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I am no good at deciding who won or lost debates. I react to them as a voter and not as a journalist. And I tend to fasten on things that don’t necessarily upset or thrill other voters. Here are two things that bothered me – not because they’ll determine the election, but because they could foreshadow trouble after the election.
A just released NBC/WSJ poll puts Hillary Clinton 14 points ahead of Donald Trump (52-38) in a two way match-up and 11 points up in a four way match-up.
Live blogging a debate is a curious experience. You’re not really watching it in the way one might watch a news show or a sports events. Because you’re watching with a very focused level of attention and also writing at the same time. That means you pick up almost everything and yet sometimes miss things that are right there – sort of like a hyper- or over-focused driver. For me the effect was compounded with this debate because so many normally impossible, norm-shattering things happened in such a rush.
I spent the last 45 minutes or so going back through the video and rush transcripts to get a precise version of what I think was one of the key passages in the whole debate: Cooper’s questioning of Trump about the ‘grab’ tape and Trump’s denials. Specifically Trump insisted that Cooper had misunderstood what was said on the tape, that what he was describing was not sexual assault. Here is the back and forth. I’ve bolded the portions where Trump addresses the tape and left unbolded the parts where he switches back and forth to talking about crushing ISIS.
This was a very, very different kind of debate. Let me begin with a few general observations.
10:29 PM: Clinton On Trump’s Predatory Comments About Women: This Is Who He Is
10:28 PM: Trump just said he’s pretty much self-funding? Really.
10:22 PM: “I have almost 25 million people.”
10:21 PM: She “was no girl scout.” “There was no sex tape.”
10:20 PM: “She has tremendous hate in her heart … She’s got tremendous hatred.”
10:17 PM: I think a basic theme of this debate is that this is the debate the Breitbart team wanted from Trump: aggressive, hitting Bill’s adultery, all the laundry list of slashing attacks.
10:16 PM: “I have been saying in big speeches where I have 20 and 30,000 people. What do you have to lose?”
10:15 PM: Trump seems to think all Black people live in a place called “the inner cities.”
10:14 PM: The constant fighting with the moderators is not helping Trump.
10:10 PM: Trump’s ignorance of basic military concepts is amazing.
10:09 PM: “I think it’s basically fallen.”
10:09 PM: “He and I haven’t spoken. But I disagree.”
10:06 PM: “We’re old. We’re tied and exhausted.”
10:01 PM: This is a very different debate. The first 15 or 20 minutes were terrible for Trump. Since then he’s done much better. It’s hard to evaluate Trump because his manner is so caustic. But just in the most basic sense he’s got in his key attacks against Hillary. So that’s different. He does seem more prepared than he was on round one. Not a high bar, but more prepared.
9:53 PM: Trump said he and Putin were friends and had great chats.
9:51 PM: Trump’s supporters in the audience sure seem pretty voluble.
9:46 PM: Lots of evidence that jihadis are rooting for a Trump presidency because they think he’ll be the best thing that ever happened to them.
9:44 PM: Seems like one former RNC Chair thinks it’s not going well.
GOP at this moment. #debate pic.twitter.com/nD0gc29sWj
— Michael Steele (@MichaelSteele) October 10, 2016