Thursday, October 20, 2016

Hillary Romps Through the Debates

Ezra Klein:
The third and final presidential debate has ended, and it can now be said: Hillary Clinton crushed Donald Trump in the most effective series of debate performances in modern political history.

The polling tells the story. As Nate Silver notes, on the eve of the first presidential debate, Clinton led by 1.5 points. Before the second, she was up by 5.6 points. Before the third, she was winning by 7.1 points. And now, writing after the third debate — a debate in which Trump said he would keep the nation "in suspense" about whether there would be a peaceful transition of power, bragged about not apologizing to his wife, and called Clinton "such a nasty woman" — it’s clear that Trump did himself no favors. Early polls also suggest Clinton won. . . .

The dominant narrative of this election goes something like this. Hillary Clinton is a weak candidate who is winning because she is facing a yet weaker candidate. Her unfavorables are high, her vulnerabilities are obvious, and if she were running against a Marco Rubio or a Paul Ryan, she would be getting crushed. Lucky for her, she’s running against a hot orange mess with higher unfavorables, clearer vulnerabilities, and a tape where he brags about grabbing women "by the pussy."

There’s truth to this narrative, but it also reflects our tendency to underestimate Clinton’s political effectiveness. Trump’s meltdown wasn’t an accident. The Clinton campaign coolly analyzed his weaknesses and then sprung trap after trap to take advantage of them.

Clinton’s successful execution of this strategy has been, fittingly, the product of traits that she’s often criticized for: her caution, her overpreparation, her blandness. And her particular ability to goad Trump and blunt the effectiveness of his political style has been inextricable from her gender. The result has been a political achievement of awesome dimensions, but one that Clinton gets scarce credit for because it looks like something Trump is doing, rather than something she is doing — which is, of course, the point. . . .

Each debate has followed the same pattern. Trump begins calm, but as Clinton needles him, he falls apart, gets angrier, launches bizarre personal attacks, offers rambling justifications for his own behavior, and loses the thread of whatever question was actually asked of him.

Clinton, meanwhile, crisply summarizes the binders full of policy information she absorbed before the debate. The gap in preparation, knowledge, and basic competence has been evident in every contest, and it’s led to polls showing that even voters who loathe Clinton recognize she’s far more qualified and capable than Trump. Nor does Clinton make mistakes — she’s often criticized for being careful and bland in her answers, but here it’s helped her, as she’s never taken the headlines away from Trump’s own gaffes.
Hillary knows a lot and works hard. I think we are about to find out how far those will take a president.

2 comments:

pithom said...

Hillary Clinton is Mitt Romney. The donors like Her, and she clearly won the first debate. Trump won the second debate (like Obama) and tied in the third. Never trust a Dem partisan with anything.

BTW, if you still trust Clinton with nuclear weapons even after understanding Her extremely incompetent foreign policy, I don't know what to tell you.

G. Verloren said...

@pithom

You don't know what to tell us? Why don't you tell us to trust nuclear weapons to Trump instead? Because that's the only other option on the table.

Let's be generous and say that Clinton's foreign policy is flawed in some unspecified way. So what? She's still not going to start a nuclear war under any realistic circumstances.

Everything we know about Clinton tells us that she is cautious, restrained, and relies on delegation and a network of expert contacts and advisors to shape her decisions. She's only going to push the nuclear button if everyone around her is in agreement that it is necessary.

In contrast, Trump is a loose cannon. He's incautious, unrestrained, and dismisses the advice and council of others. He relies solely on his own gut feelings to make rash snap decisions unless others step in to stop him, and he's ,already made campaign promises to employ nuclear weapons on the Middle East,.

The only way someone a sane person could possibly think Trump is a safer option than Clinton is if they are a Putin supporter and think that Ol' Vladdy should be the one to have control over the US nuclear arsenal.