A debate in which there is disagreement over the basic facts is unlikely to produce an agreed winner.
But in a conventional sense it certainly seems like Hillary Clinton had the upper hand in last night’s presidential debate. Although it was perhaps a little overdone at the start Clinton projected capability without condescension. She offered specifics without sounding robotic and frequently left her opponent to give meandering responses. ‘Just listen to what you heard’, she said after one of his more outrageous statements.
True to form, Donald Trump was largely vague and repetitive in his answers – a flaw that was highlighted last night by the moderator Lester Holt pressing him for specifics. In contrast Clinton effectively navigated her two of her biggest weakness – her emails and her health – in part because of deft answers and in part because Trump frequently fluffed his rebuttal.
Above all she came out swinging. We saw in her convention speech a willingness to goad Trump into overreaction. This was her playbook for much of last night, whether on his tax returns, his temperament or his treatment of employees. In a snap CNN poll 62 per cent considered Hillary to be the winner.
And yet his is not a conventional election. Over 100 million Americans watched some of last night’s contest, about as many as watch the Super Bowl. Many of them will have heard his constant repetition of key phrases (‘jobs, trade, regulation, tax cuts, Hilary’s 30 years in politics’) not as meandering but as message discipline.
The early exchange on trade and employment was an apt example. Where Trump made sweeping generalisations about the ‘disaster’ of NAFTA and the causes of the United States’ trade deficit, Clinton defended the importance of overseas trade and cited statistics showing that manufacturing jobs has actually risen in the 1990s. How that will play in Ohio and Pennsylvania is anyone’s guess. The same was true in the later foreign policy section where Trump offered clarity and simplicity even if much of it bore scant relation to the facts.
Trump’s strongest responses to Clinton consisted of one or two words (usually ‘wrong’ or ‘not true’ when she was in mid-flow). Although childish his bare-faced denials effectively neutralised many of Clinton’s attacks especially since many of the viewers begin from the premise that she is a compulsive liar. At one point someone in the room where I watched the debate put their head in their hands and asked ‘how does he get away with it?’. I do not know, but he does.
The problem is that Hillary has always had the superior grasp on policy and Trump has always been the braggart and the blowhard and look where that has got him: to a dead heat in the polls with six weeks to go.
Indeed, neither candidate really used last night to show a different side to themselves. Clinton was the cool operator in command of the facts, Trump was the swaggering businessman unafraid of causing offence. Each one doubled down on the strategy that has got them to this point in the race. This may yet cost Trump. When asked about his failure to pay federal income tax he responded that this was smart business, perhaps a good answer in the primary but not in the election. The starkest example of this doubling down came when the debate turned to the issue of race in America. Where Clinton called for reform to the police and the criminal justice system, Trump cited his endorsement from the fraternal order of police and defended the controversial policy of stop and frisk. Not the words of a man planning on expanding his electoral coalition.
Likewise the Clinton of last night’s debate seemed to be turning out her voters rather than reaching wildly for new ones. Exhibit A was her repeated reference to ‘fact checkers’, a form of journalism consumed by many ex-Bernie Sanders and Jill Stein voters but less so for many Americans. A clue to the roots of this approach may lie in an eve-of-debate interview given by the leading Democratic adviser David Axelrod who spoke of undecided college-educated voters being the demographic most likely to be swayed by the debates and that they were likely to break in her favour.
Judged by the normal rules of a debate Hilary clearly outmanoeuvred an unprepared Trump but these are not normal political times. With two more debates and 41 days to go it remains to be seen how this doubling down will move the polls.
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Charlie Samuda is a former adviser to the Labour party and is studying at the Harvard Kennedy School. He tweets @CharlieSamuda
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