Delaware Liberal

What can one say? I was afraid that Trump’s charisma and stage presence and salesmanship might outshine Hillary Clinton’s usually tepid and wonkish instincts. I feared that the facts wouldn’t matter; that a debate would not take place. And it is to Clinton’s great credit that she prepared, and he didn’t, and that she let him hang himself. His utter lack of preparation; his doubling down on transparent lies; his foreign-policy recklessness; his racial animosity; his clear discomfort with the kind of exchange of views that is integral to liberal democracy; his instinctual belligerence — all these suggest someone who has long lived in a deferential bubble that has become filled with his own reality. Clinton was not great at times; her language was occasionally stilted; she missed some obvious moments to go in for the kill; but she was solid and reassuring and composed. I started tonight believing she needed a game-changer to alter the trajectory of this race. I may, of course, be wrong, trapped in my own confirmation bias and bubble — but I thought she did just that. I’ve been a nervous wreck these past two weeks; my nerves are calmed now.

First, let's compare the 2012 and 2016 races. Obviously, we have the full race data set for 2012 while more than a month of 2016 is still to happen. Still the comparison is instructive. I've filtered each chart to begin in May. [Click through to TPM at the link above to see the charts]. A few things immediately jump out. First, the 2012 race is much more stable than the 2016 race. This is likely do to having four candidates, two fairly unliked candidates and a race that is at least to some degree upsetting recent voting patterns. Second, Clinton has maintained a lead at all times. The lead ranges from very small (less than a single percentage point) to fairly substantial (high single digits). (It is important to note that statistically speaking, when you are talking about an average of many polls, a lead of perhaps two percentage points is not a virtual tie.) This captures the key factors in the race. It is close by historical standards but not closer than 2012, judged by the leader's margin. Indeed, over the course of the period we're looking at the 2016 margin has usually been higher than 2012's, sometimes substantially higher. Does this mean Clinton more likely to win than Trump? Yes. Does this mean it's close? Yes. Can you just assume Clinton will win and not worry about it? No. Should you channel your anxiety into self-doubt, recrimination and drama? Please don't. Pretty much everything else seems like a matter of semantics. My own hunch is that that line separating the two candidates is likely more durable than some suspect. But that's just my own hunch.

For Trump, the bigger problem in a debate setting is the nature of two person debates versus as many as ten on the stage at once. Answers in multi-person debates tend to be short and pointed. Time is in very short supply. Generally you have to fight to get in on a question. There can be back and forth and candidates are sometimes pressed on a given point. But that isn't the norm. Time is scarce and you can generally just hang back on a question you don't want to address. Two person debates have very different dynamics. I think the bigger liability for Trump is what we saw in the national security forum hosted a few weeks ago by NBC News. [....] [There, on a question regarding ISIS,] Trump has very little idea what he's talking about and when pressed on a clear contradiction he starts making up new nonsense to avoid addressing the question. As I said at the time: I think this exchange is pretty obvious for people in a way that transcends politics and ideology. Trump is the kid telling the teacher the dog ate his homework. Then the teacher points out he has no dog. But he's not going to apologize or come clean. He's just going to keep talking. Trump is extremely ignorant when it comes to public policy. George W. Bush had a pretty limited handle on public policy issues too. But either he or his campaign staff (likely both) had some awareness of this fact and kept his answers general and brief. Trump has no such self-awareness and generally just makes things up on the fly. That's seldom gone over well in non-Fox contexts - not just because he's ignorant but because it's usually pretty obvious he's just making things up. I do think it's possible he'll be goaded into saying something offensive or unhinged. For instance, I think it would be highly advisable for Clinton to confront Trump on birtherism - to press the point that he needs to provide some explanation and apology for why he spread this lie for six years. He's shown very little indication that he has a good answer to that question. Questions like that, shaming questions, tend to set him off.