinton that to me evoked the Biden/Ryan VP debate from four years ago, Biden was criticized in that one for acting like a bully, but in the end it was a positive result for the campaign and I think we get the same results today but more so.

Clinton toughed out interruptions and attacks, parsed out avenues of attack from the word vomit that Trump expelled every time he opened his mouth, was poised and in control of facts and new both her record and his better than he did.
And she did it with a smile on her face.

The smile at times even looked genuine, it kinda appeared that she was actually having fun out there, which I guess makes sense, I mean she is a huge politics dork who has been doing this for decades, she has to actually like parts of it too, and it isn't like you can have an easier debate target than Donald Trump, a man who seemingly has devoted his public life towards making himself as politically vulnerable on every issue as possible.

Trump basically attempted to cram his usual stump speech into every answer, with his usual meandering style of speaking, he touched on a diverse array of topics every time he opened his mouth, but he clearly showed he had no command of actual facts and in some cases didn't even understand the question asked by the moderator, particularly when he was asked about President Obama considering making changes to our first strike policy, his response mentioned the B-52 bomber, Iran, and nuclear weapons in general, but made no reference to the actual policy.

Clinton and the moderator provided openings, a questions about cyber-security seemed tailor-made to get an emails attack, but Trump ignored that opportunity in favor of rambling on about Russia, China, or some 400 pound guy in his bedroom, also that his son is good with computers.

Clinton spoke of her ability to handle the presidency and her history, this should have allowed Trump to bring up all kinds of topics such as the Clinton Foundation, Benghazi, her Superpredators comment from the 90s, and so on, but for the most part they were ignored or glossed over, he mentioned Superpredators once in passing near the end of a response to something, but it was lost in the usual word salad and she didn't bother to bring it up again, the Clinton Foundation was probably a smart topic for him to avoid, because I am pretty sure he doesn't want to talk about his own charity at the moment and I think some of Clinton's comments were sort of fishing for an attack like that.

She certainly set him up for other attacks in a similar manner, a couple times she made comments about the Iraq war and Trump's support for it and he did bite on that eventually, flaming out spectacularly while demanding everyone go talk to Sean Hannity if they want the true story.

But mostly he didn't get to play offense, Clinton hit him on everything from his taxes to his racism and did it using easily available facts and figure, indeed the fact checkers have found not a ton to complain about from her side of the table and Trump himself gave some good ammunition, when confronted with the fact that for the only tax records we know about he paid none, he responded, not responded, interrupted, to say that "I was smart". During the final portion of the debate Clinton hit him on sexism and again without prompting, Trump brought up Rosie O'Donnel, who he famously referred to as a "fat pig" and said he was totally justified in saying what he did.

He was unprepared, got knocked off balance early on and never recovered, and grew visibly more and more upset as the night progressed. Hilariously of the two people up there, the one who didn't recently have pneumonia looked the least healthy too, with red face, constant water drinking, and what appeared to be the sniffles.

The moderator did an okay job, though I wish they would cut mics rather than just sort of hoping the candidate decides to stop talking at some point. But Lester Holt did well in appearing unbiased and at least attempting to get people to stop talking, and made heroic efforts to try to get Trump to actually answer even one question succinctly and with any actual facts. It didn't work, but he tried, and for this I salute him.

Will this change anything? Ehhh. Possibly? The first reactions look good for Clinton, most people polled by the networks say she won and looked presidential, more telling are the fact that Trump surrogates are having a hard time saying outright that he won, and quick dip into the hell that is the alt right message boards on places like /pol/ show that they are filled with furious Trump supporters who know he lost too.

My guess, and it will take a week or two for this to pan out, is that the current narrowing of polls was already going to reverse the trend, this debate might push that a little bit farther out than it was going, nationally maybe we see Clinton at +4-6 on average I guess, state level polls are anybody's guess and I won't make a solid prediction there but I feel like the polling outfits are already under estimating turnout in certain groups and this will only help boost confidence, so a positive for Clinton certainly.

In short, things matter again and the debate probably will matter more than most have, next up is Kaine/Pence on October 4th, that should be interesting.

Before I go I want to leave you with my favorite line of the night from Clinton regarding stamina:

"Well, as soon as he travels to 112 countries and negotiates a peace deal, a cease-fire, a release of dissidents, an opening of new opportunities in nations around the world or even spends 11 hours testifying in front of a congressional committee, he can talk to me about stamina."

Bam.