RE: Thoughts On The First Trump-Clinton Debate, Sept. 26th

[florentina]

Interesting. I watched the debate with some of my colleagues after work and the conclusion we arrived at: Trump failed miserably, even worse than we expected, and Clinton was her usual self: articulate, intelligent and shrewd. His ranting and rambling discourse which ended with him claiming that he had the best temperament elicited loud laughter from everyone in the pub. The Canadian and UK papers ripped him apart but my favourite post-debate piece was one that appeared in the Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/27/debate-clinton-trump-recap-presidential-election-hofstra.
And what the fuck was up with his sniffling? The bartender said it was a "tell" that indicated Trump's nervousness and bluffing/lying. As for Trump's lies, check out the fact checker: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/26/debate-fact-check-trump-clinton-live-quotes-hofstra

Comments

[nxtblg]

Thanks for your views. There are lots of folks who are unimpressed with Trump, and many of them are in foreign lands. Funny that you mention my fellow Canadians: I remember a poll conducted in 2012 which implied that a Canadian electorate would have given Obama a huge landslide.

I'm not a representative Canadian in that I've been watching the turns and twists of U.S. politics for years. You might say it's my hobby :) One of the hardest things to "get" about U.S. politics, structurally, is the gridlock that's part of the Separation of Powers. If you grew up in a parliamentary democracy, as I (and I presume you) have, it is baffling at first to see Congress routinely defy "Prime Minister" Obama.

"What's goin' on 'ere? 'E won the election, didn't 'e?"

[nxtblg]

Oh...and for a different take, two links for the New York Post:

On the one hand... "How Trump won over a bar full of undecideds and Democrats" by Selena Zito. Excerpts:

Letosky entered the evening undecided in a town that is heavily Democratic in registration. Her sister and father are on opposite sides of the political aisle. Donald “Trump had the upper hand this evening,” she said, citing his command of the back-and-forth between him and Hillary Clinton.

Reed, 35, is a registered Democrat and small businessman. “By the end of the debate, Clinton never said a thing to persuade me that she had anything to offer me or my family or my community,” he said, sitting at the same bar that has boasted local icons as regulars, such as the late Fred Rogers, and Arnold Palmer, who had his own stash of PM Whiskey hidden behind newer bottles of whiskey for his regular visits....

On the other hand... "Trump’s debate incompetence a slap in the face to his supporters" by John Podhoretz, a regular columnist. Excerpts:

....Then due to the vanity and laziness that led him to think he could wing the most important 95 minutes of his life, he lost the thread of his argument, he lost control of his temper and he lost the perspective necessary to correct these mistakes as he went.

Methodically and carefully, Hillary Clinton took over. Her purpose was to show she was rational and policy-driven, the kind of person who could be trusted to handle a careful and delicate job with prudence and sobriety — and that he was none of these things.

And she succeeded. By the end of the 95 minutes, Trump was reduced to a sputtering mess blathering about Rosie O’Donnell and about how he hasn’t yet said the mean things about Hillary that he is thinking.

From the same paper, on the same day...

[florentina]

Fascinating!

[nxtblg]

Thanks! From what I've seen, Trump did get a slight boost in his poll numbers...