That was my reaction as well. Staved off disaster.
I saw that in the other thread. My wife was talking and I missed it.
Well, my take.
Hillary did very well.
Trump was incoherent at times, rambled, but didn’t fall on his face all that bad.
Hillary clearly won the visual part of the debate, and won the verbal as well. Trump didn’t fail as much as I thought he would though. This will be seen as a victory for the RNC probably.
I had to run an errand and had spotty coverage during the ride so I missed parts of it.
Highlights?
I think it was worse than the first one for Trump, better than the second for Clinton.
I won’t predict how this will affect the race. I suspect the Trump remarks on sexual assault are the end and would have been the end even if he’d hit a home run. This debate was of interest academically, nothing more.
I wasn’t paying attention as often as I should. Who won?
Damn it. That wasn’t the landslide over Trump I’d hope it would be.
As I said in the other thread, my takeaway is: Trump lives to see another day. I think he did what he needed to do to remain viable.
Trump didn’t fall flat on his face, so he did better than expectations. Not that that’s saying much.
Trump outperformed expectations. If there wasn’t such a thing as fact checkers it was maybe a tie.
If you’re not grading on a curve Hillary won.
This was clearly a Trump victory in that he didn’t get into a fist fight with the audience or moderators. In terms of persuading moderate voters a clear win for Hillary except maybe on the supreme court issue.
I think Trump did what he had to do to stop the death spiral of his campaign. He was unusually calm in answering the first few difficult questions about his comments and then mostly disciplined about sticking to his talking points attacking Hillary. He whined too much about the moderating but did not interrupt nearly as much as last time.
Hillary was steady and well-prepared as usual. She will probably hold onto the 4-5 point lead she has but I don’t see it going much beyond that for the time being.
Can I get a fact check on us being energy independent, as Clinton claimed?
According to wikipedia, we’re not:
Agreed. It’s hard paying full attention to the debate AND full attention to the comments posted here, but I have to say I was a little surprised at the comments posted in this thread making it sound like Clinton was squashing Trump and he was acting like an incoherent lunatic. I am behind Clinton all the way, and Trump scares the shit out of me - but I don’t think it’s useful to see Clinton’s performance as better than it was, or his as worse. I’d have to call this one a draw, in terms of what an undecided voter might see and respond to.
Trump was too incoherent too much of the time. Fact checkers will be up all night and tomorrow, the facts will be out. His supporters don’t care if he lies though.
The real winners were the moderators. They did a great job.
I’ll be interested to hear the take of the voters who claim to be undecideds on the outcome.
Regarding Clean coal Clinton already was talking about that too, so Trump was also off his knocker there by Claiming Hillary was not. Not very optimistic about it myself as there are many issues still, but the point should not be missed, the problem is not fossil fuels, but the fact that we do not prevent the CO2 and other particles to be released into the atmosphere.
http://www.mining.com/clinton-talks-up-clean-coal-says-she-will-bring-steel-jobs-back-to-pa/
a) I actually have to give props to Trump, at least for not spontaneously combusting on stage. The arguments were shitty and the shots were cheap, but there were lots of them and at least a few landed.
b) I have never seen so many cheap shots delivered in a Presidential race, and for this I have to blame Trump. He went for the gutter, as is his instinct and to a certain extent Hillary let herself get sucked in.
c) I firmly believe that Trump’s campaign is dead in the water, and nothing is likely to change this simple fact in the short time remaining to the election.
Trump was a rambling mess much of the night. Even his tax answer, which some have given him plaudits for, was an incoherent litany.
According to a recent 538 liveblog item, no, the US isn’t (quite) energy independent - the amount of energy the US generates is 91% of the energy it consumes. We don’t actually use all of that - we export some of it, so US energy imports are more than 9% of consumption.