People one on one with Trump for whatever reason seem unable to land a convincing blow. He went through the entire GOP lineup of people with decades of debate and political experience like a hot knife through butter. He has some secret “I could give a f***” Mojo that lets him slip every hold.
And he’s willing to mock and deride people to their faces in visceral terms which seems to throw a lot of political pros off their stride.
Democrats are expecting HRC to take him apart like a tinker toy. I’m not sure that’s going to happen.
The question is, can the debate stay on-topic for five minutes, and can it spend any time on policy. If forced to stick on a particular point for any extended amount of time, Trump will show cracks. If the debate is forced to a position where the candidates have to talk policy, and as a result show off what they know and understand, Trump is going to be in trouble. And of course, if the moderator actually does their job and moderates the claims made in the debate, Trump will look like an utter buffoon.
The problem with that is, I think I’m vastly overestimating the role of the moderator on this. Whether any moderator involves does any of these tasks is questionable to doubtful. Chris Wallace has made it perfectly clear he doesn’t plan to be the truth police - i.e. “I’m going to let Trump lie his ass off without correcting him on any of it”. The question is, how do you even defend against a strategy comprising of, “I’m going to lie my ass off, refuse to answer any substantive questions, and I’m going to get away with it on sheer chutzpah because anyone considering voting for me hasn’t been fact-checking shit anyways”? Facts don’t matter. Personality goes firmly to Trump because he’s willing to be the bigger shitlord. Policy really doesn’t matter.
I don’t know how Hillary wins this unless the press actually steps the fuck up and does their job. And as we’ve seen from the Commander in Chief forum, that ain’t fucking happening.
Yeah, Trump really seems to have such a low bar in terms of expectations that I fear he’ll be declared the winner if he just manages to not have some kind of crazy outburst, regardless of whether anything he says makes any sense or is true.
That said, it’s Trump, so I give it about a 50/50 shot of at least one crazy outburst over three debates.
I’d like to believe if she refuses to address his attacks, remains dignified, refuses to attack him or his idiot policies and speaks in full sentences, she can’t help but come out looking like the adult.
Whether or not that’s enough this election cycle, who can say?
My guess is that he will work very hard to make sure she never gets out a single full sentence. The example of Matt Lauer’s September 7th performance will not have been lost on him: Lauer was criticized for failing to fact-check Trump, but got very little blow-back for continually interrupting Clinton. (He didn’t interrupt Trump, so far as I can find.)
So Trump will interrupt her many times and can simply smirk if Lester Holt says anything about it (which he may not–he may well have been intimidated by Trump’s calling him A Democrat).
It will be 90 minutes of Clinton trying to get a full sentence out and being cut off by Trump, asserting the privilege of any man to interrupt any woman (apparently). And Trump will greatly please his fans by affirming his dominance in this way, and possibly win new fans who will find it impressive.
It’s a tough one for Clinton. If she calls him on it, according to the rules of our culture, she will be labelled far and wide as ‘a ball-breaking bitch.’ If she doesn’t call him on it–as she didn’t call out Matt Lauer, knowing full well as she does the rules for her gender–she will look ‘weak.’
This, on the other hand, is a good example of a Democrat underestimating Trump. He won’t do this. It would be stupid. He will be relatively respectful.
Hillary Clinton isn’t a civilian. It’s so condescending to think she can’t hold her own against Trump in any situation or that Trump should play by different rules because she is a woman. If she can’t handle a clown as so many of you describe him, what can she do?
That basic viewpoint has kept Presidential debates relatively respectful over the years; candidates assumed that voters would punish anyone who looked like a lout or a bully.
This year, we’ve learned that many voters will reward a bully; no behavior is too loutish for that core 35 - 40% of US voters. But the calculation for those advising Trump (“let Trump be Trump” versus “try to be Presidential”) is all about those Undecided voters: what percentage of them want to see the woman put in her place? Conversely, what percentage of them will not only fail to enjoy the spectacle of him continually interrupting her, but will decide against voting for him expressly because of it?
His instinct is to bully women who compete with him or hold some degree of power over him (for examples, see his interactions with journalists such as Megyn Kelly and Kay Tur, as well his remarks about Carly Fiorina). A lot depends on what his advisors say to him and how seriously he takes their views. But in the heat of things, he may remember the fact that no one really called out Matt Lauer for his pattern of interrupting the female candidate–and go for it.
