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Commentary on the second 2016 presidential debate
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 Date: November 8, 2016 |
Winner: Donald Trump (R) Hillary Clinton (D) • Jill Stein (G) • Gary Johnson (L) • Vice presidential candidates |
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This page was current as of the 2016 election.
The columns below were authored by guest columnists and members of Ballotpedia's senior writing staff. The opinions and views belong to the authors.
More a sideshow than a real debate
October 10, 2016
By Karlyn Bowman
Karlyn Bowman, a widely respected analyst of public opinion, is a senior fellow and research coordinator at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank in Washington, D.C.
Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump didn’t shake hands as they walked on University of Washington stage in St. Louis for their second presidential debate and managed a less than heartfelt one at the end. They did manage to say something nice about each other at the end, though his praise of her tenacity seemed more genuine than her comments about his children.
So went another debate in what has been a less than edifying campaign season. I’m guessing that I am like most Americans in that I am eager for it all to end. I wonder if the town hall audience that seemed like a sideshow to the moderators felt the same way.
Trump didn’t seem to do more damage to his campaign although that is a low bar. Clinton didn’t enhance her appeal. Both have serious weaknesses and they were visible once again last night. What we heard about Obamacare and Syria reminded us that their are important differences between the candidates and the parties about what America’s future should be. But those competing visions probably got lost in the barrage of insults and ad hominem attacks.
Trump: a one-man wrecking ball
October 10, 2016
By James A. Barnes
James A. Barnes is a senior writer for Ballotpedia and co-author of the 2016 edition of the Almanac of American Politics.
There hasn’t been a presidential debate like the one that took place on Sunday night. Donald Trump decided to become a one-man wrecking ball on the debate stage at Washington University in St. Louis.
Trump swung away at his rival, Hillary Clinton, and her husband in deflecting his own crude remarks about women from an informal exchange that were captured on tape 11 years ago: “Bill Clinton is abusive to women. Hillary Clinton attacked those same women, and attacked them viciously, four of them here tonight.”
If elected, Trump vowed to pursue Clinton with the full force of the Department of Justice over her email scandal: “I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a special prosecutor to look into your situation. Because there has never been so many lies, so much deception.”
He accused his Democratic opponent of despoiling the country and having animus in her heart: “We have a divided nation, because people like her—and believe me, she has tremendous hate in her heart.”
Trump swung and rebuffed his own running mate, Mike Pence, who suggested in the vice presidential debate less than a week ago that the U.S. should be prepared to strike the military assets of the Assad regime in Syria: “He and I haven’t spoken, and I disagree.”
As one Republican operative described Trump’s strategy in a Ballotpedia survey of political insiders after the debate: “He wants to reduce last 30 days [of the campaign] to a pile of rubble and emerge the winner.”
It won’t help you lead should you actually get elected. Constitutional experts can debate legality and ethics of a president targeting a defeated political rival for criminal prosecution, which would be unprecedented in U.S. history. But it surely would be a recipe for disaster from a governing perspective.
Many Trump supporters are rightly indignant over Clinton calling half of them “deplorable.” So how are Clinton’s numerous supporters supposed to react when Trump says she’d be behind bars if he were in the White House? The chant of “lock her up” at Trump rallies is an amusing taunt, but a president needs to focus on leading the nation, not leading what many would see as a political witch hunt during his critical early days in office. That would be a huge distraction and a sure way to embitter every Democrat in Congress.
At times, the brute force of Trump’s verbal attacks seemed to throw Clinton off balance. When Trump charged, “there’s never been anybody in the history of politics in this nation that has been so abusive to women” as Bill Clinton, and added, “when Hillary brings up a point like that and she talks about words that I said 11 years ago, I think it's disgraceful and I think she should be ashamed of herself, if you want to know the truth.” Clinton’s immediate response was measured and somewhat detached: “Well, first let me start by saying that so much of what he just said is not right, but he gets to run his campaign any way he chooses.” She then invoked First Lady Michelle Obama’s advice, “When they go low, you go high,” and then pivoted to demanding an apology from Trump for his attacks on others during the campaign.
Clinton may have been following the old adage about not letting your opponents drag you in the gutter where they can defeat you with their experience, but it was still striking that she didn’t seek some kind of apology for herself or her family or rebuke Trump more passionately for dredging up her husband’s past infidelities.
Seizing the offensive meant that at least Trump held the initiative during long stretches of the debate, something he was unable to do during his first encounter with Clinton on September 26 at Hofstra University in New York. That cheered many Republicans in the Ballotpedia survey, but some wondered about it’s overall effect on the course of the campaign. “Trump stopped the bleeding, but didn’t expand his vote: bad news if you're behind,” said one GOP Insider. Another echoed, “It felt as though Trump stopped the bleeding to a certain extent, but that may not be enough to turn the page.”
We’ll know for sure in four weeks.
See also
- Presidential debates (2015-2016)
- Presidential debate at Washington University (October 9, 2016)
- Did Trump stop the bleeding?
