26 September 2016
If Hillary doesn’t thump Trump tonight,
Trump will thump her on 8 November
Donald Trump is leading Hillary Clinton by a point in Colorado, and is just one point behind her in Pennsylvania, according to a CNN poll released this morning. Yesterday, a Washington Post/ABC News poll reported that nationwide, Clinton leads Trump by two points. Trump has been gaining on her for weeks, and now is beginning to pass her. Nate Silver has more at FiveThirtyEight.
That makes tonight’s debate far more critical for Clinton, who has much to lose, than for Trump, who has only to behave reasonably well to prevail.
Gut checking, not fact checking, is the key to understanding this debate. Clinton is much better informed on the issues than Trump, but that’s not what will win the contest. Voters are looking not for the candidate with the best answers, but for the candidate with the stronger, more presidential, personality.
Clinton is running on knowledge. Trump is just running over people, much to the delight of his followers, who believe our nation is on the wrong track and that we need a strong man in the White House, someone who will bust heads instead of split hairs.
Clinton needs to present herself as a leader who’s neither intimidated nor diminished by one of the most accomplished interpersonal dominators of all time. That won’t be easy. Physically, she’s the smaller person, and her voice rises in pitch, and sharpens in bite, as she becomes more excited, angry, or outraged.
Trump will walk onto the stage with a sociopath’s unshakable conviction that he’s the dominant party in the encounter. He relies not on a storehouse of knowledge in his head, but on a comfortable confidence in his clear superiority; a confidence that to his fellow authoritarians projects the strength they crave.
Two things much happen for Clinton to win. She must present herself as strong as well as informed, and Trump must stumble badly at least twice. If Trump neither stumbles nor does something to scare the bejesus out of the people watching, he wins.
I’ll be watching the debate. I have not decided whether I’ll be live Tweeting it.