What we saw Monday night in the first presidential debate felt like a 90-minute microcosm of the 2016 campaign.
Hillary Clinton was comfortable talking substance. She kept her cool. She was steady if unspectacular, giving safe and succinct answers. Above all, she was clearly well prepared.
Donald Trump was out of his depth. He was baited into damaging sound bites. He was erratic, offering long and rambling responses. Above all, he was manifestly unprepared.
All of this contributed to a sense by night’s end that Clinton was way ahead on the scorecard. But she probably wasn’t — at least, in the eyes of voters — and for the same reason she isn’t way ahead in this election: She isn’t a strong enough candidate to fully exploit his weaknesses. There were several moments where Trump seemed to open the door for Clinton to bury him, such as when he appeared to suggest that he had not, in fact, paid anything in federal income taxes. But Clinton, who is nothing if not cautious, held back. This debate lacked a blockbuster moment, and that’s actually to Trump’s advantage. Clinton had opportunities to land a haymaker, but was content to throw safe, high-percentage jabs.
That’s the story of the campaign: Trump, whose rhetorical offenses, lack of policy knowledge, and inferior campaign infrastructure (among other things) make him eminently beatable, has given Clinton countless chances to put this election away. And yet she cannot capitalize. Every time she appears poised to blow the race open, she commits an unforced error and he continues to hang around. That’s what Monday’s debate felt like — another missed opportunity for Clinton to put Trump away. Sure, the headlines will say that she won. But it was decided by the scorecards, not by knockout. And that’s the best-case scenario for someone who gave inconsistent answers about his tax returns, lied about his advocacy of the Iraq invasion, touted stop-and-frisk in response to a question about racial tensions, defended his birther crusade, shielded Russia against substantiated allegations of cyber attacks, responded to accusations of sexism by saying Rosie O’Donnell “deserved it,” and was laughed at by the audience after bragging about his “winning temperament.”
But here’s the thing: We in the media judged Monday night’s debate by traditional metrics — accuracy, presentation, disposition — and based on those metrics Clinton was the clear winner. As we have learned over the past 15 months, however, the American voter evaluates Trump using a very different set of standards. Because of his business background, penchant for provocation, and larger-than-life personality, Trump has effectively insulated himself from criticisms that would cripple any mainstream politician. The Clinton campaign is aware of this and feared that Trump would be graded on a curve –that anything short of a meltdown would be deemed a success. Where the media saw an ill-prepared major-party nominee who was short on specifics and long on hyperbole and half-truths, did voters see an electoral novice who stubbornly held his own against an established political dynasty?
Maybe not. There are some early indications that focus-group viewers saw the same thing reporters and pundits saw — one candidate objectively outperforming the other. But it’s worth keeping in mind that many viewers only watch the first 20 or 30 minutes of a presidential debate. And unfortunately for Clinton, that’s when Trump was at his sharpest and strongest, railing against disastrous trade deals and promising to protect American workers (particularly in the manufacturing sector, giving repeated shout-outs to the battleground states of Ohio and Michigan).
It’s quite possible, despite the media’s consensus conclusion of an obvious victory for Clinton, that viewers at home scored it much closer – or even considered it a draw. We won’t know for at least four days, and perhaps a bit longer, as pollsters go into the field this week to measure the debate’s impact on public opinion. But this much is clear: Clinton needs a solid bounce, because Monday night couldn’t have gone much better for her, or much worse for her opponent. We’ve heard for weeks that September 26 would be the most important day of the campaign. If such a lopsided performance doesn’t translate into a comfortable lead for Clinton heading into the home stretch, then perhaps nothing will.