Who Won? Debate #1

[Red Five]

 

Lester Holt: he showed bias in his 'gotcha questions' - 3 for Trump and 0 for Hillary.

 

I disagree here, assuming that you think the birther, tax, and the looks questions were "gotcha". Trump has been leading the birther movement for the last 5 years and it is completely untrue. He is the only presidential candidate in the last however many years to not release his taxes, and his audit defense is total hogwash. And he and his campaign have continually mocked Hillary for not having the health to be a president. These are questions that need to be asked of him in front of 50M people. He is the one who brought those questions on to himself by acting the way he does.

 

Also, the cyber attack question was a softball to him to hammer Hillary on the emails, but he somehow turned it into talking about his 10 year old son and 400lb hackers sitting on their bed.

[zoogs]

The number of "gotchas" one receives has to be proportional to the amount of nonsense one spews.

[knapplc]

Can we all please remember that Sarah Palin, one of the least qualified members of a major-party ticket in a century, coined the term "gotcha question" when she was exposed as a fraud by the question, "Which magazines do you read?"

 

You use "gotcha" in relation to anything, you're telling me you're not capable of being president.

[Landlord]

The number of "gotchas" one receives has to be proportional to the amount of nonsense one spews.

 

 

Yep. Trump deservedly got more because Trump has insisted on living on a mountain of bullsh#t.

[BigRedBuster]

 

The number of "gotchas" one receives has to be proportional to the amount of nonsense one spews.

 

 

Yep. Trump deservedly got more because Trump has insisted on living on a mountain of bullsh#t.

 

Ever see a pile of bullsh#t when it heats up??? I really wouldn't want to be on top of it.

[TGHusker]

 

 

What it comes down to is one is a experienced, smart, qualified candidate that rubs some people the wrong way (and has lied about some very very big issues). The other is a lying, uneducated, uncaring, unqualified bigot. The decision is an easy one.

FIFY

 

Fair enough - most people, when they actually dig into the issues that she has lied on see that the weight of them vs. the attention they are getting is a wee bit skewed ... vs the gaps of supporting information and outright lies that come from the other one. But you're right. She has lied.

 

Not sure if anyone saw John Oliver this weekend, but he (I'm paraphrasing here) said lies to politicians are like raisins in a cookie. You don't like them, they shouldn't be there, but they are. You hope your cookie has no raisins. Hillary's cookie has some raisins, but Trump has only raisins .. no cookie whatsoever.

 

Oatmeal RAISIN is my favorite cookie. More like when you are a teenager, you hope the girl you are taking to the prom doesn't have as many zits as your friend's girl - they all (boys included) had zits but you hope yours has less. All politicians have zits, these 2 have an extraordinarily excessive # of zits.

[TGHusker]

 

 

Lester Holt: he showed bias in his 'gotcha questions' - 3 for Trump and 0 for Hillary.

 

I disagree here, assuming that you think the birther, tax, and the looks questions were "gotcha". Trump has been leading the birther movement for the last 5 years and it is completely untrue. He is the only presidential candidate in the last however many years to not release his taxes, and his audit defense is total hogwash. And he and his campaign have continually mocked Hillary for not having the health to be a president. These are questions that need to be asked of him in front of 50M people. He is the one who brought those questions on to himself by acting the way he does.

 

Also, the cyber attack question was a softball to him to hammer Hillary on the emails, but he somehow turned it into talking about his 10 year old son and 400lb hackers sitting on their bed.

 

Gotcha may be the wrong term - Trump deserves every one of those questions. I just think Hillary deserved some hard ??s on emails, the Clinton Foundation, Libya etc. I do agree to the above posters that the amount of BS one spews out the more they open themselves up to these hard questions and Trump rightfully deserves more of these 'hard clarifying' questions than any candidate I've ever known of including Palin.

 

Yes, that cyber ?? was one that he froze on. I think by then Hillary had him so rattle, he couldn't come up with the way to tie it around Hillary's neck. Talking about his 10 year old son - where in the world did that come from!! Again, if he can be thrown off course by a tweet or by Hillary's attempts to get under his skin (which she did), how will he do in front of world leaders - makes you wonder how good of a deal maker he really is and how he will be able to play hard ball wt China, Russia, etc.

 

Hillary probably felt pretty good standing there and watching him hang himself with his 10,000 word answers that went no where.

[TGHusker]

I was trying to imagine if it was Cruz, Rubio, or Kasich debating Hillary what the story line would have been. Of the 3 she would have had the most difficult time wt Kasich in my opinion. He would have come across as reasoned, a person with a lot of good experience, and without a bunch of blemishes. Cruz would have hit her hard and held her accountable but good chance he comes across looking cold and calculating. Rubio may have been framed as not ready for prime time - based on his poor performances in the final few debates he was in.

 

Republican party RIP - we hardly knew you.

[Danny Bateman]

That's an interesting hypothetical there TGH. It's ironic Kasich would come off as folksy and dad-like, because that's pretty anathema to the way he actually governs. He's kind of a prickly hard ass from what I've heard.

 

Cruz is a very good debater and very intelligent. But he's so damn smug and unlikable that it's hard for people to actually like him or want to root for him if they weren't already on his team. His policies are ludicrously far right, so he wouldn't win on substance with a large enough slice of the electorate. I actually think he could be a somewhat easy race for Clinton, because I don't think he'd have the appeal beyond his own base that Trump apparently has (it feels weird and wrong to type that). I think he'd struggle in swing states; he didn't show very well in damn near any of them in the primary.