If so, female viewers will make up their own minds about what that says about him.
Given your brief, I can understand your trying to characterize this as “can’t hold her own” and “different rules because she is a woman” and “can’t handle”…but nice try though it is, that’s not anywhere near my message.
My message was that Clinton will be facing cultural imperatives that none of Trump’s male competitors did–and anyone analyzing the debate would be foolish to ignore this fact. There are ways to handle boorish conduct without inviting criticism for being _________ (fill in the blank with the sexist adjective of choice), and I’m guessing we will see Clinton employing some of them.
It has nothing to do with “holding her own”. Anything short of shitting his pants will make people call Trump the winner. There are zero expectations for Trump going into this, a lot of people didn’t even expect him to show up in the first place.
We don’t have actual debates, anyway. The candidates get asked questions and then they regurgitate little prepared speeches. Hillary shouldn’t spend any time attacking Trump, but instead offer a steady stream of detailed policy positions and an optimistic view of the future. At some point, being the serious, experienced and adult candidate should start paying off.
I think Trump’s already “won” the debate. He’s learned that moderators won’t call his bullshit, that he can bluster and bully and his fans will eat it up. If Hillary gives him the drubbing he deserves, news story will be “Ill-tempered harpy nags her way to questionable win.”
Trump could end up looking somewhat like a credible presidential candidate or he could look like a circus clown. I don’t think we will see Trump yelling and out of control, but I do think he will be aggressive. Will he be too aggressive? Will Hillary say something that gets under his skin? A bigger question is, will Lester Holt do something that gets under his skin? Will some of the reporters in the post-debate reporting trip Trump’s Twitter trigger? That remains to be seen. I don’t think this is a debate that necessarily ends after the the final question has been answered.
Hillary’s growing problem is that people are starting to forget that she exists. Some probably think she’s still sick. She needs to come out and show some controlled aggression of her own.
I agree with this. Trump has been getting away with the most brazen lies imaginable, not just in this campaign, but for years (“you wouldn’t believe what my investigators in Hawaii are finding out [about Obama’s apparent non-birth there]”), etc. Then he just brazenly claims that he’s the one who finally settled the matter, and shame on Hillary for starting that nasty rumor about Obama being born in Kenya! :rolleyes:
His technique when challenged on these things is to ignore the challenge and forcefully bloviate about something else entirely. He’s a born carnival barker, a born con-man, a showman, and a professional liar.
So there are two parts to the debate challenge. I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the moderators to be fact-checkers because of (a) time constraints – if you had to factually correct everything Trump said it would take up the whole 90 minutes, and (b) the risk of being perceived as being biased (remember when Candy Crawley corrected Romney and was accused of being in the tank for Obama?). But I think it absolutely is reasonable and essential for the moderators to insist that a question actually be answered and not just deflected with meaningless rhetoric, and if the candidate doesn’t do it, give the candidate another minute to do so, and failing that, plainly note that the question was not answered, and move on. Of course this will never happen, but I wish it would.
The second part is the fact-checking, and I’d love to see a thorough media analysis of all the responses afterwards. Now this part I think will happen, and it will expose Trump’s multitude of shameless brazen lies, but unfortunately no Trumpsters will ever read it. They’ll be back to watching reality TV and celebrating their hero’s victory because Trump said something brilliant about the size of his dick.
I’ve been thinking about Mark Cuban being in the audience for the debates.
“Mrs. Clinton invited a billionaire because her friends are all Wall Street hedge managers who game the system and gave 21 million dollars for speeches. Those are her biggest donors. Does anyone know how this guy made his billions? [Shrugs shoulders] All I know about Mark Cuban is that he’s dopey and he tried to mimic me by creating a lame television show called the Benefactor that was cancelled before you knew it. Now he spends all of his time being butt hurt.”
Mark Cuban will have to sit there and take the insults. He’ll respond after the debates but he won’t have a hundredth of the audience that Trump does.
If Trump ends up debating Mark Cuban, he might as well announce his withdrawal the next day.
Trump needs to show up and look presidential. He needs to reassure voters who are concerned about his stability in order to expand beyond his current base.