The consensus is clear: Hillary Clinton trumped Donald Trump at the debate. Let’s start with Karen Tumulty:
Hillary Clinton’s weapon of choice in her first debate with Donald Trump was a needle.
Almost from the outset of the 95-minute debate, the Democratic nominee, who is known for having a debate-stage persona as a policy wonk, took after her opponent with digs aimed at piercing his famously thin skin. [...]
Nimble is not a word often associated with Clinton. But the former secretary of state kept up the jabs and the footwork, taking a far more aggressive stance than she had demonstrated in the many past debates in which she has participated as a candidate for the Senate and for the White House.
Joan Walsh at The Nation:
Trump came in unprepared and winging it, and he never got more serious or grounded in policy or detail as the night went on. Clinton found a way to sound competent without being overbearing or scolding. From early on Trump hectored her, interrupting and talking over her, and she handled it with aplomb. She regularly advised the audience to check her Web site, HillaryClinton.com, for real-time fact-checking. “Donald, I know you live in your own reality,” she said calmly. And it gradually became clear she was right.
Jonathan Chait:
The final exchange of the debate was the most devastating. Clinton lacerated Trump for his dehumanization of women — the kind of sexualization that offends social conservatives and social liberals alike. She brought up his abuse of one of his beauty-pageant contestants — noting, as an aside, his fondness for hanging around them — and that he called one contestant “Miss Piggy” and, because she is Latina, “Miss Housekeeper.” When Trump fell for the trap by demanding her name, Clinton supplied it: Alicia Machado, driving home the justifiable impression that Clinton sees her as a human being, unlike her opponent, who sees her as a piece of meat. His response consisted of whining that her campaign was spending money to attack him in advertisements. [...]
The contrast between an obviously and eminently qualified public servant and a ranting bully was as stark as any presidential debate in American history.
The New York Times:
Standing at the lectern, interrupting and shouting, playing the invisible accordion with his open hands, filibustering, tossing his word salads — jobs and terrorism and Nafta and China and everything is terrible — Mr. Trump said a lot. But as the debate wore on, he struggled to contend with an opponent who was much more poised and prepared than any of the Republicans he faced in the primaries. [...]
Depending on how your lenses are polarized, Mr. Trump met/exceeded/failed to meet expectations, which were low to begin with. He has lied compulsively since he entered the race, and he was caught again on Monday night with his pants on fire (repeating, among other lies, his slander that Mrs. Clinton invented the birther slur against President Obama). But anything short of dropping his pants in the Hofstra University auditorium would still have left him with the support of a large portion of the American electorate.
Mrs. Clinton also met/exceeded/failed to meet expectations, which were different for her. She had to have just enough levity, mixed with substance, to be stern but not shrill, funny but not flippant, smart but not pedantic, able to stand up to bullying. On balance, she pulled it off, swatting his attacks aside and confidently delivering her own criticisms from higher, firmer ground.
Andrew Sullivan:
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.
John Cassidy:
Even on Twitter, where people were pulling apart Trump’s words with the relish of a class of third graders dissecting a worm, it took a few seconds for this statement to sink in. Had he really just boasted that he didn’t pay any federal taxes? Indeed, he had.
Brian Beutler:
To me, it was no contest. It is difficult to see how Trump’s performance could be viewed as having cleared even an arbitrarily low “expectations” bar any pundit might have set.
Gail Collins:
Trump lost. Really, I think we can work under the assumption that when a candidate is accused of cheering for the housing crisis, it’s not a good plan to reply: “That’s called business, by the way.”
Eli Stokols at POLITICO:
Suddenly, his words were dripping with sarcasm as he asked his rival if he could call her “Secretary Clinton—yes, is that OK? Good. I want you to be very happy. It's very important to me.” His voice rose as he skewered her for flip-flopping on his signature issue of trade. And before long, he was interrupting both Clinton and moderator Lester Holt, interjecting as she ran through allegations that he rooted for the housing crisis and claimed that climate change was “a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese.” He remained on the defensive throughout, unwilling to apologize for—or dispute—accusations of stiffing contractors and paying little to no federal income tax. [...]
The Washington Post:
MONDAY NIGHT’S debate told the story of this year’s presidential race. The Republican primary process failed, producing a nominee who cynically or ignorantly sells a warped view of reality, disqualifying himself with practically every overheated sentence. The Democrats, meanwhile, nominated a flawed but knowledgeable, confident and even-tempered politician.
Update: Trump, by the way, did eventually go back and shake Holt’s hand. Still, not the best way to end an already terrible performance.