 

Rubio is photogenic and pretty likable, I guess. But some of his policies are nuts for me as well, and if he had another meltdown moment like in his primary debate, you could stick a fork in him. You can also count his primary wins on one hand. He just wasn't ready for a real run at the thing.

That cybersecurity question was funny as hell. They asked him how to make us more safe, and he managed to A) Defend Russia B) Bring up that his 10 year old son has a computer and C) suggest a 400 pound hacker was to blame for all the hacks.

I think that last bit may have lost him the Reddit vote.

[HuskerNation1]

I was trying to imagine if it was Cruz, Rubio, or Kasich debating Hillary what the story line would have been. Of the 3 she would have had the most difficult time wt Kasich in my opinion. He would have come across as reasoned, a person with a lot of good experience, and without a bunch of blemishes. Cruz would have hit her hard and held her accountable but good chance he comes across looking cold and calculating. Rubio may have been framed as not ready for prime time - based on his poor performances in the final few debates he was in.

 

Republican party RIP - we hardly knew you.

 

Lol...Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Bush, Christie and many others would have mopped the floor with HIllary. There were so many missed opportunities by Trump last night, and they would have not missed those opportunities. Also, Rubio has way more experience in 2016 than Obama had in 2008, so I don't think that argument ever flies. Hillary has no charisma.

[Moiraine]

 

I was trying to imagine if it was Cruz, Rubio, or Kasich debating Hillary what the story line would have been. Of the 3 she would have had the most difficult time wt Kasich in my opinion. He would have come across as reasoned, a person with a lot of good experience, and without a bunch of blemishes. Cruz would have hit her hard and held her accountable but good chance he comes across looking cold and calculating. Rubio may have been framed as not ready for prime time - based on his poor performances in the final few debates he was in.

 

Republican party RIP - we hardly knew you.

 

Lol...Cruz, Rubio, Kasich, Bush, Christie and many others would have mopped the floor with HIllary. There were so many missed opportunities by Trump last night, and they would have not missed those opportunities. Also, Rubio has way more experience in 2016 than Obama had in 2008, so I don't think that argument ever flies. Hillary has no charisma.

 

 

I think Rubio and Bush would have. She just has too much baggage. And maybe Cruz would have but I agree that he's not that likeable even by his own party members.

 

As far as actually winning the election I'm guessing 4 out of those 5 would have beat her.

[caveman99]

 

 

 

Here is an interesting OpEd.

 

LINK

 

Hillary Clinton was boring and exceptionally well-prepared. Donald Trump was exciting but embarrassingly undisciplined. He began with his strongest argument that the political class represented by her has failed us and its time to look to a successful dealmaker for leadership and kept to it pretty well for the first 20 minutes.

 

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 ODonnell and about how he hasnt yet said the mean things about Hillary that he is thinking.

 

I agree that this was devastating and will haunt Trump going forward. I can see the Hillary TV commercials already:

 

Most important, he set ticking time bombs for himself over the next six weeks.

As she hammered him on his tax returns, he handed her an inestimable gift by basically saying he pays no federal taxes despite his billions and moreover, that if he had done so, it would have been squandered anyway." Thats not going to go away, nor is her suggestion that his refusal to release his returns is the result of his either not being as rich as he says or not being as charitable as he claims.

Clinton quoted him saying in 2006 that he hoped for a housing meltdown because it would provide buying opportunities and thereby goaded him into saying thats called business, by the way. To which she quickly replied that 9 million people lost their jobs and 5 million lost their homes in the housing meltdown he was so excited about. Blammo

 

His supporters should be furious with him, and so should the public in general. By performing this incompetently, by refusing to prepare properly for this exchange, by not learning enough to put meat on the bones of his populist case against Clinton, he displayed nothing but contempt for the people who have brought him this far and for the American people who are going to make this momentous decision on Nov. 8.

Don't forget possibly the biggest mistake he made by showing he has zero idea what the US policy on nuke first use is, which is mind numbing for someone who wants to be commander in chief to not bother to study up on the biggest arrow in the President's quiver.

[Minnesota_husker]

Not a political guy most times, but people dont like either option yet a guy like Gary Johnson isnt even given a chance to debate even though he is polling as high as 15% in multiple states.

 

I doubt the guy wins, but for people clambering for another option, this is it.

 

 

He is very similar to Bernie Sanders in some aspects and I assume Clinton is terrified he will steal votes from her.

[huKSer]

Boy if the other two parties wouldn't have paid off the pollsters Gary Johnson would have destroyed those two tonight. I wouldn't even call that a debate. Too often the moderator failed to gain control of the conversation to stick to the issues being discussed and let the two go off on mindless rants that had no real bearing on the original topic. I would give Hillary the edge after Trump did what Trump does. The first half was good for Trump then it pretty much went down hill.

No, he wouldn't.

 

1) He would have been ignored

 

2) He is terrible at debates

 

3) And I am a Johnson supporter

[Minnesota_husker]

 

Boy if the other two parties wouldn't have paid off the pollsters Gary Johnson would have destroyed those two tonight. I wouldn't even call that a debate. Too often the moderator failed to gain control of the conversation to stick to the issues being discussed and let the two go off on mindless rants that had no real bearing on the original topic. I would give Hillary the edge after Trump did what Trump does. The first half was good for Trump then it pretty much went down hill.

No, he wouldn't.

 

1) He would have been ignored

 

2) He is terrible at debates

 

3) And I am a Johnson supporter

 

He probably would have had a hard time getting a word in edgewise but I feel pretty confident in saying he would come off the least crazy and has the least amount of skeletons in his closet.